With the versatility of digital photography, which has become irreplaceable in our everyday lives and businesses, I don't want to miss my analog gear. Digital photography can create its own problems, likely the growing interest only in new technology rather than photography itself. Digital is about speed; with film and analog photography, you must take it slow, sometimes even painfully slow. With analog photography, every creative image counts. For every click, you pay money. You use manual focusing and exposure, and you never know if you will screw something up. With digital, you can create, adjust, and create again. 

After a decade of digital technology and new gear nearly every year, photographers still have analog cameras and buy film. Why do we still use the analog road? It is because sometimes, we want to slow down. We want to enjoy the process as much as we enjoy the result. It makes the ordinary activity of creating images a bit more special, personal, and intimate simply by making it slower.

The RZ67 Pro and its successors use bellows for focusing and is a modular camera with many interchangeable parts, such as viewfinders and focusing screens. There are several different film backs with various frame size support (6×7, 6×6, 6×4.5). The body is plastic but rigid; I wouldn't want to drop it. The old RB67 had a metal body; you might crack the floor if it ever fell. But even with the more "plastic" feel, nothing ever feels flimsy, and the camera seems to shrug off any abuse. The camera's unique feature is a revolving back, which can be rotated independently from the body into portrait or landscape orientation.

The Mamiya RZ67 Pro was meant to be used as a studio camera mounted on a tripod. You will need a sturdy one, but mounted, it is well-balanced due to the box-shaped body. The bellows are easy to focus on and allow you to hold the camera with both hands. Focusing will enable you to focus your lenses very close, which nearly turns the lenses into macro lenses. Using the camera is very simple. You set the aperture on the lens, which has a leaf shutter with speeds of up to 1/400th of a second. You focus by turning a knob on either side of the camera. As you focus closer, the bellows extend. The aperture gets smaller if you focus very closely. A diagram on the side of the camera lets you know if you have to adjust the exposure depending on the current focus distance.

The shutter release button can be rotated to a lock position to prevent accidental exposure. The very minute you look through the waist-level finder of the Mamiya RZ67 Pro, you will find a magnificent view. When you look through it, move around, and focus, you first notice that left has become right, and right has become left. You to see just how great everything looks. 

Focusing is effortless – the image snaps into the sharp plane like nothing else I've ever seen. If you want to double-check, a magnifying glass is also available for critical focus. While several lenses are available for RZ67, including tilt-shift and zoom, I have a 150mm and a 75 mm tilt and shift lens. The Sekor lenses are built very well but quite heavy. I find the aspect ratio of 6×7 quite refreshing. I've always seen 3:2 sensors and film to be great for most horizontal shots, but, more often than not, too narrow for vertical pictures. When framed horizontally, it almost looks square, which To my taste, is a perfect framing. When used vertically, it's a pleasing portrait style but also broad enough at the sides not to lose too much of the environment.

Old, manual cameras impose a different style of shooting. You slow down. You pay more attention to composition and details within the frame. It charges you to concentrate more on what you are seeing. It helps to dive into that moment and your feelings. It sometimes seems as if time stops until I hear that loud clunk until I set off that shutter with a definitive press on the release. And then it's all back to normal again, the only difference being a strange, satisfied, subtle smile on my face. And the image? Well, it's in my mind, of course. Clear and beautiful, somewhat dreamy as film can be. Like a memory, almost. And exactly how I saw it. 

So that happens when using the RZ67. They see me looking down at some box and twisting knobs. To someone who's not a photography enthusiast, a medium format SLR, especially one with the waist-level finder, is just too peculiar to be seen as a camera. They don't seem to realize I could see them by looking down at a weird-shaped box, let alone a photograph. Clunk – it's done—a mystic image has been created.