Mamiya N 43mm f/4.5 L (Mamiya 7)

The N 43mm f/4.5 L is the widest lens for the Mamiya 7 and the reason most people give for buying the camera. Mamiya’s lens manual explains the idea in one sentence: a rangefinder has no mirror, so the rear element can sit very close to the film, “a particular advantage for wide angle lenses”, and that is what “makes an outstanding lens, such as the ultra-wide angle 43mm possible”. The maker’s data, printed identically in the 1995 Mamiya 7 manual and the later 7 II lens manual, give 10 elements in 6 groups, a 92° angle of view (a 21mm equivalent on 35mm film), f/4.5 to f/22, closest focus 1 m at 0.049×, a 67 mm filter thread, a bayonet hood supplied with the lens, 42 mm long by 72 mm across, and 390 g. The 1995 manual’s cross-section shows a near-symmetrical arrangement with deeply curved outer elements; Adrian Riu on 35mmc traces it to the 1951 Zeiss Biogon patent, and the Osaka dealer Camera no Naniwa likewise calls it a symmetrical design chosen to hold distortion down.

There is one version. The lens appears in the 1995 instruction book as one of four launch lenses (“Ultra wide angle: 43mm f/4.5 L with Optical Viewfinder”) beside the 65, 80 and 150, and it was still in the catalogue with the same figures when the 7 II arrived in January 1999 with a 50mm and a 210mm added. Both bodies share the mount and the electronic #00 leaf shutter, which lives in each lens but is timed by the camera: 4 s to 1/500 and B, flash sync at every speed, and nothing at all without the body’s 6 V battery. Wikipedia gives 2014 as the end of the system. No serial ranges, production figures or list prices have been found in any source consulted.

The 43 is outside the body’s finder, so it comes with its own: Viewfinder FV701, which slides into the hot shoe and locks with a ring, with a 0.34× erect image, a diopter ring, a folding rubber eyecup and a built-in spirit level; it covers 87% of the field at infinity and a short-distance mark handles parallax at 1 m. The manual’s drill is to compose in the FV701, focus through the body’s rangefinder (which shows the 65mm frame with the 43 mounted), then check the finder again and shoot. Reviewers split on how that feels: Michael Nguyen at Japan Camera Hunter finds precise composition through the external finder “quite difficult”, while Jacopo Brancati, after four winter commissions in Finland, says the lens “is just perfect and gives you absolutely exciting perspectives” once the finder becomes habit. Andrew on 35mmc kept the Mamiya over a Hasselblad SWC because the rangefinder, meter and interchangeable lenses outweighed the Hasselblad’s solidity.

On the glass itself the agreement is broad. Riu’s verdict is low geometric distortion, straight lines that need no correction, a “startling sense of transparency” when the light cooperates, and diffraction that stays tolerable even at f/22; his one caution is that Mamiya’s depth-of-field marks assume a generous circle of confusion, so stop down two stops beyond the scale. Frank Wesp shot almost a whole Namibian trip on it and calls it excellent. The known cost of a symmetrical wide is light fall-off, and Riu reports it as considerable without a centre filter, correctable in a hybrid scan; no Mamiya centre filter for this lens is listed in the manuals consulted.

What to check when buying: that the FV701 finder, the deep bayonet hood and the rear cap are present, since the Japanese dealer review stresses all three and the finder is the part most often lost; that the gold-plated contacts on the rear mount are clean, because the shutter and aperture are driven electronically and a dirty contact stops the exposure; and that the shutter fires cleanly at every speed on a body with a fresh battery. The barrels are light and partly plastic, which is the usual complaint about Mamiya 7 lenses, and Andrew’s warning about haze and balsam separation in the 80mm is worth carrying over to any Mamiya 7 lens: look through it against a bright light before paying. What remains open: who designed it, when in 1995 or 1996 it actually shipped, what it cost, and how many were made.