Wide Angle or Fish Eye for Mamiya 645 Pro TL

[charlie_riter]

<p>Recently broke my arm which has sent me in the direction of giving photography a try! Just purchased a 645 Pro TL and want to add a wide angle or fisheye lens to it. I also really enjoy macro and any tips on that would be appreciated too! </p>

[JDMvW]

<p>Lessee-<br>

You broke your arm so you go out and buy a great big, heavy-to-carry camera? :)</p>

<p>I strongly recommend that while you are mending you try watching Hitchcock's <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0047396/"><em>Rear Window</em></a>. :|</p>

<p>Just on general experience, I'd go for a wide angle rather than fisheye. Fisheye at its best can be fantastic, but you will note that when you look at people's portfolios, there are few fisheye lenses, even from the people who own fisheye lenses.<br>

Fisheye is a great view when needed, but a steady diet of it is like eating a pound of marzipan. Even ultrawide, but rectilinear, lenses can be over done. My favorite medium-format wide lenses are my 45 and 50mm lenses. I have adapters that will allow full circular fisheye view and some of them can be used on 120-format, but I've never been motivated so far to actually try them out.</p>

 

[stephen t]

<p>Charlie, congrats on the 645 acquisition - I know you will enjoy it.</p>

<p>I agree with JDM - get a rectilinear first. I enjoy my fisheye lenses both on medium and small format, but use them much less frequently than the ultrawides. Well worth having, however, and I am sure you will add it to your inventory later. </p>

[Dustin McAmera]

<p>Mamiya made a good range of lenses for their 645 cameras, but I don't think anyone else did, so unless you can get a mount adapter, you don't have many choices beyond the focal length.</p>

<ul>

<li>55 mm f/2.8: only a moderate wide; my favourite lens on my 645 Pro.</li>

<li>45 mm f/2.8</li>

<li>35 mm f/3.5</li>

<li>24 mm f/4 (full-frame fisheye)</li>

</ul>

<p>For macro, or anything close-up or low down, you will probably find a waist-level finder useful. You can get an 80 or 120 mm macro-focusing lens, but it's a lot cheaper to get a set of extension rings, which you can then try with all the lenses you have. I quite like the close-up view with that 55 mm lens. You could get a bellows, for more, and more variable, extension, but it's a lot more cumbersome than rings.<br>

There are reversing rings too, if you can find them for sale: I have a reversing ring for one of my lenses in 35 mm, and find it very limited. It works right there, and nowhere else.<br>

If I was more into close-up, I'd get a slider (goes between the camera and your tripod, and lets you rack the whole camera forward and back).</p>

 

[rodeo_joe1]

<p>Well Charlie I hope that your 645 Pro TL is in good health, and doesn't have a broken "arm" itself. I've worked through 2 M645 Supers and recently my Pro TL stopped working as well. So IME they're not the most reliable of cameras. Commonest fault appears to be the little plastic mirror rest/brake, which has a habit of snapping off (search for other M645 threads in this forum about this).</p>

<p>Assuming your camera is fully operational. I'll second the opinion not to go for a fisheye. The 35mm lens is one of the widest rectilinear lenses available for medium format and should satisfy your wideangle needs quite well.</p>

<p>BTW: Symptoms of a broken mirror-rest are that the focus on film differs greatly from the viewfinder focus, and you may also be able to see a variation in focus from top to bottom of the viewfinder.</p>

[johncox]

<p>You could also look at the hartblei super rotator. (http://www.hartblei.com/lenses/lens_45mm.htm). It's a tilt shift 45mm that can be adapted to several MF mounts if you buy it in Kiev mount or used in Mamiya mount if you buy it native.</p>

[ondebanks]

<p>I have the 4 lenses that Pete listed above. In 35mm-format equivalent terms, they correspond to the classic 35mm, 28mm, and 21mm focal lengths for the rectilinears, and 15mm for the fisheye.</p>

<p>It's down to personal taste and "vision", regarding which you would be best served with. With rectilinears, I tend towards 35mm-on-35mm equivalence, which means the 55/2.8 on 645 film or the 45/2.8 on my square-format digital back. I like the 24/4 ULD fisheye a lot - it's a top performing lens - and when used with a digital back, there's the option of de-fishing the image into a perfectly rectilinear version, significantly more "ultrawide" than the 35/3.5 delivers.</p>

<p>There's another M645 wideangle that hasn't been mentioned - the 50/4 shift lens. I have no experience with it.</p>

<p>And just to note, you can also reach 55mm wideangle with the 55-110/4.5 zoom. I have the AF version of that zoom, and it is of prime quality. The manual focus N version has identical optics, AFAIK.</p>

<p>Since you also seek info on the macro regime: the 80/4 macro is said to be excellent (I have no experience of it). It focuses up to 1:2 as-is, and from 1:2 to 1:1 with its dedicated extension tube. The newer 120/4 is stunning however, including at portrait and infinity distances. It reaches all the way to 1:1 as-is, and due to the combination of its versatility and its image quality, it has quickly become one of my favourite lenses.</p>