Well I took your advice -- sort of: Bronica ETRSi

[cooltouch]

I just won this:

Click here to see on Ebay

Just this past Sunday, I was asking members about medium format preferences for somebody on a tight budget. Y'all had some good recommendations. And in a separate thread, PaulC showed us this Pentax 645 he picked up for a great price. I was still leaning toward a square-format camera, but I was starting to pay attention to your comments about 645. However, later that same day I bid on and won a Yashica Mat 124. This is a great camera and I'm looking forward to using it. Hasn't arrived yet; I'm hoping it will by tomorrow or so.

After reading members comments (especially PaulC's), I checked out the Pentax 645s and found one possibility that's still several days away. Then I checked out the Mamiya 645s, and couldn't find any deals on them. And then I checked out the Bronica ETRs. Found the above camera, and put it in my watch list about the same time as I put the Yashica in the list. I figured if I got outbid on the Yashica, I'd set my sights on this ETRSi outfit.

Well, as it turns out I got the Mat for quite a bit less than I was expecting to have to pay, and had some funds left over. So I figured what the hey? All I could do was get outbid on the ETRSi outfit. But I didn't.

So I've gone from having no MF cameras to having two within the space of a week. And I still have a few days left

Oh, and I believe, all things considered, the deal I got on this outfit is perhaps as good as the deal Paul got on his. True the Pentax 645 has a meter and a winder. But this camera comes with two backs and a leaf-shutter lens.

Just earlier today I was checking out prices on ETR stuff at KEH, and the closest I could have gotten to this outfit there would have cost me over $100 more.

So, yeah, I am pretty stoked I was able to pick up a nice MF outfit for less than $150 shipped to my door. And I guess I'm still a little surprised that I've wound up with two MF cameras for about what I budgeted for one. Now I gotta go buy some film . . .

[mo]

Congrats...now what are you going to buy with the left over change from both the MF cameras....

[Katastrofo]

Congrats, Michael, looking forward to some pics.

[cooltouch]

[cooltouch]

[Attila]

Surely it will be good! Congrats!

[Excalibur]

Wow what a bargain....I would use my medium format gear more if I could find a cheap and easy way are getting the colour negs developed, don't fancy doing it all my self again.

[ManualFocus-G]

Woah, nice! You must have a bigger camera room than me

[Rolf]

Hi Michael,

welcome to the club of medium format users !!!

[LucisPictor]

Wow! What a bargain!

[Farside]

Nice bit of kit, Michael. Bargainaceous!

[cooltouch]

[Excalibur]

[cooltouch]

Yeah, I can understand this. Even with MF I prefer shooting slides over color negatives, and I haven't been able to find any place yet that will do E-6 processing of 120 that I consider affordable. So I will most likely just bite the bullet and develop my own. I've done it before and it wasn't all that big of a hassle -- the main thing was just keeping the temperature stable. Other than that, it wasn't all that much different from developing B&W. And when buying the E-6 chems in quantity, the savings can become very significant.

[shauttra]

Congrats from me too!
I have the sama camera, and i love it! I won it on ebay for 400$ and it was almost new, sterile
Cheers!!

[Cobalt60]

Congrats!

And have fun getting the "necessary" lenses.
Make SURE you go for the PE-models for the 40mm or 50mm lens, or the 150mm the MC version will do fine (and save you 100 bucks ...), same for the 250mm.

[cooltouch]

I've been reading up on this some. Bronica made E, E-II and PE lenses for the ETR series cameras. The lenses labeled "MC" are earlier E lenses. The "MC" designation was dropped later by the mid-80s when it was widely understood that all modern optics had multicoating. cf:

http://www.tamron.com/bronica/etr_guide.asp

Apparently a number of the PE lenses were redesigned and thus preferable to the older ones. So I plan to add PE lenses as I can afford it. However, if I run into great deals on older ones, I reckon I might be tempted.

Eventually I'd like to add a decent wide angle and a medium telephoto, thus probably a 40mm and a 150mm or so. The 40mm looks to be a pretty rare item, though, so I might just have to make do with a 50mm.

[Cobalt60]

The 40mm is indeed rare, with some luck you could get the 50mm PE around $220.
Again, for the 150mm there is no difference in quality between the MC and PE version so I would advise you to save some bucks there going with the MC ...
This could be a 150mm bargain ($80, very good): Click here to see on Ebay
And this could be an even bigger 150mm bargain ($40!):
Click here to see on Ebay

[cooltouch]

[Cobalt60]

There's one of the rare 40mm PE beast at a beasty price ... Click here to see on Ebay

[cooltouch]

Yeah that guy's prices are always high.

[Scoo]

Get an E-14 extension tube to go with that 150mm if you like tight portraits as the lens focuses "only" to about 1.5 meters.

If you like close-ups then the normal lens goes quite a bit closer than the Yashica-Mat (~0.6m vs. 1m), add an extension tube to that and you have quite a photographic tool

[cooltouch]

Thanks, Scoo. Those sound like very worthwhile tips.

Did Bronica -- or somebody else -- ever make reversing rings, I wonder?

The 50mm reversed would probably be a good item for macro work as well. If the iris operates manually, that is.

[Excalibur]

[Cobalt60]

The Iris probably won't be the main problem ... the shutter will be .