The Mamiya RB67 is a good camera. I want to say that upfront, because most of this article is going to read like a hatchet job, and it should not. The RB67 is well-engineered, the Sekor lenses are tack sharp, the close-focus capability is genuinely brilliant, and there are good reasons it is one of the most loved medium format systems on the platform.
The problem is the population. RB67s were used by working professionals through the 70s, 80s and into the 90s, and a lot of them have had a hard life. I bought three cameras and returned two. I bought four lenses and returned two, then took the working glass out of one and put it into the working body of another to make a single functional lens. I still ended up with a camera that does several things it is not supposed to do.
If you want an RB67 that actually works as designed, you need to know what to look for and be prepared to send a few back.
This is a review of the one I ended up with, which is a Mamiya RB67 Pro S, but it is also a buying guide based on what I have learned the hard way.
The three models, briefly
There were three RB67 models:
- RB67 Pro (1970), the original
- RB67 Pro S (1974), what I have
- RB67 Pro SD (1990), the last and most refined
Mine is a 1974 design and it feels like it in places. The shutter cocking lever cocks the shutter and lifts the mirror, but it does not wind on the film. You have to wind the film separately with the knob on the back. The Bronica S2A, which came out in 1969, a year earlier, does both in one action. From a pure mechanical-design point of view the Bronica feels better thought out.
That is not a deal-breaker. It is just a thing to know.
Why people love it
Before I get into why I am not keeping mine, the case for the camera in good condition is strong.
The viewing screen is huge and bright. Focusing on the ground glass of an RB67 is a genuine pleasure. The image is large enough to see what is going on, and the screen is bright enough to work in less than ideal light.
Leaf shutters in the lenses. This means flash syncs at every shutter speed all the way through the range. No 1/60 limit, no high-speed-sync workarounds. If you shoot with flash, this is a real advantage.
6x7 format. A lot of people prefer 6x7 over 6x6 because they like a rectangular frame. Personally I would push back on this slightly. 6x7 is much closer to 6x6 than it is to 6x9. If you want a frame that feels properly rectangular, that scales up the 35mm aspect ratio, 6x9 is what you want. 6x7 is, to my eye, a square with the corners pulled out a bit. But this is a matter of taste and plenty of people see it differently.
Close focus. The bellows-focusing system on the RB67 lets you get genuinely close to your subject with the standard lens. None of my other medium format SLRs will focus this close with their standard lens. That is real and that is special.
So that is the case for. Now to why I am selling mine.
The buying experience
I returned two RB67 bodies before I kept one. The reasons were specific failures: shutter buttons that would not depress reliably, film backs that did not seat correctly, mechanical things you can only really discover by putting a roll through the camera.
The lenses were worse. I bought four copies of the 90mm f3.5 Sekor (the standard lens). All four had glass problems, specifically separation in the rear element group, which is when the cement holding two glass elements together starts to fail and you see a kind of oily rainbow pattern at the edges. Two of them were unusable. The other two were borderline, one mechanically good with bad glass, one mechanically iffy with reasonable glass. I unscrewed the rear group from the lens with good glass and fitted it to the body of the lens with good mechanics. That is the lens I am currently using.
The lens I dismantled, with the bad rear group still in it, is mechanically unreliable. It fires sometimes and not others. I think I have identified the problem and I will eventually try to fix it. But the point is: to get one functional 90mm lens, I had to buy four and Frankenstein two of them.
This is not a normal buying experience for a medium format camera. None of my other systems have required this. The conclusion I draw from it is not that the RB67 is a bad camera. The conclusion is that the RB67 was used so heavily by so many working photographers that the available stock today is, on average, in worse condition than the comparable stock for other systems.
What is wrong with mine
Even after all that, my “working” RB67 does several things it is not supposed to do. I want to document them properly because they are the kind of issues that show up after you have already bought.
The rotating back jams the shutter
The film back on the RB67 rotates to switch between landscape and portrait. You just twist it. There is no release button. It clicks into place at each orientation.
