The Mamiya C330f is a great camera for close-up work, unless you want to photograph something only 3 centimetres tall, fixed in the ground!
I went on a Royal Photographic Society trip to Samphire Hoe; everyone else was shooting digital but I took my C330f and a precious roll of Fuji Pro 400H. The images won't win any prizes, but all things considered I'm amazed I got anything. A twin lens reflex camera must be the least suitable tool for making images of these tiny orchids. It had not rained very much so they were only a couple of centimetres high! As you know, the Mamiya C330f is pretty good for general macro work, having bellows which allow close focusing. Of course there is parallax to contend with but Mamiya made a device called a Paramender which allows you to compose the image then lift the camera by exactly the right amount to put the taking lens where the viewing lens was. Unfortunately this device adds a bit of height, especially as it can only be used on a tripod head. Using it would have meant looking down on the orchids from above! I just had to balance the camera on the ground and compose the image with the top of the flower in the bottom of the frame and hope for the best. The parallax indicator in the viewfinder showed me where the top of my frame would be and proved very accurate, as well as telling me how much exposure compensation was required for the bellows extension. The small aperture needed to get any depth of field at all from medium format film at this distance meant some rather long shutter speeds at 400 ISO and the breeze didn't help, making the flowers wave around. I got a few keepers from my roll of 12 shots, this is probably the least bad. I should have done a bit more "gardening" to get rid of the light brown dead grass just behind the left top of the flower, but that was actually out of view at the bottom of the viewfinder when I took this image! Anyway, I had fun dealing with the challenge and very much enjoyed the company of the other photographers there.
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