Torn

I’m torn. I’ve been pretty hyped up about buying a Mamiya RB67 medium format film camera, and a 50mm lens for it (about the widest they made, equivalent to about a 24mm lens for a 35mm camera). That 6×7cm image would yield, with my current scanner, about a 36megapixel image to play with. I can just imagine the prints I could make from that!

Aside from the really huge piece of film, there are all kinds of advantages such a camera would offer me for landscape work. As Rob mentions, the Mamiya 50mm lens focuses down to about a thumbs-width from the front of the lens, and the depth of field is absolutely incredible. Plus, there’s the advantage of viewing the image on a large piece of ground glass, rather than through a typical viewfinder — which makes composition easier because your actually viewing what looks like an image.

Making a photograph with a camera such as an RB67 is a very deliberate act. You only get about 10 shots on each roll of 120 film, so, you want to waste as little as possible. There’s no built-in exposure meter, so a hand-held meter is essential. And, since the meter is not built in, you have to remember to compensate for any filters that you may have on the camera. The RB67 is a big, heavy camera, so a tripod and cable release are must-haves! Add to that the usual decisions about composition and camera position, choice of film, and you can see that setting up for a shot and actually making an exposure could take some time.

The cash investment in a good used RB67 with the 50mm lens would probably be somewhere around $550-600 … plus the light meter, which would run around $160.

Or, for a little over $500, I can get a superwide zoom lens for the D70s, such as the Tokina 12-24mm F4 that’s been getting rave reviews lately. In the 35mm world, that’s roughly equivalent to an 18-36mm lens. Or, maybe the Sigma 10-20mm F4/5.6.

So, what would I give up by getting the lens instead of the new camera? The huge, extremely detailed image file, for one thing. The extreme close-focus and depth-of-field. And, the process. I’ve got to admit that part of the allure of the RB67 is the process involved in making the picture. But, with a superwide zoom, I would gain a lot of flexibility — variable focal length, smaller size and lighter weight would allow me to work in more adverse (is that less verse) situations. I could move faster, if needed, than with the RB67.

And, there’s another interesting advantage — the possibility of relatively easy HDR imaging for extreme landscapes. Sure, I could shoot the required three exposures with the RB67, scan them all and get them aligned, then run the process on those images. I’m sure, with that much raw data, my computer would explode on the spot!

Hmmm… ponderance ensues…