Plaubel Makina 670 pics

[HAnkg]

I'm all digital now, but I miss my Plaubel Makina 670. I found it's odd ball ergonomics ideal. Folded flat as 35mm RF, great 2.8 lens, huge viewfinder/rangefinder, focus - shutter - advance all controlled from same spot.

Great reportage camera (although it needed periodic maintenance). Here are some pics:

http://www.hankgraber.com/archives/7...6689786/193682
http://www.hankgraber.com/archives/7...6689786/193681
http://hankgraber.my-expressions.com...6689786/194177

cropped to 2x3 (still prefer the 35mm aspect ratio):

http://www.hankgraber.com/archives/7...6689786/192502

[pdx138]

Very nice. I've just become intrested in getting a medium format RF and this looks like an interesting camera. I was thinking the 6x7 format would be nice as an alternative to the 35mm aspect ratio although I think I also feel most comfortable with the 2x3... Maybe a 6X4.5...

Anyway, nice shots. What film is used in the shots from the Dominican Republic? I like the quality of the color.

[Jamie123]

Excellent pictures, Hank! Especially the last one. What did you use to scan the pictures?


Kyle, maybe a 6x9?

[HAnkg]

Film used was Kodak E100GX for the DR pics and I think Fuji 800Z for the 'Naptime' pic. I've got a Scitex Jazz scanner ( I used it to produce CMYK seperations for print work) which I'd rate one step below drum scanners like Aztek Premier or Hell Tango. It has some trouble with the dynamic range of transparencies with detail in deep saturated shadows like the DR images and those required some post gyrations to get back the look of the original slides. Final color for digitized film images can be set in post. In the end my Fuji negs wind up looking very much like my Kodak trans in terms of color balance.

I'd say there are only 2 drawbacks to the Plaubel -it's old and will likely require maintenance (I used Ken Ruth) and it's has the loudest shutter release of any RF camera, a really authoritative clunk. Still it's my all time favorite film camera.

[HAnkg]

On the subject of slide film. I really love E100G. I tried Fuji Provia, Astia and Velvia and really hated the color balance of Provia especially. It seemed to me a really ugly cyan-green and was a nightmare to scan. I find the color balance of E100G to be just about perfect, its to bad Kodak came out with E100G just before I went all digital. For negative film Fuji handled multiple light sources in the same shot much better then Kodak, although I didn't get to use the then new Kodak Ultra.