Mamiya RZ67 75mm Shift lens

[jbcrane_gallery]

<p>Greetings All,<br>

I'm wondering if anyone has experience with this lens-good or bad. How complicated it is to use, how the optics stack up to the 65mm/f4 (besides not being quite as wide)-whether it makes a good landscape lens or not. I know its focus is architectural, but it seems it would render a pleasing non-distorted landscape as well (?). Any thoughts appreciated, and thanks so much.<br>

John</p>

[larry_freytag]

<p>John, I don't have much experience (yet) with Mamiya lenses, but based just on one roll I just shot with the 50 mm C lens, don't worry about the quality. I am looking for the same<br />lens for my RB. By the way, there are some really good prices right now on new Mamiya lenses at a major NY store, the RB lenses anyway are marked WAY down.</p>

[jbcrane_gallery]

<p>Hello Lawrence and thank you for the response. I bypassed the 75mm shift for now opting instead for the 65/4 reasoning I'd see more utility out of it right out of the gate. Plus, my G3 bellows and filters wouldn't fit that big, honkin 105mm filter thread. I found a good deal on a demo and it'll be here Friday-just in time for under the tree ;-).<br>

This will be only my second Mamiya lens, being new to the RZ system this October. I started with the 110/2.8 and my results confirm your assessment above: they're awesome quality glass. This 65/4 has a good reputation and I'm anxious to put it to work this winter. I haven't shot RB lenses on my RZ but I understand it's possible.<br>

It's nice to have entered the realm of "cheap glass" after having paid premium prices for all my DSLR glass for the past few years. A quality MF lens is typically running about as much as the slow, variable ap. consumer DSLR lenses these days, and I for one am glad (so is my wife!).<br>

Thanks again and kind regards, John</p>

[btmuir]

<p>Hey John,</p>

<p>I've been watching this thread.<br>

I've been putting together an RZ kit and I must say these are GOOD times to be doing so. The glass is suberp and going for a song considering they are shutter lenses</p>

<p>I have the 65 (non LA version) and you won't be disappointed.</p>

<p>I've also been going through the motions of running down a decent dedicated film scanner to show what this glass can do. There is a great deal of learning when it comes to scanning but my only option for color. I'm still printing my b&w wet but plan on doing some comparisons once I have some more scanning under my belt.</p>

<p>I also have the 110 2.8 for my normal and that is a bangin' piece of glass as well.</p>

<p>Have fun.</p>

[jbcrane_gallery]

<p>Hi Bruce,<br /> "I've been putting together an RZ kit and I must say these are GOOD times to be doing so."<br /> Isn't that the truth. Along those lines in a somewhat non-technical vein, I've been wondering about market trends lately and I'll see if I can roll it into an intelligible comment: In reading through the flickr's and various other on-line photo sharing spots it seems there has been somewhat of a re-invigoration of the film world-especially medium format. Folks excited about picking up their RZ, RB, Pentax or what have you...inexpensively and shooting MF film for the first time...<br /> Maybe I'm just actively looking more now that I'm into it and the interest has always been there (which I'm sure is the case). But there seems to be a growing discontent with the DSLR limitations. Something along the lines of, the bigger the image is, the more expensive the camera is (case in point, the newly announced Nikon D3X at $8K; and the Nikon tilt-shift PC lens I was considering buying in October for my DSLR gear was about $1,800), the more of the imperfections you can see - so now bigger, newer, higher-resolving (and heinously expensive) premium DSLR lenses are being designed and built to put a higher-resolved image on a larger, more expensive sensor... all the while the cost rising higher and higher... and there's an "emperor's new clothes" thing happening, where people are saying, "...wait a minute... you mean I can spend only hundreds of dollars and get an even better quality image by shooting film?..." and suddenly people's eyes are opening and are pointing at the digital emperor, realizing he's not what everyone wanted him to be.<br /> Maybe I'm just speaking for myself here but this is surely a cycle I've hit in this past year. While I regret not having jumped into MF earlier, I feel a bit like someone who profits from another's misfortune - buying all this amazing gear at such amazingly low prices because others have abandoned MF to chase the uncatchable digital darling emperor. Just an observation, and happy to enjoy it while it lasts.<br /> Kind regards, John</p>

[mikeseb]

<p>@John, "[profiting] from another's misfortune" is simply the market's way of reallocating finite resources to their best uses.</p>

<p>Rejoice, you are a prime mover in a market economy's cycle of "creative destruction".</p>