pentax 67II vs Mamiya RB67 pro SD vs Hasselblad 503CW

As I stated before, I own both an RB system and a Pentax 67 (ii) system (as well as a Hasselblad V system). The P67 is the number one choice for film astrophotography because of the very flat film plane - if that is your goal, you will be very pleased with the camera - both the Hassie and especially the RB backs do not keep the film as flat. Don't be fooled by other comments - a Hasselblad cannot be handheld at any slower speed than a P67 - the Hassie has quite a mirror slap and the RB will wake the dead. An RB is more handholdable than many would have you believe, but it is still much heavier and more cumbersome than the P67, and much slower to use. Of the three systems, the P67 is the fastest handling. The P67II it is especially fast handling with its AP mode. The RB is the slowest - it requires cocking the back seperately from the camera - and on some models, you can accidentally double-expose if you forget to cock the back (and don't forget to take out the darkslide before shooting!). Also, contrary to what has been stated, leaf shutter lenses are available for the P67 if you need high-speed flash sync - these allow you to sync up to 1/500th of a second - I have a 90mm LS lens and it works just fine for daylight fill-flash. I would agree all three have good lenses, but the Mamiya lenses are a notch below the Pentax and Zeiss (Hassie) lenses in terms of sharpness - I find the Pentax and Zeiss glass to be equal in this regard. The Pentax lenses are contrastier that the others, which some people don't care for. At the same time, they are the least flare prone of the three. I can focus at 2 feet with many of my Pentax lenses, so not sure why the comment about "it can't focus close" - on the other hand, the RB can do macro type shots with the bellows. Finally, one of the annoying things about the RB versus the other two is the sheer amount of light seals in the camera. I changed all the seals on mine last year, and could not believe how many seals there were - I think there are 8 seals in the back alone. The Hassie and Pentax each have only one light seal to worry about.

By the way, if you get the 67ii, be sure to get the metered finder - it has spot, matrix, and CWA metering, and also allows the camera to work in AP mode - it is a very nice feature to have on a MF SLR.

All that being said, I wouldn't handhold lower than 125th of a second with any of them if the shot is important - use higher speed film or a tripod. If you need to handhold at slow speeds for some silly reason, get a rangefinder.

Should i? Or should i let it pass this time?
O, what the h.... Here goes:

"Mirror slap" has nothing to do with handholdability.

Yes, I forgot - MLU and "pre release" are just marketing tools. Next we will see the "penny trick" viceo as proof.

Q.G. said:

"Mirror slap" has nothing to do with handholdability.

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That's true, I get good results handholding my Mamiya 6 down to 1/8 and it doesn't even have MLU.

Mirror slap is an urban myth that has been disproven many times. The myth should have died decades ago.

The subject gets beaten down several times a month here. As Q.G. said

'Should i? Or should i let it pass this time?
O, what the h.... Here goes:

"Mirror slap" has nothing to do with handholdability.'

Steve

Sirius Glass said:

Mirror slap is an urban myth that has been disproven many times.

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Might you be able to furnish some links to the tests disproving this vile myth?

It's not about whether mirror slap exists. So let's be aware that discussing whether it does or no is leading us onto a sidetrack.

It is about the mere fact (which it is) that even the most steady hands move much, much, much more than what a terribly bad mirror slap would cause.

So we can easily assume it proven that mirror slap exists (and i indeed am a believer), and it will still be misleading to suggest that whether a camera has a slapping mirror or not has any bearing on the results when the thingy is used handheld.

Q.G. said:

It is about the mere fact (which it is) that even the most steady hands move much, much, much more than what a terribly bad mirror slap would cause.

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This is likely true. Which is why I go back to my earlier comment:

"All that being said, I wouldn't handhold lower than 125th of a second with any of them if the shot is important - use higher speed film or a tripod. If you need to handhold at slow speeds for some silly reason, get a rangefinder."

JRJacobs said:

"All that being said, I wouldn't handhold lower than 125th of a second with any of them if the shot is important - use higher speed film or a tripod. If you need to handhold at slow speeds for some silly reason, get a rangefinder."

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Now that I can agree with, although I always keep a very good tripod in the car for just that reason.

Steve

2F/2F said:

The things that are BIG differences:

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I think it is really a very subjective matter. It is not really that "BIG". It is only this "big". Other than that this is a very nice post.

