Mamiya Shift L 75mm f/4.5 S/L (RB67)

The Shift L 75mm f/4.5 S/L is the Mamiya RB67’s perspective-control lens and one of only two lenses in the line that fit a single body. The RB67 Pro-SD of September 1990 had its mount widened from 54 to 61 mm, the manual says, for “the APO, shift, and newly designed wide angle lens 75mm”, and the manual’s page on the mount adapter ring puts the shift and the 500mm f/6 APO in a class of their own: “Both the 75mm shift and APO 500mm lenses are L lenses”, with no removable ring at the rear and no way onto a Pro or Pro-S. Mamiya’s c. 1994 brochure says the same in plainer words. It is an 11-element lens in 9 groups with a 61 degree angle of view, minimum aperture f/32, closest focus 0.416 m by Japanese Wikipedia’s reading of the Pro-SD catalogue, which is 0.114 m from the front rim, and a 105 mm front thread, shared in the RB line only with the L 500mm f/6 APO. Adorama’s listing describes a shift mechanism in a rotating mount, so the movement can be set in any direction, and a cable-release adapter in the box; there is no hood, and Mamiya’s own accessory page rules out its sun shield.

There is only the one version. What confuses the record is Mamiya’s legacy Pro SD lens page, which has no entry for the shift at all: its “75mm f/4.5” heading is followed by one line about perspective for architectural rendering and then by the K/L 75mm f/3.5 L’s figures, 9 elements in 7 groups, a floating element and a slip-on hood. Those belong to the ordinary 75, which shares this lens’s focal length and year, mounts on every RB body once its 7 mm ring is off, and has its own page here. The RZ67’s Shift Z 75mm f/4.5 W is the same idea for the other camera and fits no RB. On the barrel the shift lens reads Shift L 75mm f/4.5 S/L; in the trade it is called the K/L 75mm f/4.5 PC Shift as often as anything. How far it shifts is not stated by any source consulted for the RB version; analog.cafe measures the RZ lens at 20 mm horizontally and vertically and 17 mm on the diagonals, and whether the RB lens matches is not established here. The 1,700 g in the table is from the RB67 Camera Guide alone.

No review of the RB shift was found on any of the sites this catalogue indexes, and none of the forum threads that turn up in searches for it could be read from here. The nearest thing is Dmitri’s analog.cafe review of the RZ67 sibling, which finds superb detail across the frame with aberration-free corners, praises a closest focus of 0.42 m that is near enough for near-macro stitched panoramas, and notes that at 1.66 kg the lens is heavy and, at under $200 on the used market, cheap. Whether any of that transfers to the RB lens depends on whether the two share their optics, which Mamiya’s brochure claims for the K/L series in general but which no source states for the shift in particular. Casual Photophile, Ken Rockwell and Lomography are not consulted by this catalogue.

Buying is about the body first. The lens seats only on a Pro-SD, so a buyer with a Pro or Pro-S has no use for it and should not take a seller’s word that a ring can be removed, because there is none. Then the shutter: the Seiko #1 is cocked by the body and after years unused will hang at T or drag at the slow speeds, so run every speed and confirm that B and T both hold. Rack the shift through its full travel and rotate the mount through its stops, looking for play and for a movement that creeps under the lens’s own weight when the camera points down. Check the 105 mm front thread for dents, since a hood was never made and the rim takes the knocks. No launch price in yen or dollars was found, no serial-number table exists, no weight or dimensions come from a Mamiya document, and no discontinuation date is published.