Film Fridays: Plaubel Makina 67 – The beginning and end of a journey into medium format

These things are going for over two grand on eBay. Pretty ridiculous if you ask me

Because of the lock-down, I'm finding myself culling through my catalog. My film work is what jumps at me especially MF. The emotive character of the medium and knowing there were little post work if any outshines my best and greatest digital work in terms of my sentimental attachment to the images.

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While I'm happy DPreview started to publish film photography content, I'm not entirely happy with the current "link to 35mmc" partnership and what it implies.
The thing is, and that is very personal, my opinion, that Hamish tends to be a bit too verbose and that's absolutely his own right and 35mmc has a consistent direction but I was sort of expecting something more in line with the DPReview editorial style, and seamlessly embedded in the site. Every author has his/her own style but they all remain sort of concise while still being able to convey opinions. Hard to pinpoint exactly but I find that I don't really want to hop to 35mmc. Just my humble opinion and perhaps it will be useful to DPR staff and Hamish, whose site I've been reading every now and then for years now.

Back on Topic, the Plaubel is truly a weird thing. I found amusing to find this article as I'm finally getting around to using it after a long while...

I had both the Plaubel Makina 67 (with the 80mm Nikkor lens) and the Plaubel Makina W67 (with the 55mm Nikkor Lens). That was during the 1980-1990. Both were more than okay, but the Nikkor lenses were not spectacular, ‘moderate’ is more accurate. Seeing these days the photos taken with the Plaubels, they are immensely ‘overtaken’ by digital cameras. With my Panasonic cameras (like the G9 and GX9 and the good Panasonic/Leica lenses) I get much, much better technical quality, sharper, ‘richer’, with more contrast, with more micro-contrast et cetera, et cetera with less bulk and memory cards for 3.000 plus Raw-files/photos, whereas with the Plaubels I had to change after 10 ‘shots’. I am not missing the Plaubels and the days, weeks, years in my darkroom for developing and printing. Now, when I come home, within a quarter of an hour my Epson professional printer is giving a technical quality which light years ahead of my b&w-prints from the negatives out of my Plaubels.

It makes me wonder why we don’t get “full frame” cameras with square sensors that let us shoot in different aspect ratios (including portrait without rotating the body), because I don’t really see any other significant benefits of medium format unless you’re going for insane IQ that needs to look good both at a distance and up close (e.g. fashion images printed huge for retail display).

I had the 67W and loved it. It had an unusual characteristic that turned out to be very helpful; the corners of the film aperture were rounded. So in the days before everything was done for you, with tagging and data, I always knew which shots were made with the 67 Wide and which were taken with the Pentax 67.

"...Posted on August 19, 2018..."

I say: Texas Leica....if there's one affordable medium format camera that blows you away in every aspect, go for the GSW690!

I have seen the PM67 bandied around a lot, but it always struck me as a very, very expensive camera given its feature-set, which I attributed to extreme rarity and hype as much as high quality.

Is there a big reason why it is so popular even at the same price tag as the Mamiya 7 (more modern, more capable, interchangeable lens) , or the Fuji GF670 / Voigtlander Bessa III (newer, similar size and form factor)?

Is it just intangibility and novelty?

I'd also be a bit concerned about shooting with a very rare $2500 40-year old collapsible camera. My Koni Omega Rapid 200 (another 6x7 rangefinder), by contrast, is likely 50 years old at this point, but it cost me $100 and is built like a literal tank (I swear there's 3" of steel mantlet plating around the lens mount). There's absolutely nothing fragile about it, and it feels like a self-defense bludgeon in hand. But it's not a particularly casual camera due to its size and weight. Upsides and downsides...

A few days ago I decided to sell some 220 Portra 400 film I had in the refrigerator since 2013. I posted them on eBay via auction and have over 40 watchers tripping over each other trying outbid one another. There's still a lot of love for analogue in a world of digital.

What is this doing here? Where is the D in DPReview? This article is 20 years late! Forget film!

This is a real camera. You may think you love your Sonys and Nikons and whatnot but if your camera doesn't have bellows, you might as well melt it down to make bullets for what historians will call "CoVid 19: The Aftermath."

I once had one. Sold it to buy a Fuji GS645. A camera I brought everywhere. It was my main travel camera. The Fuji is now dead, the shutter totally locked. I am a bit sad I sold the Makina 67, but I was young an money was an issue.

[sigh] This post — recycled from August 2018, by the way — is another entry in an online genre I call “Journeys of Self-Discovery by People Who Don't Know Much About the Basics of Photography But Want to Write About It Anyway.” Reader beware. Sorry, no refunds on this 10 minutes out of your life.

I'm kind of an older guy, 64, and I always thought I wanted one of these but the blog and the comments here have put that to rest for good. My first camera was a Yashica Mat 124 TLR, $90 new in 1971, sold for $60.00 5 years later to a co-worker. Mint ones go for $400-500 now!

I used the W67 with 55mm lens almost exclusively for several decades on documentary projects. I loved the camera, but the film advance was its Achilles heal- it just wasn't reliable. So I ended up always having two of them so I'd have a backup. There were also very few places that could repair them. The one place in NY (DOI I think?) would sometimes send the camera back with the rangefinder out of whack, so I ended up having to figure out how to adjust the rangefinder myself. My final straw with it was when I tested it against my Pentax 67 55mm lens. I discovered that the Nikkor lens on the Plaubel was just as sharp, but had horrendous falloff compared to the Pentax. I've been a happy Sony full frame user for years now, but wish I had kept one of the Plaubels as a keepsake.

There is one point that is often forgotten. Pictures published with reviews and stories like this - are just something. In this case the quality of the pics depends totally about the scanner. It might be flatbed, it might be drum etc. Scanner driver is something and the guy scanning likes some kinda pics.
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The same goes with digital. I see it quite funny that there are a lot of pics to go with every review. Then..the resolution people care to watch them is low and developed from RAW...some way...and their monitors are just...something - with faults in lightning and color etc.
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This might be though a good thing cause we can see that modern cameras produce almost the same quality pics technically, the way pics are -- depends nowadays about the skill of photographer. And that is not much to say about anymore. :-(

I enjoyed using my Makina 67. But I hesitate in using it abroad or too often as replacement parts and technicians are hard to find now. I use Fuji GF670 and GF670W as a replacement and they work charmingly. The Fujis have an extra advantage being almost silent and minimal shutter shock.

It was a pretty interesting camera and the lens was terrific, however everyone I knew that had one had issues with durability and especially film transport issues. One of my graduate students who used it had two as often as not one was in the shop being repaired. I would be so bold to suggest that the Makina was the "grandfather" to the Mamiya 6/7 series cameras that would prove to be much more reliable and had interchangeable lenses.

I like the camera. The writing is a bit like a transcript of one of those super long youtube videos that are mostly about the person speaking and take forever to get to the point.