Very good optical performance

The minimum focus distance is to long for close portraits, small image size in the viewfinder, hard to focus, bad lens hood.

The optical performance of this lens is the best that I have ever seen for a medium format lens. I rate the lens with 4 stars because of the limits coming from the camera. These are practical problems with focus in close distance and the small image size in the viewfinder.

Customer Service

The mamiya service in germany is good.

Similar Products Used:

The old 105 mm lens for the C330 back in the 80s.

Sharpness

Lack of close focusing

Great supersharp lens which is fiddly to focus at close distances. Still it is so good for the infinity/near-infinity shots so I don´t really mind... If it was a tad easier to focus it would be GRRREAT! Not suitable IMHO for portraits, I use the 80 instead. For those tight headshots I use Contax SLR´s.

Customer Service

N/A

Similar Products Used:

150 for Mamiya 645
Lots of teles for other formats.

Probably the sharpest lens I've ever owned; solid feel, smooth focusing ring, great colors and bokeh.

Lens hood is junk; close focusing takes great care; minimum focus distance can't give you head-and-shoulders portraits, however image quality and neg size allows for tight cropping with little or no loss of quality.

photodo.com gives this lens the highest rating of all MF lenses tested. I agree with their assessment, as I've never owned a better lens.

Customer Service

Excellent - new M7II was missing sync saftey cap - parts dept sent me a few immediately.

Similar Products Used:

none of this lens type, but of similar length in 35mm - 85/1.8, 35-70/2.8 Nikons.

Very compact for a medium format telephoto lens.
Excellent mechanical and optical performance.

Some reviewers complain about the lack of close focussing. It's not bad at 1.8 meters which is not a problem for most outdor purposes.
The rangefinder needs to be in perfect adjustment for correct focussing in the 5 to 10 meter range.

An outstanding short telephoto lens, very sharp, no detectable distortion, no problems with flare, handles backlight very well.

Customer Service

Good from Maxwell Optical in Sydney

Similar Products Used:

Pentax 67 lenses, other Mamiya 7 lenses

near APO performance
sharp from corner to corner
high contrast
mechanically and optically professional quality
low weight and size in comparison to RZ lenses

none

The advantage of any good manual focus rangefinder is the focusing accuracy. This attribute comes in handy with wide angle lenses and in this case medium telephoto lenses. The 150 is without a doubt the sharpest lens I have ever used in the focal lenght range, beating out the RZ lenses only in terms of contrast and corner sharpness. Again this is due in part to the rangefinder body (lack of mirror and possibly better optical mounting surface) and the smaller number of lens design trade offs. I have used this lens mainly on people subjects and little else. It has sufficent magnification to fill the frame nicely without being the person's face or so far away that you have to use shouting. But there in fact is one of the drawbacks to the lens.

The rangefinder design does imposed one limitation to the 150 (and other telephotos), that is close focus range. The range limitation does effect the final subject image ratio on film which can be considered a drawback by those who compare it to the SLR counterparts. This limitation will also not play well with those who enjoy macrophotography.

Otherwise the 150 rangefinder lens is flawless. The images it produces are sharp and full of contrast, even into the corners.

The optional 150 optical viewfinder is not necessary in my opinion due to it's $200 cost and lack following the primary lens focus for the finder parallax correction. This is done manually to the aux finder after the primary lens is focused. If it proved even slightly helpful I would have purchased it, instead I recommend that Mamiya should include it with the lens at no additional cost to the consumer.

Customer Service

n/a

Similar Products Used:

Mamiya RZ 180
Mamiya RB 150
85mm/1.8 on 35mm systems