Pentax 67ii (especially this latest P67) is very different from the other two. With the new AE prism (only for P67ii) it is equivalent to a most advanced manual (non auto focus) 35mm camera such as a Nikon F3 or Contax RTS-2 except being bigger (not BIGGER) and heavier. This is why I almost shoot 220 rolls only with my P67ii. 120 with 10 frames is just too short and goes through too fast for me. more than 80% of my film stock in my fridge is 220 for this reason. P67-ii gives 21 shots out of a roll of 220. Very nice.

Sirius Glass said:

Mirror slap is an urban myth that has been disproven many times. The myth should have died decades ago.

The subject gets beaten down several times a month here. As Q.G. said

'Should i? Or should i let it pass this time?
O, what the h.... Here goes:

"Mirror slap" has nothing to do with handholdability.'

Steve

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So I see that this is now a fiction forum as well as a medium format forum.

dougjgreen said:

So I see that this is now a fiction forum as well as a medium format forum.

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If you believe, and would insist, that the matter of having a moving mirror or not has any bearing on the results of handheld photography, yes.

I posted that of the three, I think that Hassies are a bit more reliable for "technically sound" hand held shots simply because they are smaller and lighter, and less shaky at eye level. Maybe it is just me who finds them this way. I can get a decent hand held shot with my friend's Hassy at at least one shutter speed lower than with my RZ. Same with my M645 (which I consider to basically be a sort of Hassy copy).

I also qualified this by saying that none of these cameras are *that* reliable for such unless the light levels are high.

Q.G. said:

If you believe, and would insist, that the matter of having a moving mirror or not has any bearing on the results of handheld photography, yes.

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Actually, quite specifically, the FICTION is the claim that mirror slap has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the ability to hand hold at slow speeds.

I vote to move the mirror slap issue to its own thread. Worthy of discussion (again), but not here, IMO.

dougjgreen said:

So I see that this is now a fiction forum as well as a medium format forum.

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Mirror slap at 1/focal length or shorter is caused by an Operator Assisted Failure, as in "Whenever the OAF takes photos he gets mirror slap."

Steve

dougjgreen said:

Actually, quite specifically, the FICTION is the claim that mirror slap has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the ability to hand hold at slow speeds.

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That's what you believe.
But it is not so.

Your hands, Doug, shake so badly, that it well and truly 'pales' the effect of mirror slap into insignificance.
And that's the length and breadth of it. That's how it is.

Believe anything else, and you're heavily into fiction indeed.

Sirius Glass said:

Mirror slap at 1/focal length or shorter is caused by an Operator Assisted Failure, as in "Whenever the OAF takes photos he gets mirror slap."

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Well ... It's not quite as simple as what follows, but the longer the exposure, the lesser the effect of mirror slap.

My hands actually DON'T shake so badly at all. Yours might. But mine can consistently hand hold a TLR at 1/8th of a second, and occasionally hold it still for 1/4th. I am very nearly as steady when shooting with a rangefinder and leaf shutter. But I cannot come close to that with any camera that has both a reflex mirror and a focal plane shutter. So, I have an existence proof that as far as MY OWN shooting technique is concerned, the mirror and focal plane shutter make a consistent and very measurable difference in my ability to hand hold - generally by 2 f-stops, or more. This is too consistently observed, and far too large a difference to be spurious. And it most assuredly does exist, and is very repeatable. If you can come up with a more plausible explanation, other than that it is imaginary, which I can easily disprove in my own work, I am open to hearing it.

I'm sure your'e right about your hands*.

But try this:
Attach a laser pointer to a camera, put it on a tripod, point the thing at a wall, and watch how the laser spot 'dances' when you first release the camera without mirror prerelease and then with mirror prerelease.

Next, take the thing off the tripod, and first just try to keep the dancing spot from wandering more than what it did when the tripod mounted camera was released withour mirror prerelease.
Then try to operate (push the shutter release) that handheld camera and see what the spot does.

Do that for starters, and you'll know that there is no need to even compare what happens with or without mirror prerelease when handholding.

*Steady?
Have i told you how i caught a 10 ft salmon the year before last using the elastic from my underpants?

