The "Mini-Gun" Mamiya 250mm f/5

 I bought the rare 250mm f/5 from e(vil)-bay while I was in Singapore and I have brought it back to Thailand for some closeup portraits.  Its a hell of a lens.  All metal and glass.  Not much plastic (only the levers or the aperture ring seems to be plastic).

I posted this snapshot of the lens as a scale on facebook and I loved one of my friend's comment.  He said it looked like the mini-gun from the worms game.  I agree with him so I decided to nickname it the "Mini-Gun".

I tested the lens in SG with a roll of film.  Its ok except the last 2 shots went missing.  Double checked and realised it has a bit of oily aperture :S.  Which means the shutter may not be functioning correctly.  I need to send it for a good CLA but due to time constraints, I decided to let it be for the while.  Since I don't think I will be using it that often.

However, today, I decided to shoot some instant photos with the mini-gun and surprsingly.  It handles pretty well and surprisingly my hit rate was pretty good even with such shallow DOF and slow shutter.  Heavy camera really has less camera shake? hehehe.

Here are 4 of the better ones..

 

There are a few more but I'm just too tired to scan and post them now.  But I have to say the bokeh and sharpness of this lens is quite lengenary as mentioned in other photographic forums.  Contrast and colours are good too.  The only bad thing (optically) besides the weight is that it slightly vignettes on the Instant photos.  I dun really mind though as I guess I would use it mainly for portraits for instant photos so that is not really a big issue to me :) .  Its still surprising cheap in the ebay market (less than $800 SGD) so its really really a bargain to get such a good glass with such a price tag.  But I guess my muscle of my arms will get bigger if I used it more often.  hehe