My First Medium Format - What Should It Be?

Alan Gales · Apr 5, 2019

How do you feel about eBay?

I used to be a Seller of film gear on eBay so I think nothing of selling an item on there. Some feel it's a hassle though. What I'm getting at is you buy any of those cameras with a normal lens off eBay, shoot it for a month and then sell it if it's not for you. I've done this myself with cameras and lenses quite a few times. I've bought something at a good price, tried it and then lost very little if I resold it. Sometimes I even made a little. Just consider the few dollars you may lose as a dirt cheap rental fee. Like others have said, there is nothing like actually using a camera to let you know if you like it or not.

Andrew O'Neill · Apr 5, 2019

Pentax 67? 120 SLR on 'roids.

4season · Apr 5, 2019

Bronica ETRSI is a pretty nice camera at a bargain price but beware of the multi-exposure lever which is too easily moved. Otherwise, no real complaints.

baachitraka · Apr 5, 2019

May make negatives in 6x6/6x7 then cropping...

645 can be restrictive...

runswithsizzers · Apr 5, 2019

Thanks again for the continuing good advice.

Unless something else falls into my lap, now I just need to decide between the Zenza Bronica ETRsi - and some model of the Mamiya 645. (I haven't researched the Mamiya sub-models yet.)

@ iandvaag: I love 3D! On my bucket list to investigate for someday.

@ Theo Sulphate: Good idea about swap meets and camera clubs. There is a local camera club, and I just sent them an email inquiry to see if anybody local is interested in medium format film cameras.

@ RauschenOderKorn: I do like the looks of that Zeiss-Ikon Super Ikonta 532/16. And the simplicity.

@ Alan Gales: Yes, unless someone can suggest a better source in the USA, I will most probably buy on eBay. I live in a medium size city in the middle of the US (pop about 150,000) but the only camera store in town is focused on main-stream digital cameras, only. I have bought and sold stuff on eBay before (no problems), but unlike you, I never actually MADE any money .

hsandler · Apr 5, 2019

[QUOTE
@ Alan Gales: Yes, unless someone can suggest a better source in the USA, I will most probably buy on eBay. I live in a medium size city in the middle of the US (pop about 150,000) but the only camera store in town is focused on main-stream digital cameras, only. I have bought and sold stuff on eBay before (no problems), but unlike you, I never actually MADE any money .[/QUOTE]

There's also BGN grade stuff on KEH of which many speak highly. Their shipping tends to be expensive, but they periodically have sales with free shipping. There are no super bargains, but OTOH, they will take stuff back if you don't like it.

Paul Howell · Apr 5, 2019

Don't overlook Shopgoodwill.com, I have bought some really good gear and few real losers as well. Mamiyas do show up from time to time, watch the bid price, make sure you know what shipping and handling will run and understand there are no returns.

baachitraka · Apr 5, 2019

I feel like to say it again to save some money in the future...

Please start with 6x6

Alan Gales · Apr 5, 2019

runswithsizzers said:
I have bought and sold stuff on eBay before (no problems), but unlike you, I never actually MADE any money .

Yeah, it's hard to do anymore. I started buying whole medium and large format film kits back when people were switching to digital. I'd part everything out and sell on eBay for a profit. I found with Sinar I could even part the camera out selling each piece of the camera separately for more than I could get for the monorail as a whole. I didn't get rich or anything but it helped pay for the gear I now have plus film, chemicals, etcetera.

Prices have leveled off. If I want to try a lens then I'll buy it and try it out and resell it if it isn't for me. I'll pretty much get my money back minus the shipping I paid. Of course you have to buy at a good price to do this. Good luck to you!

abruzzi · Apr 6, 2019

I’d love to try a later Mamiya 645, like a Pro or Pro TL. When I was going though the same questions last year, I ended up with a Pentax 67, and the soon later an ETRSi. The 67 was great but it’s size and weight made me long for light, but without giving up interchangeable lenses. Because I was so focused on light, I ignored all the advice and got a ETRSi with a waistlevel finder. It’s nice a tiny, and weighs very little. I acclimated to the left/right flip pretty quickly, and now it’s second nature (there is a thread on here from a year ago where I asked people, jokingly, if they accidentally swerved their car into oncoming traffic after shooting with the WLF.). Yeah, I don’t shoot many portrait orientation shots with it, but I don’t with my 35mm SLRs either. I do have an unmetered prism that I bought for $30, but I don’t really use it.

