Week 49 – The Mamiya c330
The last couple of weeks have left me smarting a bit if I am
honest, I like to see nice images and they had been thin on the ground.
Emulsivefilm’s DeltaDefJam had come around again and I wanted to at least hold
my head up amongst my peers. The Mamiya c330 was just the ticket, a 1970s TLR
aimed at the pro and serious amateur market it promised quality. 1.7 kilos of
simplicity is what you get, no meter, Aperture and shutter rings around the
taking lens, interchangeable lenses mounted on rack and pinion bellows for
focusing which holds 2 sweet 80mm lenses. You view through a lovely bright
ground glass with a fancy system for parallax correction involving an indicator
needle and exposure correction scale, simple but effective.
I intended to run it alongside the Bronica s2a which would
give me a whole bag of my favourite 6x6 images hopefully. Each would have a
pair of Ilford Delta films of the 400 and 100 asa variety. A quick rummage in
the filter boxes turned up a nice set of black and white filters but no hood.
Loading was straight forward and I was pretty confident there would be no light
leaks as it had just had new seals. The only slight question mark was the lenses
which had some marks.
The week started slowly with work and dreary weather, I did
manage an hour or so over the river Tamar at Torpoint but just 3 shots to show
for it and not feeling too inspired. It was Friday before I really got a chance
to get my teeth into it. I got an early start and tried my luck on the other
side of the city taking the water taxi over the river Plym to Mount Batten. It
was a much better day with sun, clouds and a mind willing to work. The Mamiya
made it easy, it can focus really close and equally sharp at infinity, everything
looks super sharp and almost 3D like in the viewer. It is quite however heavy
and doubled up with mighty Bronie my back knew it had been worked hard. There
are lots of boat yards to meander around plus the breakwater pier and a pebble
beach. The later was a real boost for inspiration and I found when I got down
low I could create little Micro landscapes in the rocks and pools. I was so
taken with this idea I returned on the Sunday and shot more with the Bronie.
In short it performed really well, excellent consistent
images only limited by my short comings, I did lose one frame completely but
that was me. I have to say it is a bit of a lump for a TLR and setting up for
exposures is a bit fiddly compared to others, ergonomics were not high on the designers
mind but you can forgive this given the high quality images it churns out with
ease. This isn’t the tidiest example around but it certainly performed well. I
am looking forward to the film party now!
