The Best Medium Format Camera

What’s going on all of you beautiful people welcome back to the channel today we’re going to be talking about one of the sexiest cameras ever made by one of my favorite camera companies the mamiya seven now this camera hardly ever needs an introduction because of the prevalence it has on the youtube platform amongst the film photography community it is a rangefinder camera i’m introducing it right now i vividly remember about a year and a half ago now that my buddy nathan who got me into film photography introduced me to this camera when we were walking through a camera store and he said like that camera is worth so much money and i looked at it and i was like i don’t get it so a year and a half ago i was like i’m never going to get that camera a total waste of money all this other stuff of like trying to seem all tough and rebellious to how beautiful the camera actually was it’s kind of like that it girl that you’re like man she’s all right and then later down the road in the movie that we’ve all seen before.

the guy’s like oh yeah she is pretty beautiful whole plots of getting to that’s camera or what to that person is what drives the story was what keeps the audience ends that mamiya seven is that it girl from a year and a half ago so i’ve had this camera for a little bit over a month now i’ve taken it to a good amount of locations to test its portability on also its functions took it to seattle took it to yosemite of course because i take all my new cameras 370 that’s like the training grounds for all of my equipment i took it to the sunset district of san francisco and also japan town for a little street walk around and i have to say that i have to give this camera a straight up nine and a half out of ten which is a super great high score and i will explain why that point five is missing for those of you who always want a 100 score but yeah starting off with the first impressions.

i remember reading up on a lot about this camera and one of the more defining characteristics of its body is that it’s plastic i’ve dealt with like a lot of metal cameras like the hasselblad and the mia and also like all my mirrorless cameras are made from a magnesium alloy body so when i heard a plastic body i was like okay that makes sense that it’s like very light why it’s so travel friendly but when i got it i’m like this is a super hefty camera like yes it definitely is plastic but the grip is mega solid the weight to it is actually a lot more substantial than what i thought it would be given it’s like plastic description online so i’m very glad that the build quality is a lot better than i thought the grip is the most ergonomic thing ever if i were to compare this camera to anything it would be the fuji gw 690 or the 670. it is a rangefinder style camera straight out from fujifilm and it loads the same way it has a rangefinder patch the fuji doesn’t have a light meter in it this one does so this is super handy both camera systems are great the lenses are sharp on the mia the lenses are sharp on the fuji you can’t take the lens off of the fuji but most of the times like that lens will serve you well but i would have to say that the characteristic that differentiates the two of them is this grip.

i mean this is such a deep grip and everybody loves to like have a secure tight hold on the camera for the fuji gw series you’re straight up gripping a flat out brick and gripping a brick is not as comfortable as gripping a grip what and of course the images that i got from the first few rolls that i pushed through this camera are immaculate they are super sharp it has not disappointed me mamiya glass is one of the best in the game and my experience with the rz has attested to that time and time again and the mamiya 7 holds up to that reputation [Music] the next thing that i want to talk about is the function of this camera it is a highly functional piece of equipment my favorite part about it is the amazing light meter .

if you’ve ever used a film camera with a built-in light meter i feel like the more common one that you would see is when you’re looking through it and you have pressed the shutter with your settings maybe at like what 1 1000 of a second and your aperture at f 1.4 it’ll give you like arrows to show you like if you’re overexposed or underexposed and when you’re correctly exposing it could either show you a dot or both arrows lit up at the same time and that’s like a great option for light meters good enough for like simple adjustments of turning the aperture blades or turning the shutter speed dial but for the mia 7 and some other cameras like the voigtlander r2a and the r38r4a series these light meters they don’t give you the arrows they read out the entire scene that you’re putting in front of your camera and it’ll just tell you what shutter speed you should go to like.

it’ll skip all the way to saying hey like i’m gonna flash 500 you should just go to 500 instead of just giving you an arrow to tell you to keep going like keep turning your settings until it’s right so these light meters are super advanced they’re super convenient especially when like when you’re trying to capture a quick scene maybe in japan town or the sunset district of sf and uh you’re just wanting to jump straight to the settings so that you don’t have to keep like rolling and rolling and rolling until you find out like oh shoot like i have to change my aperture as well for the second version of this camera mamiya actually put in a polarizer for the rangefinder patch to prevent flaring for when you’re focusing in a very bright scenario i did uh find myself in some scenarios where like the sun is hitting my camera at the right angle where the focus patch where i’m lining up the ghost image with the real image it kind of disappears and it gets washed out it’s not too much of a problem i just have to adjust and then refocus.

