This is one of the more curious cameras to have passed through my hands. The Mamiya 528AL is a 35mm SLR with a fixed (non-interchangeable) lens and a leaf shutter behind the lens, introduced by Mamiya in 1975. That combination of features puts it in an unusual hybrid category. Not quite a compact rangefinder. Not quite a proper system SLR. Something in between, designed to give amateur photographers the through-the-lens viewing of an SLR with the flash-sync flexibility of a leaf shutter, in a cheaper and simpler package than a full system camera.
The 528AL also has the distinction of being Mamiya’s last leaf-shutter SLR. By 1975 the category was already dying out, displaced by focal-plane shutter 35mm SLRs from Nikon, Canon, Pentax and Olympus. The 528AL closed out a chapter in 35mm camera design that had run for about 15 years.
This is the review and shoot writeup. It came to me as part of an outlet box from Camera Rescue in Finland (the same box from which the Agfa Synchro Box also came; the Mamiya was the more functional of the four cameras in that box).
What it is
The Mamiya 528AL is a fixed-lens leaf-shutter 35mm SLR introduced in 1975 as the replacement for the earlier Mamiya 528TL (1967-1975). Both cameras share the same basic design: a 48mm f/2.8 Mamiya-Sekor lens in a fixed mount, a Copal X leaf shutter built into the lens assembly, through-the-lens viewing via a pentaprism and a single 1.5V battery for the light meter and auto-exposure.
The 528AL was the final iteration of this design and the last leaf-shutter SLR Mamiya ever made. After the 528AL, Mamiya focused entirely on focal-plane shutter SLRs (the MSX 500 and 1000, then the NC-1000 and ZE series) and on their famous medium format cameras (the RB67, the M645 system launched in 1975 alongside the 528AL, and later the RZ67 and the Mamiya 7).
Why a leaf-shutter SLR?
This needs some explanation, because the category seems strange today.
Most 35mm SLRs have focal-plane shutters. The shutter is two cloth or metal curtains that travel across the film plane just before exposure. The mirror swings up out of the light path, the first curtain opens and the second curtain follows it across the frame after the set shutter time has elapsed, and the mirror returns to the viewing position. This design allows for very fast shutter speeds (1/1000 and faster) and a single shutter mechanism in the body, which means the lens can be interchangeable without each lens needing its own shutter.
The leaf-shutter SLR design is different. The shutter is a leaf shutter (the same kind found in most rangefinders and TLRs and medium format lenses), located behind the lens but in front of the mirror. The mechanical sequence is more complex: mirror swings up, then the leaf shutter opens for the set time, then the mirror returns. The shutter has to be in the open position whenever you are looking through the viewfinder, so the camera holds the shutter open in viewing mode and closes it briefly during exposure.
Why bother with the more complex design? Two reasons. First, leaf shutters can flash-sync at every shutter speed, which is useful for portrait work and fill-flash photography. Focal-plane shutters typically max out at 1/60 or 1/125 for flash sync because the slit between the curtains has to be wide enough for the flash burst to illuminate the full frame. Second, leaf shutters are smaller and lighter than focal-plane shutters, which kept the body slimmer and reduced the weight.
The downside was that the lens had to be fixed. Each leaf-shutter SLR could only ever have the one lens it shipped with, because the shutter was part of the lens assembly. This was a major limitation in a market increasingly dominated by interchangeable-lens SLRs.
The leaf-shutter SLR category had its moment in the early 1960s with cameras like the Kodak Retina Reflex, the Voigtländer Bessamatic, the Topcon Auto 100 and various Contax and Yashica models. By the mid-1970s, the format was clearly losing ground to focal-plane SLRs with interchangeable lenses. The Mamiya 528AL was a late entry that survived until 1975 in part because the price point (significantly cheaper than a proper system SLR) suited the budget-conscious amateur market.
A short Mamiya history
Mamiya was founded in 1940 by Seiichi Mamiya (a camera designer) and Tsunejiro Sugawara (a businessman) as Mamiya Optical Co. Ltd. The company spent the wartime years producing optical equipment for the Japanese military and then pivoted to civilian camera manufacturing in the late 1940s.
Mamiya’s main reputation today is for medium format. The Mamiya Press series of the late 1960s was a popular rangefinder for journalism. The RB67 and RZ67 became the studio workhorses of professional portrait photography for two decades. The M645 system (launched 1975, the same year as the 528AL) was the smaller-format medium format alternative for working pros who wanted something more portable. The Mamiya 6 and Mamiya 7 (1989 and 1995) are still in production demand from contemporary photographers wanting a rangefinder medium format experience.
