The Cost of the Mamiya 7

In the early days of the pandemic I purchased a Mamiya 7 kit from an old timer at a reasonable price. This had long been a dream camera of mine and I had been searching for one year after year waiting for “the right price.” In a disappointing turn the 80mm lens was a write off due to severe balsam separation, but that earned me a big discount on the remaning camera and 43mm lens. It was “the right price” I had waited for and thus could not turn down. I quickly shot a few rolls of black and white film with the working 43mm lens as the previous owner had done for years. I developed them in my modest home set up and was unimpressed with the results at best and let down in all reality. I did as so many photographers do and decided to remedy the issue by buying more stuff, namely the 65mm lens. Then the camera sat for 2 years… probably more but who is counting. Always with a hope I could “flip” it for a small payday.

In more recent months I finally tried to sell the camera to a few photographer friends none had the interest or the money. One of them did suggest I should have shot color film since that is where the system shines. I toyed with this idea for a while and after seeing that the arrival of Kodak Gold in 120 format, I decided to give the camera a second chance.

After carrying the camera around and selectively shooting a few rolls (very conscious of the cost of color film and developing) I sent them off to a lab for development and was presently surprised to see what I had wanted all along, good photos with a distinct film look, almost a large format look. I still have a dozen rolls of the Kodak Gold and decided to shoot them all by summers end without getting too concerned with the cost of film or lab development costs.

I can’t say there is much of a moral to this story other than not under estimating the power of patients and perseverance. But I can’t help but feel that I should have just used the camera more to begin with and not concerned myself with the cost of film so much. The Mamiya 7 with its 6×7 frames does only get 10 shots on a single roll of film, which is quite concerning to many not so accustomed to film. But if used with intent a keen eye can get more out of those 10 shots than many can squeeze out of a 32GB memory card. While I don’t think I can claim such a grand feat, I do feel the shots I pulled off the first few rolls were more exciting than most of my digital work as of late.

looking back I think the idea of “fetishizing” the camera came into play. I knew well before I bought the camera that Mamiya 7s and 6s were both valuable and sought after by many, including some of the great photographers of recent decades. Thus there was a high level of awareness and matching hi demand to own the camera. In theory the camera could be sold for quite a bit more than my initial purchase price, If I could find a willing buyer. I made a mistake that is becoming all too common in the modern camera collector driven world and saw the camera not as a medium for photography but as an investment.

Rather than meeting the world with camera in hand and forever capturing memorable photos in negative format, I was trying to cut costs by shooting cheaper film stocks. I was not going out and interacting with the world as I had dreamt of when I first the saw the camera and the work created with it by so many of the great photographers out there, I was guarding the camera away in a bag in a box so as not to damage or devalue the investment. While obvious in retrospect, I never had much to work with or look forward to when using the camera and the camera languished in storage as I tried to convince myself the purchase was not a waste of money and would indeed provide a capital gain. I now, with the benefit of hindsight, realize I wasted time and opportunity, the most valuable of resources.

So I guess this story does have a moral after all, get out and shoot. A photographer should be concerned with the images not the cost basis analysis of each frame of film or a small pay off from a gear flip. A good photo is the ultimate goal.

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