CAMERA COLLECTION #10

November 14, 2020

Mamiya RB67

Mamiya RB67 Pro-S 6x7 professional medium format SLR camera, made in Japan by Mamiya Camera Co. LTD. Introduced 1974.

The Mamiya RB67 is a heavy bit of kit especially with the range of lenses and is normally used as a studio camera but it is my primary camera of choice, not used in a studio but on the road wherever I go. I first used one at college, its bellows which extend the lens make it brilliant for taking pictures close up. When I was working to commission I knew its versatility meant it was important to have one as part of my kit and gradually after about the year 2000, it became my main camera for my own work. I love the rotating back allowing you to move between portrait and landscape and the interchangeable lenses, it's like three cameras in one.

I used it in the UK on the Meridian Line project '36 Minutes in Cambridgeshire' and in Thurrock 'A Different Light'.

I also used it in America and South Africa but on all of these shoots I was moving around by car.

A blue tinted car window with rain on it looking out to a road landscape in South Africa.

In 2013 I took my camera to India and since then I have been carrying the kit round doing street photography in America, China, Vietnam and Italy which is very physically challenging. While on the one hand this camera shows that you mean business and you are serious about what you're doing but one of the negatives of this camera is that it can be too conspicuous and in some situations you need to be a bit more discreet.

Working this piece of vintage equipment can be temperamental so I actually own four of the bodies so that if ones not working I can use another. This is the concluding blog about ten cameras that I own but my collection is actually wider and I own multiples of some of the ones listed having bought them over many years, often when film cameras were not so popular with the switch to digital cameras, although its certainly come back around as film cameras are much more popular once again.