I seriously considered the Mamiya 645 as well. Getting the Bronica wasn’t so much a choice, as happenstance. I was looking for both, and I was going to buy the one which one popped up first at the price I wanted, in the form I wanted (WLF, no grip, and the crank still intact*.). As it turned out, it was a Bronica with a 50mm lens for $230, so that’s what I have, but I’d still like to try a Mamiya.

One great thing about the ETRSi system is pieces have been cheap. I’ve managed to find 120 backs for $35, lenses for $70-150, extra bodies for $50-70. The usual prices are all higher than that, but if you keep your eyes out things come along.

* if you buy either camera with a right hand grip, there is a good chance that he crank was removed, and lost since it needs to be removed to attach the grip. That means that if you want to shoot with grip removed, advancing film will be more cumbersome. Replacement cranks are hard to find. In the Bronica world, the easiest way to find on is to buy a broken body. So unless you never intend to remove it, I’d look for a body without the grip, then buy a grip separately.

Deleted member 88956 · Apr 6, 2019

Since there is such a small support of it, let me throw in the Pentax 645 IF your goal is to have a premier MF camera yet compact and rather inexpensive while supplied with great lenses. The are only 2 design features that may play part in going elsewhere: lack of true interchangeable backs and finders. The advantages are very compact 645 system that shoots almost like a 35mm SLR and robust design. I would NOT recommend the N bodies if AF is not important to you. With MF lenses system remains more compact and MF focusing on original 645 is a dream. On N bodies installed screen is a joke for manual focusing, and getting the NII is one of my regretful decisions. I don't care if metering is sophisticated (original is plenty good), highly touted knobs for setting shutter and few other parameters are indeed more intuitive and faster, but they are not worth in my opinion the drawbacks of manual focusing problems. FA lenses are also bigger, not optically better and take the system size and weight to a different territory. Surely, if AF is a must, then original 645 is not it.

To reiterate, Pentax 645 is in a class of its own, none other MF 645 cameras can be fairly compared to it and others may have features that P645 does not have. But for $300-350 an excellent condition body/film insert/one lens can be easily found. There is only one issue to watch out for in original P645: for whatever reason, electrical contact between battery insert and grip goes bad and you get a "dead" body. So make sure it functions and battery compartment has clean contacts with good looking battery insert (inserts in original are fragile and do not take long storage in very cold temperatures well).

Bill Burk · Apr 6, 2019

iandvaag said:
Warning: hard sell incoming.

I will tell you one of film photography's best kept secrets: medium format stereo (known among practitioners as MF3D).

Get a Sputnik camera off ebay for about $100 and join the yahoo MF3D group.

Wow fun.

I noticed there's no standard way to present 3-D online.
Some are two-frame side-by-side (and opposite what would work for cross-eyed viewing).
Some are three-frame side-by-side (and I don't know... do they put it as left-right-left so you can cross-eye view one side and stereoscope the other?)
Some are red-blue separated (for the glasses).
Seems to really show it right to everyone, you would need to show 4 frames.

Alan Gales · Apr 6, 2019

Bill Burk said:
Wow fun.

I noticed there's no standard way to present 3-D online.
Some are two-frame side-by-side (and opposite what would work for cross-eyed viewing).
Some are three-frame side-by-side (and I don't know... do they put it as left-right-left so you can cross-eye view one side and stereoscope the other?)
Some are red-blue separated (for the glasses).
Seems to really show it right to everyone, you would need to show 4 frames.