If you accidentally start to rotate the back even a fraction, before it has clicked fully into either position, the shutter button on the body stops working. It will not depress. You can stand there pressing it and nothing happens. The fix is to make sure the back is fully clicked into one orientation or the other.
This is something to be aware of more than a deal-breaker. But it is the kind of thing that has you missing a shot in the field and not knowing why.
The film back is shredding film
This is the one that genuinely worries me. Every roll I put through this back came out with scratches along the edge of the film, and on closer inspection there were small black marks on the negatives that changed position from frame to frame.
When I opened the back to investigate, I found tiny shreds of film emulsion inside the chamber. Something inside the film back is dragging on the edge of the film and shaving off thin slivers of emulsion as the film winds through. I have identified what I think are the culprits: a couple of small sharp bits inside the back that need to be ground down or replaced.
You can actually see the damage on the developed negatives as faint scoring along the edge, plus the moving black marks from where the shed material has briefly sat on the film before being moved along by the next wind.
If you are buying an RB67, ask the seller specifically about the film back, ask whether they have seen any scratches on the film, and inspect the inside of the back for any visible roughness or damage.
It fires with the dark slide in
This one cost me most of a roll of Fuji Pro 400H, which came back completely blank. The dark slide is a metal plate that slides into the film back to seal it light-tight when you change backs or remove the back from the camera. You are supposed to pull it out before shooting. The camera is supposed to refuse to fire while the dark slide is in.
Mine fires happily with the dark slide in. The frame counter advances, the shutter clicks, the mirror flips. You think you have taken a picture. You have not.
I should note: my dark slide is not the original Mamiya part. It is a third-party replacement (mine is branded “EONE for Mamiya 67”) which I think is still available on Amazon and eBay. It is possible that an original Mamiya dark slide would interlock correctly with the camera’s safety mechanism in a way this aftermarket one does not. But the failure mode is real either way, and worth being aware of.
Focus accuracy is harder than it should be
I shot three rolls and very few frames came back properly in focus. Some of that is on me. I was shooting wide open at f3.5, very close to the subject, where depth of field is paper thin. But I shoot with similarly fast lenses on my other medium format cameras and I do not have this hit rate.
Some of it I think comes down to the ground glass on this particular body, which may not be sitting at the correct distance relative to the film plane. This is something that can drift on heavily used bodies and is fixable, but it is another thing to add to the list.
![PLACEHOLDER: a frame from the shoot showing the film edge scratches and one of the moving black marks]
So am I keeping it
No. This one is going on eBay with full disclosure of everything I have found. Someone who is willing to either fix the issues or shoot around them might get good use out of it. The 90mm Frankenstein lens is genuinely good, the body’s metering is fine, the shutter is accurate, and the photos that did come back well are tack sharp.
But for what I want a medium format camera to do, which is be reliable, this is not it.
Should you buy one
If you want a Mamiya RB67, my honest advice is this:
Buy from a dealer with a returns policy. Not from a private seller, not from “as-is” eBay listings. You want the option to send it back when, not if, you find something wrong.
Test everything in the first week. Put a roll through it. Inspect the developed film carefully for scratches, light leaks and unexpected marks. Try the rotating back. Try firing with the dark slide in (it should refuse). Check the rear element of the lens for separation, particularly the 90mm Sekor which seems especially prone.
Budget for either a clean copy at a premium or for repairs. A pristine RB67 Pro SD with a clean 90mm Sekor is going to cost you significantly more than the average eBay listing, but you will save yourself the buying-and-returning cycle. A cheap one will need work. Pick which cost you would rather absorb.
Consider the alternatives. If you want medium format on a budget and you do not specifically need 6x7 or leaf shutters or close focus, a Bronica S2A or ETRS will give you a comparable shooting experience for less money and in generally better surviving condition. If you want 6x7 specifically, the Pentax 6x7 is the other obvious choice and is its own can of worms but a different can.
The RB67 is a good camera. I do not want to leave you with the impression that it is not. But the population is rough, and the stories you read online from people who love theirs are generally from people who got lucky, or who had the experience and patience to find a good one and rehabilitate it. Going in informed is the difference between joining them and joining me, with a camera you are about to relist.