Why am I only getting this camera now? The first impressions are very good indeed.

The 150mm lens is sharp, and the range finder is bright and works pretty well — the frame lines are automatically set for the attached lens and parallax adjustment is made based on the focusing distance of the lens. The focus synchronisation is not entirely there for detailed closeups with the 150mm fully open to f4.5 (a known issue with this camera), but fine at f8, which is more than acceptable (the focus synchronisation can be adjusted by a properly equipped shop, but it’s close enough on this camera not to make it worth the bother, I think).

What is much welcome: the built in, centre-weighted, meter is bang on when using the 150mm lens. This eliminates the hassle of using a handheld meter, and the guesswork of what adjustments need to be made to the suggested exposure that come with using a basic averaging meter like the Sekonic L-208 (which for landscapes invariably produces underexposed images, if compensation is not made for bright sky). In fact, I suspect the 7ii meter might be good enough to avoid carrying a spot meter much of the time, but I’ll need to shoot a few rolls first to see if I am right about that.

The lenses come with their own bayonet hoods, which is nice, but they will not fit over a filter with a step up ring. I have a cheap collapsible rubber hood that might do instead, not that keen on having to buy a set of filters specifically for this camera. But I didn’t think to test it when putting the first roll through!