Night time: Medium Format Help Me Find the Right Camera

[loccdor]

Yes, Mamiya 645

Best value in a versatile medium format camera. Can do 120 and 220 film, and adapt to another great value - Pentacon Six mount lenses.

You can remove the finder at night when composing on a tripod.

I was surprised at how inexpensive they are for what you get.

 

[Darryl Roberts]

best choice

 

[RalphLambrecht]

I always found rangefinders much easier to focus for night work. I would highly recommend one. I use the Mamiya 6 and it works great.

I second the recommendation about the Mamiya6. It's lighter and smaller than the Hasselblad but has the same film format and a terrific lens trio(50,75 and 150mm).

 

[abruzzi]

I was surprised at how inexpensive they are for what you get.

I considered one recently, I appreciate that with a FP shutter its easier to adapt lenses. But when I was looking there we a LOT of M645 lenses for sale on eBay with significant amounts of fungus and to get a basic 80/2.8 or 80/4 lens without fungus actually got pretty expensive compared to the cost of a Bronica 75/2.8 lens, so I decided to stick with my ETRSi system. I may have been looking at bad time, but I checked other M645 lenses and found way more with fungus than I usually see for other systems I buy lenses for.

 

[loccdor]

I considered one recently, I appreciate that with a FP shutter its easier to adapt lenses. But when I was looking there we a LOT of M645 lenses for sale on eBay with significant amounts of fungus and to get a basic 80/2.8 or 80/4 lens without fungus actually got pretty expensive compared to the cost of a Bronica 75/2.8 lens, so I decided to stick with my ETRSi system. I may have been looking at bad time, but I checked other M645 lenses and found way more with fungus than I usually see for other systems I buy lenses for.

Interesting, I wonder why. Haven't looked deeply into the native lenses for M645 but I hear there are a few real gems. I use a CZJ Sonnar 180 f/2.8, Biometar 120 f/2.8, Flektogon 50mm f/4, Mir-26B 45mm f/3.5, and Volna-3 80mm f/2.8 adapted to mine. All requiring full manual control. I love the rendering of those lenses. My purchase of the M645 came out of not being able to get a fully working Pentacon Six body, after multiple attempts and CLAs. Great lenses but very hit-or-miss camera.

With the M645's short flange distance, you really have a lot of options on what lens pool to pick from.