Mamiya RZ67 350mm

Hello, I've been using a Mamiya RZ system for over a year now with great results but recently I needed a 350mm and rented one from Sammys in Los Angeles. After looking at the film the majority of exposures where far underexposed. I metered with a hand held meter and exposed as I normally would with any of my other lenses. Is there something I'm over looking with the 350mm or do you think a faulty lens was the issue? Anyone have experience shooting with the 350mm and have any advice?

 

Thanks!!!

 

Nicholas

roadphoto.com

If you shot other lenses in the same session in the same session and they were correctly exposed, I'd think the problem was most certainly with the shutter in that lens.

 

If you only used that lens, it might be worth checking your camera battery. I know with my Bronicas, the Seiko shutter fires at 1/500 if the battery is dead.

Thanks for the reply Ben. I do believe I had a good battery but that would be a possibility. I just read that the RZ shutter defaults to 1/400 if the battery is bad. I'll change the battery just to be certain. I need to reshoot this later in the week and will be renting another 350mm.

Were you shooting in studio or outdoors? Outdoors with the narrow angle of view, metering may become tricky with the long 350mm lens. If the work was done in studio with strobe, ignore the previous comment.

It was outside with consistent overcast light. I did bracket as well. Unless for some reason that focal length needs a great deal of exposure compensation I guessing it problem is with the lenses. I'm going to reshoot this and use a different APO version and see how it goes. Luckily it's a subject I can return to.

Nicholas, The shutter does not 'default' to 1/400 if the battery is bad; you would have to set the switch to the mechanical setting. I did this by mistake once when doing a fashion shoot and didn't understand why my images were coming out dark - I was using a Polaroid back (with Fuji film) at the time. The 350 won't need any exposure compensation if you are just using the lens with the camera bellows but if you are focussing closer using extension tubes then you will need to take these into account.

Just wanted to give a quick follow up on this old post. Turns out the rental lens from Sammys had some issues and needed repair. I rented the APO version they also had and the images with that worked out very well. Thank you for your thoughts and suggestions!