----- Original Message ----- From: "J and K Messervy" Subject: Pentax medium formats
>I really want to get a medium format at some point for landscape and >maybe > even macro shots. I keep an eye on Pentax 67 and to a lesser extent > Pentax > 645 gear on Ebay. 645 appears to be cheaper on average. > > Being a complete medium format ignoramus, can someone please explain > the > main differences between the two systems and the pros and cons of the > two? > > I am no professional, just a hobbyist but would love to have a medium > format > for large prints, etc. I would probably use a mixture of negative and > slide > film and use it fairly sparingly. > > What should I go for? What should I look out for? > > Any advice would be greatly appreciated. My first medium format was a 645. What I didn't like about it was that because of the orientation of the negative on the film, the image goes through the neg carrier vertically. Fine for portraits, not so good for landscapes. For some reason, I can deal better with sideways portraits than sideways landscapes. Anyway, this will only be a bug if you print your film in a darkroom. 645 is certainly a big enough format to do good quality display prints up to at least 11x14 with reasonable cropping. After my 645 suffered a horrid fate, I decided to go for the Pentax 6x7. It's a nice format, but for the type of landscape that I tend to shoot, it is sometimes difficult to impossible to get sufficient depth of field. 645 is better for this, as it uses shorter lenses to get the same field of view. Whether sufficient, to say would be to know. I do not know, so I cannot say. If you truly want to get excellent pictures from film, and don't mind a bit of extra work, then a view camera may be a choice to consider. The movements allow for better depth of field control, as well as giving the photographer the ability to correct geometric distortion, though if you are planning on scanning instead of printing, there is fixing it in Photoshop as an option. You can shoot roll film with a view camera, which can be the best of both worlds. The 6x7 is not such a good camera for macro, though good macro is certainly possible. The bellows is very bulky, the extension tubes allow for little adjustment, and in all situations, the combination of having to stop a slow lens down, and the amount of extension that is required to do real macro work make for a dim, hard to focus viewfinder and long exposure times. Again, I think 4x5 is a better option for macro than 6x7. This will take you to a macro I shot with the 6x7. This is pretty close to full frame. http://pug.komkon.org/02mar/dime.html I expect 645 would be nicer for macro, though I haven't first hand experience with it. 6x7 is heavy compared to 645, it would be good to figure out how many lenses you want to carry, and see if the weight is acceptable. My 6x7 bag, when full, is close to 30 pounds. William Robb -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
