Got new used tripod and lens, and have a request
I am getting ready for my Fall Foliage Trip - lots of planning, money-accumulating, planning, replanning...anyway, I decided to use my state tax return to buy a decent travel tripod and a wide-angle lens for my Mamiya 645. I ordered it Sunday, and it's here now.
The tripod is a MeFoto Backpacker. MeFoto sells these neat little Benro-made folding tripods that have black legs with colored accents so they look cool. This is a very good tripod. It is metal everywhere you'd want it to be metal. It has good-quality rubber on all the knobs and locks. Finish is anodized. Its head-mounting bolt has the standard 3/8"-16 thread and the quick-release plate is Arca-Swiss compatible, so you can easily get more plates for your other fifteen cameras and can also replace the head easily if need be. (It's a very nice head so you probably won't want to change it.) The leg locks are twist-lock not lever-lock; I didn't take a leg apart to see how hard it would be to clean sand out of it, but it shouldn't be that bad - the guy who invented this thing seems to have known what he was doing. There's a cute little retractable hook on it to hang a sandbag for extra stability. Its stated capacity is 4 kg. I haven't done extensive testing, but I did run it up all the way and stick a 6-pound Mamiya on it, and it was surprisingly shake-free. And it's purple! Or red, blue, aqua, black, silver or any of the other sixteen colors it comes in. They even give you this adorable shoulder bag to put it in. It has no spikes on the legs, which is fine by me because spikes on tripod legs are as useless as Republican campaign promises. If you don't like twist-lock legs or ballheads this tripod isn't for you; otherwise, you want one. There are two versions - aluminum legs for around $130, or carbon fiber legs for twice that. I'm not sure how overloaded you'd have to be to want the carbon fiber one, because the aluminum one doesn't weigh very much.
The lens is a "Mamiya 645 45mm f2.8C Compact Lens." Since not even MamiyaLeaf's own website admits this lens exists and there aren't any reviews of it online, this may be the Internet's introduction to the little beast. I will write a full review of it after I've had a chance to go out and put a few rolls of film on it, but these are first impressions:
When the lens is mounted on your camera, it sticks out a bit over two inches. The front element is close to being spherical; the front of the glass is REAL close to the front of the filter threads, so a UV/haze filter should be considered an absolute necessity here. (It requires 67mm filters).
Mamiya had two generations of M645 lenses: "C" and "N." As far as anyone can tell, "C" means Coated and "N" means New. The lens formula on the N lenses is supposedly improved and the coatings are slightly better, but Mamiya has always made exceptional glass; whether you get a C or an N lens, you will get good pictures.
There is no plastic in this lens. Everything that is not the rubber grip rings is either aluminum, brass or stainless steel. My specimen shows signs of being mounted frequently; since this is a pro lens, that's good - it means it was doing what it was purchased for.
The focusing range is 1.5 feet to infinity; the focusing action is silky smooth. Apertures are from 1/2.8 to 1/22; off the camera this ring also turns smoothly. (On the camera is a different story; the ring turns a gear that reports aperture to the automatic-exposure prism, and that always feels like you're cranking a lawn mower by hand.)
Until I get some images out of this lens I can't give a full endorsement, but I like what I see.
Now for the request: The new fad is to buy Mamiya 645 lenses and adapt them to DSLRs. Quit doing that shit. Our lenses are corrected for medium format film and won't perform properly on your camera. Our lenses don't work with your autofocus and auto aperture systems so using them on your camera is a grade-A pain in the ass. And you using medium-format lenses on non-medium-format bodies means there's now a shortage of them. It's not our fault Nikon and Canon have cheapened up their new glass to the point it's not worth buying. There are TONS of classic Nikon and Canon lenses on the market that'll work better for you than ours ever will.
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