Another Twin Lens

I took my Mamiyaflex II for a morning walk in Old Town.  The temperature at 9:00 AM was already about 70 degrees in the last week of February.  That made for a nice walk, along with a little anxiety about what will come in the Summer.  The car club guys that hang out in the Plaza on the weekend did not really take a winter break this year.

I found the Mamiyaflex at a yard sale some time ago.  I didn't really need another twin lens reflex camera, but it looked to be in pretty good shape for its age except for a little peeling of the covering.  It is also interesting because this Japanese camera from the 1950's bears a very strong resemblance to my Kodak Reflex II which is only a little older.

Given the amount of time the Mamiyaflex sat on a shelf since its last use I was not surprised to find that it was not working quite perfectly.  The advance was a little rough, and when I developed the film I found that the frame spacing was very irregular.  

I also found that I had a little trouble with framing my images in the viewfinder, which seemed dimmer than I remembered, especially in the corners.  That may have been due in part to the sunny day reflections on the viewscreen, and I suspect my own dimming vision may also be implicated.

Over all though I can't complain about the quality of the images.  I'll see if a little cleaning and lubrication will help with the rough advance issue.  I may also try inserting a plastic fresnel lens under the viewscreen to see if that will brighten things up a bit.

trees

I dug around in my refrigerator film drawer and turned up a roll of 120 Arista.Edu Ultra 400.  I decided to use it in my Mamiyaflex II which last shot about nine months ago.   I drove to the National Hispanic Cultural Center.  None of the buildings were open, so I walked around the grounds and made a few exposures.  Then I took a long walk along the river.  These are the three pictures I liked best from the day.

The Arista film did not give me quite the contrast and tonal range that I expect from Tri-X or TMAX on this occasion, but I think it is still pretty good, and the price is right.  I think that a little experimentation with developers and dilutions would produce results very close to the higher priced films.

The Sekor f3.5/7.5cm lens gives quite nice results.  The viewfinder is a little dim compared to my contemporary Kodak Reflex II.  It is an interesting example of early post-war Japanese technology which preceded a big leap into Mamiya's revolutionary C-line of twin lens reflex cameras.

Mamiyaflex II

There is not a lot of information on line about the early Mamiya twin lens reflex cameras and not many examples of pictures made with the cameras.  I think the reason for that is that the Mamiya line of cameras underwent very rapid development during the early post-war years and the beginning of the line like my Mamiyaflex II got left behind as photographers discovered the later C-line of tlr cameras with their many innovations and capabilities.

I have not made many pictures with my Mamiyaflex II either, but I hope to remedy that over time.  I was initially not very impressed with the camera's performance when I first acquired it at a local garage sale a couple years ago.  Since then, though, I've decided that my dissatisfaction with the images from the Mamiyaflex was due more to poor technique on my part rather than any deficiency in the camera.  In fact, the camera's feature set is quite competitive with others of the period; it has auto frame spacing and shutter cocking coupled to the film advance and a pretty nice pair of coated lenses.  I took a walk around Old Town Albuquerque recently with the camera loaded with Kodak Tri-X which I processed in HC-110, semi-stand.

bicycle shop

Grey Dog Trading

sculpture garden

The Mamiyaflex represented an odd detour for the Japanese camera industry. Before and after WWII, Mamiya mostly followed the industry trend of producing some very nice copies of German medium-format cameras. In 1951, however, Mamiya produced a close copy of an American tlr, the Kodak Reflex. It seems likely the presence of great numbers of U.S. military personell in the country had an important bearing on the source of Mamiya's design decision, and it must also have raised some eyebrows at Kodak. Mamiya also followed Kodak's lead by introducing an upgraded second model in 1952, the Mamiyaflex II, which incorporated auto-shutter cocking and and an auto-film advance counter.

Photographers today looking to shoot a medium-format tlr will particularly appreciate the Mamiya's capacity to accept standard 120 film, as opposed to the now-obsolete 620 Kodak. While shutter operation and focusing smoothness compare very favorably with Kodak's tlr, the optics of the Mamiya seem to me to be a little less sharp.

It is not surprising that the Mamiya Sekor lens could not achieve quite the sharpness of the four-element Kodak Anastar, which was one of the great lenses of the era. It is a little hard to fathom, though, why Mamiya did not choose to brighten the screen image of its reflex with the addition of a Fresnel intensifier as was the case in the Kodak Reflex II. It may just be that Mamiya saw that the design strategy embodied in the Reflex II tradition was a dead-end, and that the path to success was much more likely to point in the direction of new ideas which would be incorporated in their innovative press cameras and the extraordinary C-line of twin-lens cameras.

The Mamiyaflex II Manual is at the Butkus site. 

Spring...

... means car shows.

The first big show of the season took place on the grounds of Albuquerque's Balloon Museum.  It was sponsored by the Classic Chevy Club.

I didn't stay to see which car took the top honors.  The real show stealer for me was the 1934 Studebaker.  I had photographed it before, a few years ago, with my Pentax K1000 at the yearly Art Museum car show.

My camera at the show this time was my Mamiyaflex II, loaded with TMAX 400.
The tulips were shot at the Botanical Garden with the Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim, loaded with Fuji 200.

Mamiyaflex II

I have added a page to my vintage cameras web site for the Mamiyaflex II which I picked up recently at a yard sale in Albuquerque.