Mamiya RB67, Egypt and Mount Sinai

 

Hauling the Mamiya RB67 up to the top of Mount Sinai to capture the sun rise over the desert in November 2022 convinced me to replace the RB67 as my main medium-format camera.

 

So why did I buy it? Don’t get me wrong, I really love this camera.  It’s a marvel of engineering and technology, and is solid as a tank. This is the third medium format (MF) camera I have owned, and the first single lens reflex (SLR) medium. 

 

My first MF was a Yashica Mat-124G, a fixed twin lens MF camera I bought new in the late 70s.  This was a great camera, one I wish I had kept, by the prices they are selling on Ebay these days. While you set the aperture and exposure manually on the 124G, there was an integrated light meter. As well, the camera was equipped to take both 120 and 220 film (same image format, twice the exposures), giving me 24 frames per roll in a 6cm by 6 cm square image format. Sadly, 220 film is no longer in production.

 

The second medium format camera I acquired in the late 80s was a used Mamiya C330.  This was a great twin lens reflex camera (TLR) that had interchangeable lenses, though I only had the “normal” 80mm lens.  This camera also had the ability to use both 120 and 220 film. I used this camera a lot for large group photos, both for work in the 80s and 90s (photos taken at annual meetings at Jasper, St-Andrews by-the-Sea, Whistler), and on personal time: At the old Scouts Canada camp for Cubs north of Montreal, Camp Jackson Dodds, the dining hall had framed photographs that I had taken over the years of large groups of campers, taken on the weeks that my kids were at the camp.

 

The RB67 is a wonderful camera.  I managed to score one last fall on Facebook marketplace as part of a complete kit: waist and eye-level viewers, two film backs, for both 6X7 and 6X4.5 image formats, and three lenses: 50mm “wide”, 90mm “normal”, and 180mm “telephoto” Mamiya lenses, all in a hard case.  

And the camera has a very cool feature, a rotating back, hence the RB in the name: The back of the camera, part of the film back, actually rotates, so there is no need to move the camera when switching from portrait (vertical) to landscape (horizontal) shooting. I believe this was also the last film camera used by my friend Ross Johnson before he fully transitioned to digital photography.

 

The RB67 is a solid, incredibly well designed and beautiful camera. Unfortunately, it is also the bulkiest and heaviest camara I have ever owned.

 

Work brought me to Sharm El-Sheikh on November 2022 for the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, more commonly referred to as COP27, the 27th United Nations Climate Change conference.  I was part of the Canadian delegation, scheduled to speak at and moderate a number of panels from a Canadian electricity perspective. Also attending was my colleague Michael Powell, who is the VP of Government Relations where I work, at Electricity Canada. 

 

These UN climate conferences are gruelling affairs if you are part of the programming.  The days tend to very long, starting with Business and Industry NGO (BINGO) briefings first thing in the morning, sessions throughout the day and into the evening, and must-attend events most evenings. (To give you sense of COP27, here is a GoPro video walkthrough of the pavillions, which is separate from the negotiating sessions) There is a single day off in the middle of the event, the only time delegates get the chance to either simply unwind, or to see some of the sights. (In 2019, at COP25 in Madrid, I spent the day off visiting the Prado, one of the world’s truly great museums…I wish I had brought a camera on that trip). 

 

The most popular option for many of the delegates at COP27 was excursions to visit the pyramids. Michael and I opted for a sunrise trip to the top of Mount Sinai, wherein a bus would collect us in the evening and drive us into the desert to deposit us at the base of the mountain in the middle of the night. During the night we hiked up the first third of the way, hired camels for the middle leg, and climbed the last leg, which was too treacherous a climb even for camels. 

 

The tour operator billed this as being of moderate effort and suitable for the average person.  It was not.  This was a gruelling hike and climb in the dark, and without the camels we hired for the middle section, we likely would have arrived at the top after the sun rose. I would liken the effort to equivalent to running a half-marathon, of which I have complete a few.

 

I was fortunate that Michael was part of the trip, as he was willing to take turns with me carrying the camera bag, containing the RB67, a digital camera (Nikon D5300) and a lightweight tripod.  He also took some terrific digital photos with the Nikon, some of which are below. We successfully hauled the gear up and down the mountain, but by the end of the trip, I had decided that I would find a light weight alternative for future medium-format shooting, which eventually led me to the Hasselblad.

On to some photos (all film was developed and scanned by the fine folks at Canadian Film Lab)...

To save a couple of bucks, we did not stay at one of the fancy resort hotels on the water, but at an Airbnb in a holiday compound far from the water, called the Delta Sharm. These were shot on Ilford HP5 Plus ISO 400.

The entrance to the Airbnb we booked:

The view from the roof, HP5, but with a red filter to darken and bring some definition to the blue sky:

At the base of Mount Sinai, after we climbed back down, also on HP5:

And a final B&W shot, at night at Delta Sharm, of the shops inside the compound, on Delta 3200 film:

Sunrise from atop Mount Sinai, shot on Portra 400 film, did not turn out as I had hoped...but

...the good news was, Michael was shooting with the Nikon while I was fiddling with the RB67.As you can see from these, Michael is a fine photographer; here are some great digital photos from him, shot on my Nikon 5300, processed with Lightroom:

 Michael shot a photo of me on the Nikon:

And as a bonus, while we went up the mountain in the dark and thus have no images of that, on the way back down, I put my GoPro on my head and filmed parts of the trip down, here is a clip as we come down from the peak to the area where the camels stop on the way up, where they are getting a much needed rest.

 

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