Seagull 107

[Ed_Davor]

After some time of thinking and rethinking, I think I'm going to enter MF through a very small door with this camera.

I know, I know, don't buy it, buy a Yashica-mat,
but from what I've read the sicret lies in a few repairs: recalibrating the focus, avoiding changing the shutter speed after cocking the shutter, relieving some pressure of the pressure plate etc. Which pretty much covers all its inherent technical flaws which made many people throw them away after a year (even after a jamed shutter)

Well anyway, the reviews on the 4-element lens are really good

Now what I want to ask you people is this:

I've found a nice little review which features a sample picture and a crop made on a Flextight 646 (it doesn't get better as a test) of a frame of Velvia 50, but I'm not good at evaluating MF images, so I ask someone to comment on the crop, is it good enough for MF?
The page is in russian so I don't understand a thing

http://www.mformat.com/camera.asp?mv=7&mf=97

here it is, the crop is taken from the above picture, it seems like a pretty tight crop, my guts tell me this is good sharpness for that kind of enlargement, but I could be wrong

 

[Ed_Davor]

hope this helps:

after some resizing in photoshop and trying to match the two pixtures, the crop seems to be such that the entire image would be about 7Kx7K pixels large.

 

[Foto Ludens]

Yup, its good. I don't expect you to ever enlarge a neg/slide that much, anyway. I've shot with a 3 element Seagull before and have been pleased with the results, so I expect that a 4 element one will meet your expectations.

 

[Ed_Davor]

IT seems this is 3200dpi. If this were 35mm, that wouldn't be a very good sharpness at 3200dpi, but as I understand you can't evaualte MF the same way you'd evaluate 35mm at the same dpi resolution, right?

 

[Foto Ludens]

Right.

The best way to test the camera out, I think, would be to loan one and shoot a roll through it.

Here's an example of a 3 element Seagull. This was Tri-x in d-76...

Like I said, the 4 element lens would only be better. I've almost bought one a few times, but ended up with SLRs instead.

Hope this helps,

André

 

[DBP]

If you want an even smaller door, buy an old CiroFlex for around $25. The triplet on the A-E models is pretty good.

 

[Ed_Davor]

I do not want a small door intentionally, but as big as I can affoard (which is small right now)

 

[Ed_Davor]

What I'd really like to hear is a comment on that crop from someone using pro MF gear

What I'd like to know, is wheather there is a big difference in sharpness between this examples and something you'd get from a "serious" MF lenses such as new Mamiya or Zeiss lenses at 3200dpi.