Q.G. said:

But try this:
Attach a laser pointer to a camera, put it on a tripod, point the thing at a wall, and watch how the laser spot 'dances' when you first release the camera without mirror prerelease and then with mirror prerelease.

Next, take the thing off the tripod, and first just try to keep the dancing spot from wandering more than what it did when the tripod mounted camera was released withour mirror prerelease.
Then try to operate (push the shutter release) that handheld camera and see what the spot does.

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That has nothing to do with the issue. Your argument seems to be that hand motion exceeds mirror slap motion, therefore it's moot. well that's just plain wrong. Hand motion is of a much lower frequency. Which type of motion will matter more depends on the shutter speed. At 1 sec exposure, yeah of course hand motion matters more, if you are shooting unbraced.

Too may variables to make such gross generalizations. Is the shot at 1/15? 1/30? 1/60? Flash, no flash? Braced/unbraced? Caf/decaf?

Some folks don't get acceptable handheld results anywhere near 1/60! But I have found that the biggest source of blur is usually not the low frequency camera movement... it is the finger impulse when the shutter button is pressed. My usual advice is to depress the button with the side of the finger, not the fingertip... or better yet: use the timer and forget about the button altogether.

keithwms said:

That has nothing to do with the issue. Your argument seems to be that hand motion exceeds mirror slap motion, therefore it's moot. well that's just plain wrong. Hand motion is of a much lower frequency. [...]

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It has everything to do with the issue.

Your hands move all the time. And more than the mirror will make the camera move.

If mirror slap makes the dot dance over a distance of, say, 0.5 a degree, but that 25 times per second, the image will be far less blurred then when your hands make it sweep round a full 360 degree, but only 1 time per that same second.

And your hands will indeed make it move over a greater distance (try it), making any smaller movement a mirror might cause disappear.


You can calculate at what speed the larger, but lower frequency, hand movement will be no worse than the movement caused by a slapping mirror. And even though the example above is somewhat unrealistic, it is immediately clear that it will need fast shutterspeeds.

But even when you find a shutterspeed at which the dot moves that same 0.5 degree, both caused by hand movement or mirror slap, it does not matter much, if at all, whether the dot moves over that distance only once or 10 times. The amount of blur will be the same.


That last bit is all academical though, since the difference between hand shake and mirror induced shake is much greater.

And mirror induced shake is not only very small, but dies away very soon. Your hands however keep swaying. So it gets even worse than the above suggests at the shutterspeeds people like to boast about.

There are three primary sources of image blur in handheld photography: hand motion, impulse delivered to the shutter button, and mirror slap. If you can eliminate two out of the three then why not do so.

Enough is enough, this is far off topic now.

Q.G. said:

I'm sure your'e right about your hands*.

But try this:
Attach a laser pointer to a camera, put it on a tripod, point the thing at a wall, and watch how the laser spot 'dances' when you first release the camera without mirror prerelease and then with mirror prerelease.

Next, take the thing off the tripod, and first just try to keep the dancing spot from wandering more than what it did when the tripod mounted camera was released withour mirror prerelease.
Then try to operate (push the shutter release) that handheld camera and see what the spot does.

Do that for starters, and you'll know that there is no need to even compare what happens with or without mirror prerelease when handholding.

*Steady?
Have i told you how i caught a 10 ft salmon the year before last using the elastic from my underpants?

Click to expand...

I've already done this experiment, only I replaced the laser pointer with an exposed piece of film which records the motion blur for posterity. And it is more relevant, because the ONLY time that blur is recorded is while the film is exposed, NOT the instant before the film is exposed. And the measurable, repeatable result is, the film clearly records less motion in cameras without mirrors and focal plane shutters than with them. As I said, I can shoot a TLR at 1/8th of a second that shows less blur than a 6x6 SLR at 1/30th of a second. Consistently.

BTW, even if you CAN catch fish with the elastic from your underwear, the more salient question is, who would want to eat that fish?

After all the impassioned arguments made here I almost feel guilty reminding people that the real problem with the Pentax 67 system is actually shutter shake and the relatively long-duration sympathetic vibrations it causes. But this appears not to be a factor until shooting at 300mm or longer (and then, sadly, it appears to be incurable).

Happily, using hand-holdable focal lengths (figure 165mm or shorter) neither the mirror shake or shutter shake should be a real problem when hand-holding the camera with proper and practiced technique.