Bill, if you want to try 3-D on the cheap then buy a Stereo Realist 35mm camera. I've got one and it's a lot of fun. If you enjoy it then you can later move up to one of the medium format stereo cameras. Read the included attachment if you are interested. I own the common and cheaper 3.5 version and like it fine.

http://www.drt3d.com/3DRealist/

John Koehrer · Apr 6, 2019

Try Roberts camera online. Good service, reasonable prices and stands by the items.

images39 · Apr 6, 2019

I'll put in another plug for one of the later Mamiya 645's (Pro or Pro TL). The viewfinder is very bright (more so than the earlier versions), the lenses are superb, and the cost is reasonable. They don't have the "cachet" or cult following of Hasselblads, but the lenses and backs sell for much less. Some say that the negative is too close to 35mm, but the 645 negative is 2.7 times the size of 35mm, and I see a noticeable difference in an 8x10 print.

Dale

Deleted member 88956 · Apr 6, 2019

images39 said:
... Some say that the negative (645) is too close to 35mm,..

Dale

Whoever says that is disconnected from reality. It is much truer to state that 645 is not far off from 6x6. In fact, only when shooting for square composition 6x6 makes sense (and also when using a camera that is not built for flipping portrait / landscape shooting, like all WLF ones). Then you go 6x7, which appears marginally larger than 6x6, but if rectangular cropping is intended, then in reality it becomes significantly larger. 6x9 is in another league.

Michael Teresko · Apr 6, 2019

John Koehrer said:
Try Roberts camera online. Good service, reasonable prices and stands by the items.

Roberts (or usedphotopro.com) often has a lot of Bronica gear at decent prices with good customer service. I'm another happy Bronica ETRS user. Great optics and cameras, and I find 645 to be a big step up from 35. It's a nice compromise between camera and negative size.

iandvaag · Apr 6, 2019

Bill Burk said:
I noticed there's no standard way to present 3-D online.

Yup. There's not really any great way to share 3D images online. This is one place where analogue runs circles around digital, technically. Even the best digital VR display technologies can't hold a candle to a properly exposed medium format slide in a handheld viewer. I share my MF3D photos by participating in traveling folios with other artists where we all submit a few slides in a box and circulate the box by snail mail.

Get in while you can; slide film won't be around forever.

Alan Gales · Apr 6, 2019

Witold said:
Whoever says that is disconnected from reality.

Here in the U.S. the traditional wedding film camera was a 6x6 cropped to a rectangle or a 645. Wedding photographers did use 35mm for the wedding reception following the actual wedding. If 645 was too close to 35mm then they would have shot the whole wedding with 35mm.

mgb74 · Apr 6, 2019

I

4season said:
Bronica ETRSI is a pretty nice camera at a bargain price but beware of the multi-exposure lever which is too easily moved. Otherwise, no real complaints.

I "fixed" that. My ETRSi lever broke.

runswithsizzers · Apr 6, 2019

abruzzi said:
I’d love to try a later Mamiya 645, like a Pro or Pro TL. When I was going though the same questions last year, I ended up with a Pentax 67, and the soon later an ETRSi. The 67 was great but it’s size and weight made me long for light, but without giving up interchangeable lenses. Because I was so focused on light, I ignored all the advice and got a ETRSi with a waistlevel finder. It’s nice a tiny, and weighs very little. I acclimated to the left/right flip pretty quickly, and now it’s second nature (there is a thread on here from a year ago where I asked people, jokingly, if they accidentally swerved their car into oncoming traffic after shooting with the WLF.). Yeah, I don’t shoot many portrait orientation shots with it, but I don’t with my 35mm SLRs either. I do have an unmetered prism that I bought for $30, but I don’t really use it.

I seriously considered the Mamiya 645 as well. Getting the Bronica wasn’t so much a choice, as happenstance. I was looking for both, and I was going to buy the one which one popped up first at the price I wanted, in the form I wanted (WLF, no grip, and the crank still intact*.). As it turned out, it was a Bronica with a 50mm lens for $230, so that’s what I have, but I’d still like to try a Mamiya.

One great thing about the ETRSi system is pieces have been cheap. I’ve managed to find 120 backs for $35, lenses for $70-150, extra bodies for $50-70. The usual prices are all higher than that, but if you keep your eyes out things come along.

