----- Original Message ----- From: "David Bliss" Subject: Moving Up to MF: 67 or 645? Or something else?
> So I'm growing increasingly frustrated with 35mm and APS-C digital. > > Solutoin: medium format. But what? Hassy and Rollei lenses are about the best you can get, many of them surpass the best 35mm format lenses for resolution. The Pentax 645 lenses are very good indeed, 6x7 lenses are not showing the high resolution numbers, but the bigger neg makes up for a lot of that. I have 11x14 prints from 6x7 negs hanging beside prints from 4x5 negs (shot with good Nikkor lenses), and can't really tell any difference. I think at 16x20 or larger you might see the 4x5 advantage. The 6x7 is noisy, but not shaky. You can balance an American nickel on the focusing screen of a leveled 6x7 and trip the shutter, no mirror lock up used, without knocking the coin over. It's that smooth. I think Scott Loveless has a video on his website proving it. I never really missed a high sync speed, even using the 6x7 as a wedding camera. There are always workarounds that can be used. A friend of mine shoots with Hasselblad. I did some prints for him when I was running my custom darkroom and was very impressed with the sharpness of the negatives. The lenses are pretty incredible. The 6x7 waist level finder is about on par with every other waist level finder I have seen, better than some, not as good as some, about as good as most, but certainly usable, and the prism finders are very good indeed. You can also get a chimney finder for the 6x7 that works very well. Consider what you will be doing with the camera. If you are shooting in the studio, you won't miss the high sync speed (on the 6x7), but if you are going to insist on trying outdoor fill flash, you will either curse the thing from time to time, or will seek out the LS lenses to allow high sync speeds, and then curse the slow operation. The 645 is only a stop faster for shutter sync, IIRC, while the Hassy will sync up to 1/500 with all lenses. If you are primarily a landscape photographer, consider giving medium format a pass altogether, and go straight to large format. I find getting sufficient depth of field to be easy with 4x5, sometimes impossible with 6x7, and while I haven't used a 645 for many years, I don't think that it would be all that much better in this regard, the lenses aren't that much shorter for any given AOV. You will find that the 645 wants to be on a tripod sooner than a 6x7, though both are more handholdable than 35mm or digital. If you are doing your own printing, you might not like how 645 negs run through an enlarger (I don't). If you are buying a camera based on looks over performance, then consider a wood field camera, they look gorgeous, and actually perform fairly well, whough not as well as a monorail (which are not gorgeous). William Robb > > Hasselblad makes the sexiest gear I've ever seen. But I can't afford it > even > used. > > I like the larger negative area of the Pentax 67 -- after all, isn't neg > area the name of the game? But I HATE the look of the camera. It sounds > like > it requires a tripod bigger than God and MLU for every shot. Flash sync > sucks > at only 1/30. No hotshoe for my level. > Pluses: waist-level finder (apparently not a great one). > > > 645: > less neg. > fixed prism -- no WL finder > > looks more like a hassy :) > data imprinting (a must) > less need for mlu/tripods/etc > focus confirm on manual lenses > uses 67 lenses > Maybe a 645D in the future -- yeah right. > > So: > > Which should I get? Is the cost in image size worth all the other benefits > of the 645? Or should i skip MF and go straight to a 4x5 view camera? > > Or should I go to a 6x6 view camera with the idea of robbing a bank for a > digital back? > > But only P67/P645 will play with my existing bodies... > > Any ideas, thoughts, suggestions, or tips appreciated. > > I really wanted a waist-level finder... > > > Thanks, > david > > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
