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Mamiya TLR lens shades


tom_alaerts1

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Hello,

 

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I have a Mamiya C33 with the 65mm, the 80mm and the 180mm lenses. However, I don't have lens shades for them, so welcome when shooting in bright sunlight...

My question: Which 35mm sunshades are good to put on these lenses?

I consulted the mamiya faq and somewhere it stated about for example the 65mm, if you compare it to a lens for 35mm film then if you want to record the same square on a 35mm film, you need a 28mm lens.

So, I guess I have to buy a 28mm lensshade for my mamiya 65mm lens. Is this correct and if not, which lens shades are okay so that I won't have vignetting?

many thanks,

 

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Tom

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Tom, the only sure way to be sure you don't get vignetting is to try a shade on the lens, open the aperture fully, lock the shutter open and look toward the lens from each of the four corners of the image plane. Note that you will always get some vignetting from the lens itself (viewed from a corner, the wide-open aperture will appear sharply elliptical), so be sure not to confuse that with vignetting caused by the lens shade.

 

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For a more quick-and-dirty approach, you could try putting the shade on the viewing lens and looking carefully for vignetting on the ground glass. If it's a rubber shade, you can push on its corners to see how much safety margin you have before it intrudes.

 

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The bigger problem will be to avoid having the shade block the viewing lens, especially with wide angle lenses.

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You might want to get the original ones, especially for the 65 and the 80. They are designed to cause only minimal (or none at all in case of the 80) vignetting in the viewing lens. SLR shades are quite often to large. It might require some hunting to get them nowadays.
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I recently purchased a Mamiya TLR system, and took it to Yosemite National Park for a week. While at the park, I watched the film on Ansel Adam's life they show each Sunday evening. One portion of the film showed Ansel leading a photo seminar at Yosemite, and using a hat to shade his view camera's lens while shooting. I did that with my Mamiya, with excellent results. Seems like a more simple a solution that finding an out of production shade for each lens.
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The advantage of the lens hood over the hat is, that the hood also works when the light comes from several directions, like on an overcast day. Such backlight results in a general contrast reduction, but not this "nice" images of the aperture we all know. So quite often you don't detect them easily, but in a one by one comparison you would notice. This contrast reduction gets worse, in case of dust on the lens element, (cleaning) marks and not up to date coatings. The later is the case with most (all?) of the TLR lenses.

 

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But even with the lens hood, in sunny conditions I have to use my hand (I usually don't wear hats) if shooting quite close to the sun. This is a design compromise you find in most of the lens hoods. Otherwise, they would have to be wider and longer. (Just think of the huge bellow hoods used with film cameras.)

 

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So, using the hoods doesn't stop you from worring about this point, but it reduces the contrast reduction due to diffuse backlight largly and hopefully sufficiently.

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