Pentax Lens

Searching for a fast 85mm lens for my portrait needs. I am

using an old pentax 645 manual focus. Please, if anyone can set me

in the right direction, it would be much appreciated.

Yours, Sean

not sure what you mean. for the 645, the 75 is normal, the 150 and 200 woudl be short telephotos ("portrait"), in a squeeze, the 120 macro works pretty well.

The 85 is considered portrait for 35mm -- is that what you meant?. And, are you talking manual focus there, too? If so, Pentax made a very nice 85f2, if you can find it, but their 100 2.8 manual is also quite good, as is the manual version of the 100 2.5 Tamron. I also like the older 135 2.5 pentax, which is rather sharp and nice. Lots of choices in the 35mm arena.

Lacey, I think Sean is talking about medium format, n'est pas?

I'm a 67 user, and can recommend, with a 67-645 adaptor, the 165mm f2.8 or possibly the NEW 200mm f4 (not the old one that doesn't focus closely. As I don't use 645 myself that would be my best recommendations I'm sure that there are excellent 645 lenses to consider too. Again, not being familar with 645 format I would suspect that 85mm is too wide for portrait use; wouldn't the 135mm or 150mm lenses be a little closer to what you want? Check out some prices at www.keh.com, 645 lens prices have really come down.

yes, the lens is for my pentax 645 medium format. Sorry for the confusion!

Sean

You do have some options for a 645 camera. You can try a 150mmf2.8, which is newer and autofocus, more expensive, but an amazing lens.

You could also buy the 150f3.5, which doesn't focus as close as the newer 150, but is much less expensive, comes with a built in hood and is quite small.

The 135 leaf shutter lens will allow you to flash sync up to 1/500th and is not all that expensive on the used market.

I have and use the 200f4, the newer autofocus version and find it to be an excellent lens, but if I were going to buy a portrait lens, I would probably get the extra speed and buy the newer 150mm f2.8.

You could use the 75mmf2.8 and crop, but for many this isn't really something that they want to do.

The 120macro is a much heavier lens and super sharp, so I don't know if it would make a good portrait lens, plus I only have held one, never used one.

It really depends on what you want to spend. I find that KEH has decent prices, but more importantly rates conservatively on their used stuff. Deltainternational.com has great prices on new stuff.