In my third attempt to make a panorama with the Mamiya Sekor SHIFT Z 75mm ƒ4.5 lens, i was extra careful with the focus on the extreme orders. And it worked better. I also used my hand so shield the sky light from producing too much stray light in the middle frame - with indeed reduced the flare significantly.

Warm colors

As it already went towards sunset, this is the last image before the sun set. It is also the best image from a technical standpoint, addressing both flare and focus.

You get rewarded with higher quality, by not cheating and instead fine-tune things instead. That is part of the art of making photography.

Daring...

I even dare now to leave the 1.7 kg heavy Mamiya Shift lens mounted with the hacked Fotodiox adapter. It is supported right there, where it bends downwards. Therefore, nothing can bend downwards. And instead of cotton-threads, i now use a single cable-collector stripe. You know, those plastic thingy's where you can "catch a thief" and bend his hands together, not getting loose.

That plastic stripe is now wrapped around Fotodiox adapter body, foot and the L-Grip below. If the weak screws ever would snap - the plastic stripe would hold up the weight of lens and camera, without falling to the ground. Well in theory, that is the idea.

It was Sal who came of the idea. Works perfectly, plus it looks so much nicer / uncluttered now.

What the whole set-up looks like

Between Fujifilm GFX 50s II camera, the Fotodiox adapter, and the Mamiya Sekor SHIFT Z 75mm ƒ 4.5 lens. Some piece of wood wedged under the adapter (between body and adapter-foot), and then the big L-grip with Manfrotto plates, so that i can switch position between horizontal and vertical images. Albeit i do have to remove the whole shebang, and re-mount it in vertical position.

Without it - i would be always locked into taking only horizontal images. Which would be pretty meaningless, in my opinion.

This set-up may change soon, by wrapping a lensfoot-adapter around the Fotodiox adapter (after removing the adapter's own foot, together with those two weak screws). Then i can rotate the camera + lens "on-the-fly", eliminate the need of that massive L-Grip.

You then just flip the camera+lens by 90° when needed.