Hi Gordon, some very interesting comments, thanks ;-)

Polaroid 600SE

Yes, I should be more up on the Polaroid 600SE (See my notes and postings
http://medfmt.8k.com/mf/mamiyauniv.html but I went with Koni-Omega rather
than Mamiya Universal or Polaroid 600SE; if the mamiya univ. lenses
matched it would be more interesting as the 600SE is lighter (plastic).
IIRC, you needed to use some Mamiya Univ. M adapter plus parts from the
Polaroid 600SE back(s) to get roll film back operation rather than the
original fixed polaroid 100 film option (or send to Four Designs Corp. for
modification?).

So the stock polaroid 600se is very uninteresting unless you want to shoot
polaroids ;-) (perhaps cheap in these days of polaroid bankruptcy?) while
the modified versions still limit you to just the original polaroid lens
set rather than the full mamiya univ. series, and the 75mm is hard to find
etc. while the 127 and 150mm are rather close in focal length IMHO (versus
the Koni-Omega lineup of 58mm, 90mm, 135mm, and 180mm lenses, also made by
mamiya in some cases).

150mm lens

it isn't just the close focusing issue, which I agree with you can be
achieved by cropping. It is also that 150mm on MF 6x6cm equates to
90-105mm on 35mm SLR, which achieves the classic portraiture perspective;
using a wider lens can work with care, but the "big nose" effect is more
of a problem than with the short telephotos. It isn't just getting closer
to your subject jitters that makes the 150mm the classic MF portrait lens
;-)

I haven't had the $$ either to use/buy the Century Precision adapters for
movie work. The high cost of good examples like the Zeiss Mutars were what
led me to suggest that interchangeable lens front elements could be used
with very good results, sort of like interchanging filters, but with
thicker elements for the wide and telephoto variants. As we noted, this
was done in the past with Kodak Retina and Contaflex, and with modern
designs should be do-able again today ;-)

the final reason why this hasn't been done is that too many folks are
happy with the existing offerings, esp. of low cost folders (ikonta/moskva
clones..) or rangefinders such as Mamiya 7/6 and bronica rf645. I also
think the bronica RF should have done better, and if they had opted to
tweak the bodies to match the 135mm lenses, it would have been sold as a
plus factor rather than the recall approach they took, leaving us without
a longer lens than 100mm ;-( Cropping from 6x7 and 6x9cm is pretty
forgiving, as you noted, so that can cover some of the tasks.

So I should probably look for a better afocal telephoto adapter of 3X or
4X range for those admittedly infrequent shots (in which these telephoto
adapters incorporate a focusing setup, so what you see in focus thru the
adapter is what you get on the film ;-)

grins bobm
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* Robert Monaghan POB 752182 Southern Methodist Univ. Dallas Tx 75275 *
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