i don’t think i lost a shot that i wanted because i don’t know i lost time from adjusting with the flare but that’s just something that you should be aware of some of mia seven ones are actually modified with that polarizer so if you go on ebay you could tell by looking at the front of the camera and this part right here so mine is gray over here but if yours is like all rainbowy that means it has that polarizer modification and you’d be pretty much owning a mamiya 7-2 because that’s one of the only differences with the first version and second version you know the second version has the extra lug it has the polarizer and also has some upgraded plastics and a multi-exposure tab right here i can’t do multiple exposures on this or maybe i can with some kind of mod but it’s okay.

the one is very nice and another cool feature about this camera for some is that i hope you can see this is that on the shutter speed dial you actually have an aperture priority mode so that you don’t even have to worry about the shutter speed you just fiddle with the aperture and then the camera will decide what appropriate shutter speed will go with that it’s a very quick and simple way to shoot if you are trying to burn through rolls or capture a very crowded candid fast-paced scene that features there for you for me personally i like to shoot in full manual because i just like having control over the situation um i’m typically used to using these external light meters but of course with the internal one we are good to go and yeah.

i just i just like having the full process in the palm of my hands and the last thing of course is to share my personal experience taking this on four different trips and pushing some great rolls and having great images lined up and oh my gosh my hair is like spilling out of my hood like a fondue mess this camera is definitely living up to the glory that everybody has hyped it up to be and hopefully this video doesn’t drive up the prices too much because that always happens with every film camera review out there but it’s great the lens is sharp i have the 80 millimeter standard f4 lens and it has not disappointed me i didn’t want to go with the 65 millimeter one the wide one because i already have that on the rz so even though that’s my favorite focal length i wanted something a little bit different the portability is fantastic i took it through an airport and it was just super light in my pack.

i almost didn’t know that it was in my bag sometimes because i’m just used to carrying around the rz and i’m like yeah i definitely know that’s on my back right now another thing that i own is also the mamiya 7 panoramic kit this is going to be a separate video on itself but you can actually shoot 35 millimeter film in the mamiya 7 and it’s actually an oem part like it was intended for like some kind of secondary use out of this camera to shoot panoramics and it’s super sick it’s kind of like the x-pan except the x-pan gave you 20 shots this will only give you 16 which means that the negatives are much wider so it’s super cool i think that’s what it means so going back to my score why it’s like nine and a half out of ten instead of ten out of ten seriously everything about this camera is super perfect but one thing that i kind of thought was gonna be super easy was that when i load up my camera usually for my 35 millimeter cameras once i put in the roll right here and i pull it over i can just like slip the lead into the slot like on this take-up spool and then i can just start winding without like holding it down without um you know kind of guiding it kind of babying it until like it catches all the way.

i thought it would be like that because the fuji gw was like that i would just take the tip of the 120 film roll put it in like ever so casually and then like start whining like casually and it will just like swallow it up before this camera i really had to baby the film leader in and then like as i like slowly tighten the film in then like it caught and then like it was good to go such a nit picky thing but it was very convenient when i could just do that with the fuji jw and the besa r2a from voigtlander i was just like whoop pull it over slap it in then start whining and we were good to go like that was awesome but thank you guys for watching this video this camera doesn’t really need a review because there’s tons of them out there i just really wanted to share my thoughts share some of my unique personal experiences with it even though you know you’ll find it elsewhere.

And i’m just so happy owning the mia 7 now it has the same negative capability as my rd-67 which is huge because the form factors are so different so we will be pushing out more videos with this as i like do some landscape work also do some panoramic work with it too i’m very excited to show you guys some of my work that i’ve been producing through that and it’s just gonna be a very exciting time i’m very blessed to even have this camera and you know have fun with it too so make sure you like this video comment down below subscribe and i will see you guys and girls in the next post.