The 35mm side of Mamiya’s business was always secondary. They made 35mm SLRs from the early 1960s onwards but never seriously competed with Canon, Nikon or Pentax at the top of the market. Mamiya’s 35mm cameras were positioned as affordable alternatives, often with quirky features (like the leaf-shutter SLR design) that distinguished them from the dominant focal-plane SLRs.
The 528 series fits into this pattern. Introduced as the 528TL in 1967 (also sold in the USA as the Sears Auto 35TL) and refined as the 528AL in 1975, it was Mamiya’s “economy fixed-lens SLR” with the leaf-shutter design as its main distinguishing feature.
Specifications
Lens: Mamiya-Sekor 48mm f/2.8, three elements in three groups (triplet design, simpler than the four-element Tessar designs used on premium lenses of the era). Fixed mount, non-interchangeable. 52mm filter thread.
Aperture: f/2.8 to f/22, set by a ring on the lens-shutter barrel. Turning the ring to “A” engages shutter-priority auto-exposure.
Shutter: Copal X leaf shutter, speeds from 1/15 to 1/500 second plus B. The shutter sits behind the lens and in front of the mirror, and stays open in viewing mode.
Exposure: TTL CdS lightmeter with match-needle readout visible in the viewfinder. Shutter-priority auto mode (set the shutter speed; camera picks the aperture by adjusting the lens aperture ring when set to “A”). Manual mode by setting aperture manually with the lens ring.
Battery: A single 1.5V cell (originally a 676 mercury cell; modern equivalents include the SR44 or LR44). Required for the meter and auto-exposure. The shutter itself is fully mechanical and works without a battery.
Focusing: Manual focus via a ring on the lens barrel. Fresnel matte focusing screen with central microprism. Minimum focus distance 0.8m.
Flash sync: X-sync at all shutter speeds (the benefit of the leaf shutter). PC socket on the body. Hot shoe on the top plate.
Film advance: Lever advance on the right side of the top plate, single stroke.
Film speed range: 10 to 400 ASA.
Weight: Approximately 680g, lighter than a typical focal-plane SLR of the era.
The auxiliary lens accessories
One feature worth mentioning: although the 48mm lens is fixed, Mamiya sold optional screw-in auxiliary lens sets that fitted in front of the existing lens (like screw-in close-up filters but for focal length conversion). These were:
- A wide-angle converter that changed the effective focal length to 35mm
- A telephoto converter that changed the effective focal length to 62mm
Vivitar also made third-party versions of these accessories. They were a partial answer to the fixed-lens limitation, though they obviously could not match the optical quality of true interchangeable lenses. I have not seen many examples of these accessories in the second-hand market today; they were always a small-volume product.
The shoot
I loaded a roll of Kentmere Pan 100 (an inexpensive Ilford-made black-and-white film) into the 528AL. I wanted to test the camera with a cheap film first, in case anything was seriously wrong with it. Kentmere Pan 100 is consistent enough to reveal camera-related issues without confusing them with film problems, and at about half the price of Ilford FP4 Plus it makes a sensible testing film for unknown vintage equipment.
The battery in the camera was flat, so I had to meter manually with a handheld light meter and set the aperture ring directly rather than relying on the shutter-priority auto-exposure. Not a problem for testing purposes; the camera is fully usable in manual mode without a battery.
I took the camera to the Severn Beach area, near where the M4 crosses the M48 motorway interchange. There is a network of paths underneath and around the motorway junction that has some interesting visual elements: bridges, tunnels, overgrown vegetation, the lines of the motorway infrastructure and (sadly) the empty Travelodge that sits on the hill above the services.
Frame 1: A bridge composition with the motorway visible in the background. f/8 at 1/60 second.
Frame 2: Looking down across the motorway from the bridge. Stopped down to f/8 at 1/250 to keep detail in the road surface.
Frame 3: A view of the empty Travelodge at the top of the hill. Empty car park, closed doors. A small piece of pandemic-era melancholy that the camera captured well enough.
Frame 4: A small tunnel under the bridge, with a bollard at the far end for focus. f/2.8 wide open at 1/250.
Frames 5 to 18: Various walks around the path network, with varying compositions and apertures. The 24-frame standard 35mm roll gave plenty of room to experiment.
Frame 19: At about frame 19 I noticed something strange. A small dark spot had appeared in the centre of the viewfinder image. It had not been there at the start of the shoot. It looked like a piece of dust or debris on the focusing screen or mirror.