* if you buy either camera with a right hand grip, there is a good chance that he crank was removed, and lost since it needs to be removed to attach the grip. That means that if you want to shoot with grip removed, advancing film will be more cumbersome. Replacement cranks are hard to find. In the Bronica world, the easiest way to find on is to buy a broken body. So unless you never intend to remove it, I’d look for a body without the grip, then buy a grip separately.

Thanks for sharing that advice. Never would have occurred to me about the crank. I am still not married to either one, and I want to take a second look a the Pentax 645, as well. I may have to follow your lead and let the fates decide, tho I'm not sure I'm knowledgeable enough to recognize a bargain when I see one.

runswithsizzers · Apr 6, 2019

Witold said:
Since there is such a small support of it, let me throw in the Pentax 645 IF your goal is to have a premier MF camera yet compact and rather inexpensive while supplied with great lenses. The are only 2 design features that may play part in going elsewhere: lack of true interchangeable backs and finders. The advantages are very compact 645 system that shoots almost like a 35mm SLR and robust design. I would NOT recommend the N bodies if AF is not important to you. With MF lenses system remains more compact and MF focusing on original 645 is a dream. On N bodies installed screen is a joke for manual focusing, and getting the NII is one of my regretful decisions. I don't care if metering is sophisticated (original is plenty good), highly touted knobs for setting shutter and few other parameters are indeed more intuitive and faster, but they are not worth in my opinion the drawbacks of manual focusing problems. FA lenses are also bigger, not optically better and take the system size and weight to a different territory. Surely, if AF is a must, then original 645 is not it.

To reiterate, Pentax 645 is in a class of its own, none other MF 645 cameras can be fairly compared to it and others may have features that P645 does not have. But for $300-350 an excellent condition body/film insert/one lens can be easily found. There is only one issue to watch out for in original P645: for whatever reason, electrical contact between battery insert and grip goes bad and you get a "dead" body. So make sure it functions and battery compartment has clean contacts with good looking battery insert (inserts in original are fragile and do not take long storage in very cold temperatures well).

Thanks for your input. Several bloggers say the "N" model is the one to get - and prices reflect the greater popularity. So I would love to save some money on the earlier model. But your discussion of the battery compartment issue is troubling for me, because it may be difficult for me to be sure the contacts are OK before I buy one online. Two questions:
- Were the battery contacts improved in the "N" model, or do all Pentax 645 models suffer from this complaint?
- Is it possible to replace the OEM focussing screen on the N model to improve manual focusing?

mgb74 · Apr 6, 2019

runswithsizzers said:
Thanks for sharing that advice. Never would have occurred to me about the crank. I am still not married to either one, and I want to take a second look a the Pentax 645, as well. I may have to follow your lead and let the fates decide, tho I'm not sure I'm knowledgeable enough to recognize a bargain when I see one.

Cranks are a bit scarce for the Bronica and overpriced when you find one. But I don't find cranking without it all that cumbersome. That said, I use the speedgrip 80% of the time.

MattKing · Apr 6, 2019

There are power winders for the later version Mamiya 645s - Super, Pro and Pro-Tl - and they bring rise to the same challenge. If you are considering one with a power winder, check to see if the hand crank comes with it.
IIRC, one of the "packages" marketed for the 645 Pro was the SV kit, which included a power winder and the AE finder FK402, which was actually a penta-mirror finder, rather than a penta-prism finder, and no hand crank.
I have a power winder for my 645 Pro that I almost never use.

removed account4 · Apr 6, 2019

Along the lines of a Pentacon or Kiev you might consider an ARAX 60 or 88cm. Some might suggest the Russian/Ukranian Keiv cameras are prone to problems, the owner of ARAX cameras bought Kiev Factory ( or something like that ) and rebuilt them to repair the things that typically go wrong with them ( think strip to the studs and rebuilt ). Someone emailed me a while ago about a 88cm he was interested in selling. I currently have a ARAX60 and absolutely love it. The camera is a blast to use, and the Russian Sonar lenses are just beautiful. They are sometimes found USED on Ebay or you can buy them brand new and warrantee'd from the factory. The owner is wonderful, and a pleasure to work with.

Good luck !
John

My First Medium Format - What Should It Be?

Alan Gales

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