Manual focus lenses on Mamiya 645 AFD III in studio

Hi,

I am currently moving from my RZ67 II (ouch) to a more flexible to use camera, the Phase One AF (Mamiya 645 AFD III).

I will receive it with a 80mm AF lens. I have been looking for other lenses, and I can see there are lots of pretty good deals for old 645 manual focus lenses.

Since I will be mostly using this body in studio (both film and digital backs), I am curious if it is worth to buy these old manual focus lenses.

I know some of the pro/cons of this, but what do you think? Do you have any experience with this?

Thanks

I am not a studio shooter, but I mainly use 645 manual focus lenses on my 645 AFD, and a digital back. In autofocus, I only have the 55-110 mm AF zoom.

I guess it depends a lot on what sort of studio photography you do. Product/still life? Then absolutely use the MF lenses. Vivacious models? You could struggle to nail manual focus often enough, especially if you want to use shallow dof.

You have electronic focus guidance (arrow LEDs show which direction to turn the focusing barrel) and confirmation (another LED between the arrows) when using a manual focus lens, down to f/5.6. I rely heavily on this.

I also switched to a focusing screen with a microprism centre, which helps manual focus. But I found that I had to slightly de-tune the dioptre correction in the viewfinder to make my estimation of focus, using the screen, match the electronic focus confirmation of the AF sensors. This says to me that the focusing screen does not sit at exactly the right plane. The design of the focus screen holder - "hanging" from the roof of the mirror box, with just a small metal clip determining its fixed position - is inferior in my view to the older M645 bodies, where the screen was supported from beneath and was rigidly pressed down onto 4 corner contacts.

In lens choice, the MF 120/4 macro is excellent. It's not quite full-APO like the 200/2.8 and 300/2.8, but it's damn close. Mamiya could certainly have stuck an "ED" label on it. Lovely "melt-away" bokeh in portraits too. Example below.