I checked the lens. Clean. I checked the front element. Clean. The spot was inside the camera somewhere, and I could not get rid of it by any external cleaning. I finished the roll and made a note to investigate after development.
(I will give away the ending: that mysterious spot turned out to be a dead fly that had got inside the pentaprism. I documented the cleaning process in a separate piece, which is mostly a list of mistakes I made trying to fix it without the right tools or experience. If you have a 528AL with a similar problem, read that piece for both the procedure and the warnings.)
The results
The Kentmere Pan negatives came back well-exposed and free of any camera-specific issues. The 48mm Sekor lens is sharp in the centre and softens towards the corners (the typical character of a triplet design, similar to what I had seen on the Yashica 635’s Yashikor). The microcontrast is decent. The tonal range is good for a triplet.
The shutter is fully accurate at the speeds I tested (1/60 through 1/500). The frame spacing on the negatives is consistent, suggesting the film advance mechanism is working correctly. No light leaks were visible. The camera produced reliable results across the whole roll.
For the price point this camera occupied in 1975 (an entry-level SLR aimed at amateurs who wanted SLR convenience without paying system-SLR money) the image quality is genuinely good. The Sekor 48mm is not the best lens Mamiya ever made, but it is more than adequate for snapshot and general photography. You would not use this camera for fine art landscape work, but for everyday photography it is perfectly capable.
Comparison with the Canon AE-1
Throughout the shoot I was mentally comparing the 528AL with the Canon AE-1 Program that I reviewed later. The AE-1 (introduced April 1976, a year after the 528AL) is the better camera in almost every measurable way:
- Interchangeable lens mount (Canon FD), with the full FD lens range available
- Faster maximum shutter speed (1/1000 vs 1/500 on the Mamiya)
- Larger maximum aperture available with the standard FD 50mm f/1.4 or f/1.8
- Electronic shutter timing for greater accuracy
- Lighter body despite the larger feature set
- Better viewfinder brightness with a larger pentaprism
The 528AL has one ergonomic advantage: the shutter sound. The leaf shutter on the 528AL has a satisfying, mechanical thunk when fired that the AE-1’s focal-plane shutter cannot match. The 528AL also flash-syncs at all speeds, which is useful if you do a lot of fill-flash work. And the 528AL is solidly built, with a reassuring weight in the hand that the lighter AE-1 lacks.
But for general photography, with no specific need for the leaf-shutter features, the AE-1 is the better choice. The interchangeable lens system alone is worth the upgrade.
Verdict
I am going to sell this one on. Not because it is a bad camera (it is not) but because I do not need it. I have the Canon AE-1 for my 35mm shooting (which is occasional anyway; this channel is called the 120ist for a reason) and adding another 35mm SLR to the kit just creates duplication.
For someone who specifically wants a leaf-shutter SLR (for the flash-sync flexibility or the unique mechanical character), or someone looking for an affordable vintage 35mm with through-the-lens viewing, the 528AL is a credible choice. They sell on the second-hand market for £30 to £80 in working condition. That is genuinely cheap for what is a usable camera with no major design flaws.
What to check before buying:
The battery. The original 676 mercury cell is no longer available. Modern SR44 or LR44 cells fit and work (with a slight voltage difference that may affect meter accuracy by a stop or so). Test the meter before buying or budget for a calibrated meter adjustment.
The viewfinder. Look through the pentaprism in good light and check for dust, debris, fungus, or (in my case) dead insects. The prism is hard to access for cleaning and damage inside it is usually permanent or very expensive to fix.
The shutter. Test every speed. Leaf shutters can develop timing problems at slow speeds (1/15 being the slowest on this camera) as the lubricants dry out. The faster speeds are usually fine.
The aperture mechanism. Set the aperture ring to “A” with a battery installed and a known light source. The needle in the viewfinder should move smoothly across the aperture scale as you change the shutter speed. Sticky aperture mechanisms can be expensive to repair on cameras of this complexity.
What’s next
I have three more cameras from the Camera Rescue outlet box to test. The Braun Imperial and the Ferrania Eura are next on the list. The fourth camera in the box was the Agfa Synchro Box, which I reviewed separately in the Agfa piece.
If you have a Mamiya 528AL or 528TL and you have stories or tips to share, the comments are open. If you have one for sale at a sensible price, I am no longer in the market (I just unloaded mine) but other readers might be interested.
(And if you are wondering what to do about a fly inside your viewfinder, see the prism-cleaning piece. Try not to make the same mistakes I did.)