

Kodak BW400CN / rb67 mamiya sekor C 90/3.8
The monster of medium format. The famed RB67. If there is ever a perfect camera, this will be one of the nominee. Sure, it’s big and it looks heavy. When i first carried it, it’s manageable but you won’t want to bring it for long holiday trips. Rb67 is targeted at professionals all along because of its fantastic inbuilt bellows, the large format size and the most impressive of all, the rotating back (i mean duh, y didnt the others think of it?). The weight is not a matter for professionals as they mostly work in studio and the camera doesn’t have to go anywhere. For location shoots there’s always the new intern. :p
Let’s start with the bellows. The bellows on mine looks pretty good, but from my experience with bellows, im very anal about it because of stupid pinholes. So i checked and spent 3 hours patching up just to be sure, i wouldn’t want to waste a roll because of it. Because of the extending bellows, you can do close ups (really close!) with it without using a extension tube. Very very convienent. Frankly speaking, unless you want to do some extreme close ups, you won’t need to fully extend the bellows, so even if the bellows have pinholes, it prolly won’t fog your negatives.
Next up is the rotating back. This is genius! Most cameras need to be tilted 90 degrees to take vertical shots. With the RB67, you’ll only need to rotate the film back to take vertical shots! Mamiya consider this a breakthrough and named this camera RB for Rotating Back. The 67 is for the 6 X 7 format (duh!). Back to the rotating back, it’s very accessible, convenient and it saves time.
Lenses-wise, go for the multi coated C should be enough for your work. This 90/3.5 C i have is filled with some fungus and other relatives. Initially i wasn’t very optimistic about the test results but it proves otherwise (as shown by the pic). This truely astound me and shows the quality and build of mamiya lenses.Note that there’s different models for RB , theres the original, pro S and pro SD. These are fully mechanical cameras and do not need batteries, so you don’t have to worry about no batteries and such. Mamiya also made a new generation of RB67, called the RZ67. The RZ67 is battery operated and you won’t want to know how many sad cases of spoiled RZ67 i’ve heard, so stuck to RB guys! Besides it’s cheap and works.
All in all, this is a trusty workhorse, tested and proven by professionals in the past 3 decades.
Hi, I too am a proud owner of my loved RB67. I agree with you that the revolving back is genius but also wish the camera to be smaller through newer model, it never did, as we all know! Though I am so in love with film, I wish someone make (decent and affordable) digital back for this monster soon….