Mamiya RB67

The Mamiya RB is the ‘other’ medium format studio workhorse. Other to Hasselblad. It’s 6x7, instead of 6x6, and, it’s a dream to shoot with.

It’s heavy, deliberate, but at the same time it’s forgiving. It syncs flash at any shutter speed, thanks to an in lens mechanical leaf shutter. It’s completely mechanical, but, unlike large format and cheaper medium format outfits, it’s got full mechanical interlocks- so it’s a whole lot harder to make rookie mistakes.

It’s also got the very cool rotating back, which lets you shoot in portrait or landscape, without changing camera position.

And the feeling (and sound!) of cocking the mirror inspires both confidence and awe. The downward motion feels deliberate, and it just feels the way photography should be. Precise, deliberate, artful.

And hey, who can’t like a camera that has ‘professional’ written directly on the body…

About the shoot

The RB is a pretty fantastic workhorse studio camera- so it seemed natural for me to take it on location (to the backyard), and to shoot it out of it’s element. I used golden hour tones to push the colour around it, pushed even more in post.

I wanted to show off the huge size of the RB: so I pulled out a 35mm fisheye lens, which show in the last three shots how big and how long the camera is. And hopefully, show off it’s versatility.