Kowa Super 66 55, 85, 150mm lenses

luisalegria · Expire: 2018-01-18

I have been collecting the bits and pieces for a medium format slr system. Just to be different I thought I would try Kowa, which had some interesting equipment for a time. I picked up a Kowa Super 66, the last body made for the system in the 1970's.

Standard 85mm lens, standard grip, and a little flash mainly for fill-in daylight work.

55mm wide angle (either a 35mm or 28mm equivalent, depending how you measure it), with Cokin filter/hood system

150mm with waist level finder

Kowa had a lot of experience with 35mm behind the lens shutter SLR's in the 1960's (similar to the Retina Reflex and Zeiss Contaflex), so I guess it was natural to have a look into giving Hasselblad a little competition. Because thats what this system is, a direct analog to Hasselblad, with similar flexibility and features. Other Japanese makers were earlier in the medium format SLR business, but these were focal plane shutter designs. The Mamiya RB67 which is a very similar system came a couple of years after the first Kowa.

The initial 1960's Kowas were limited by having a fixed film magazine however, and Kowa hadn't worked out the bugs of 120 film transport. The Super 66 of the 1970's did have interchangeable magazines, etc., and I think its held to be much more reliable than the initial versions. The lens range also expanded and improved over time, ultimately there were some very exotic ones made, especially very wide wide angles, though any of these other than the standard 55mm, 85mm and 150mm are very hard to find. The rarest seems to be a 19mm (!) fisheye, which is about the widest production lens made for 6x6 I think. There are also a 35mm, 40mm, and teles to 500mm, plus a 110mm macro.

I find that this is overall heavier than the equivalent Hasselblad setup, by at least 1/3, both the body and the lenses are heavier. This I think is mainly because the film transport is rather straight, making the magazine overall longer than the Hasselblad magazine, making the camera larger. I think the idea was to minimize film flatness problems. It is, overall, still lighter by @20% than the Mamiya RB67.

The magazine is much less convenient to swap than the Hasselblad or the RB67, so on mine its pretty much fixed. One also has to carefully check the seals on the magazine. These are probably bad on all surviving magazines by now, and should be replaced even if they look good. I learned this to my cost after I lost three rolls due to light leaks. I have also had problems with irregular film spacing. I have been looking for a new magazine.

The lenses seem reliable and easy to service, and as best I can tell they are too sharp for me to find an issue with them with my quality of film and flatbed scanner. The lens mount is a Canon-style breechlock, but rather a clumsy one, requiring that the lens side and the camera-side shutters are cocked before lenses can be mounted or dismounted. It is a bit of a hassle changing lenses, there being several pegs that have to go properly in several holes.

I have the 85/2.8 normal, the 55/3.5 wide angle, which is either a 28mm or 35mm equivalent depending how you compare the 6x6 format vs full frame 35mm, and the 150/3.5 portrait lens. All of mine work great. I had to slightly disassemble the 150mm to get some graphite lube in there; the main problem with these seems to be sticky mechanisms, where there is too long of a lag after the mirror flips up and the aperture stops down before lens side shutter fires. I have the older style 55mm and 150mm, there are later versions that are much more compact.

The big selling point for this type of system is of course flash sync at all speeds, which is very useful for outdoor fill in flash. There is a learning curve to manual fill in flash technique and I cant say I have gotten very far with it.

I have the proper original hoods for the 85 and 150, but I was using the bigger Cokin system for filters and hood on the 55mm, and I found out the Cokin mounting frame vignettes with dark corners. So I dremeled out the edges of the frame. It is tough to find proper color filters for this lens because its got an 82mm thread. The later one I think is 67mm.

There are many finders available, besides the waist level finder there are several styles of meterless or metering finder. I have a meter finder but I haven't used it as such because I still need to get a battery for it. None of the meter finders have linkages to the lens, so aperture and lens focal length have to be set on dials on the finder. I find the waist level finder easiest to use for accurate focus. Its very far from a 100% finder, I couldn't see the vignetting that was so obvious on film.

All in all it is a fun system to use and can deliver excellent results. A system can be picked up about in the same price range as an RB67. Accessories and especially lenses are hard to come by, and everything considered the rare lenses for this system should be regarded as collectors items.

Surprisingly, it is a wonderful system for street photography - yes, street - because people don't question what you are doing with such a massive camera. I guess its assumed that if you are carrying this thing you have some official reason to do whatever you want. It is a badge of authority that the usual DSLR does not grant.

All shots on Arista edu 100, which isn't the worlds best film.

uddhava · Expire: 2021-06-21

Nice looking system!
I have thought about buying a Kowa.
Thanks for posting all this information, it is useful for anyone who wants to buy one.
I like the first shot the best.

kds315* · Expire: 2021-03-09

Very nice Luis! Great system and very good results you got. Impressive!!