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Ned Bunnell Says "Pentax 645D for Spring 2010"


miserere_mei

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<p>Read the story <a href="http://www.pdngearguide.com/gearguide/content_display/news/e3i0d52172227325f2838abf75dfaea4790">here.</a></p>

<p>Looks like this time might be for real. No news on the price yet...not that it will make a difference as to whether I buy it or not :-)</p>

<p>I know Javier won't buy one because it's ugly and doesn't come in Hello Kitty colours, but will other people? I can't imagine spending the money for one of these unless it's going to make me money back.</p>

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<p>I'll have one please. I think we can take it for granted that existing 645 lenses will work, it would be a major selling point against the competition. Is now the time to start buying good second hand lenses? At what stage in the Pentax dSLR cycle did M and A series lenses take off in price?</p>
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<p>Yes, old 645 lenses will work (with a crop factor) on the 645D. Personally, I think that's a bad thing, but maybe Pentax thought that would help them sell more cameras.</p>

<p>Peter, I have no idea what the answer to your last question is. But before you go out and stock up on 645 lenses, maybe you should wait to see if you can afford the 645D. If Pentax release it at $10,000, I will be surprised by how cheap that is. Of course, I mean "cheap" :-)</p>

 

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<p>Nah, Javier has a 645N now, so he's past the ugliness.</p>

<p>Peter, 645 lenses have been in high demand (well the FA 35mm anyway) because canon people use them on full frame cameras, and a lot of people do the 645-35mm adapter thing. However, they are still very reasonably priced in most cases. On the flip side, if you have $10,000 for the 645D body, I'm sure a few lenses aren't going to break the bank. The other thing is will those legacy lenses achieve the resolution needed for the digital sensor? Unless you are planning on buying a 645 film camera, or buying the K adapter to frankenlens 645 lenses to 35mm you might sit back and wait.</p>

<p>That said, I'd like one too, but I'll wait till I can get a used one for $5K ish, and even then it's a big purchase for a single camera that could break, get lost, stolen, etc.</p>

<p>I thought the back was replaceable, but maybe it's not. I saw images with it off for "cleaning the sensor." I assume if it comes off at all (maybe a prototype) it would be replaceable.</p>

<p>Then again, they also did make a 645NII with the idea that they were going to make a digital insert....never happened in the western world.</p>

<p>Anyway, I still hope it is released, that would be great marketing for Pentax. I don't think many of us will be buying one, and I doubt many of us need one. The 645 is manageable in size, it's actually really ergonomic, but shooting it handheld isn't super easy, it is bulky and heavy. And the RAW files will be huge...probably 30-50MB each for compressed RAW images. Then you are looking at every image being a 100+MB tiff.</p>

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<blockquote>

<p>old 645 lenses will work (with a crop factor) on the 645D. Personally, I think that's a bad thing,<br /> Why?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Because it means there's a bigger mirror box than there needs to be for that size sensor, which makes the whole camera bigger and makes wide angle lenses more difficult. Look at how the Leica S system is significantly smaller than the Haselblad and Mamiya digital systems... of course it's also way more expensive than Mamiya</p>

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<p>Trent's post is exactly how I feel. While it made sense at the beginning of digital photography to keep mounts and registration distance the same, with a medium format system at this point in time, I don't think it makes sense to make it backwards compatible.</p>

<p>Pentax should have designed the camera from the ground up, and built it around the new sensor. They should have applied what they learnt from the K-7 (a fully-spec'd <em>small</em> camera) and use it to make the 645D the smallest MF camera in the market. Leica's S2 is about the same size as a Nikon D700; that's a camera that you can sling around your shoulder and go out to take pictures with. The 645D, not so much.</p>

<p>Further, if they could have managed to bring it to market around $8,000 launch price, they would have sent shockwaves throughout the whole industry: A MF camera the same price as a Nikon D3x and Canon 1D, yet physically smaller. Can you imagine that!?</p>

<p>As it stands, the 645D will just be a MF digital that nobody is likely to switch systems for, and that will probably just sell to a few affluent owners of 645 systems with lenses in the cupboard. Pentax will be able to say "look, we did it!" and use the camera as an exhibition piece, but little more.</p>

<p>I really don't understand what the point of this camera is (unless they have some big surprise hidden up their sleeve).</p>

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<p>Nothing says they can't make a bigger than 24x36 sensor camera sized correctly for their sensor and ship it with an adapter for pentax 645 lenses. That would be the best of both worlds. Although any bigger than 24x36 sensor camera that costs under $8000 and has decent low light characteristics would shake things up a bit.</p>
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<blockquote>

<p>Leica's S2 is about the same size as a Nikon D700; that's a camera that you can sling around your shoulder and go out to take pictures with. <strong>The 645D, not so much.</strong></p>

</blockquote>

<p>This is the reason why I don't use my 645n right now. For Justin who shoots landscapes and uses a tripod as often as he can it would be no problem.. To schlep it around is awkward for me.. Still, there is a market for it. Perhaps for wedding fellows or fashion pro's? I don't know. Most of those folks would already be set up with canikons I would imagine. But what really kills it for me, is I see no mention of it being available in Hello kitty colors. ;-)</p>

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<p>Michael,</p>

<p>Image size for the 645 film cameras is 56mm x 41.5mm. The sensor size of the 645D is going to be 48mm x 36mm (from what I've been able to surmise over the last months). This implies a crop factor of 1.34.</p>

<p>When Pentax said FF did not provide enough IQ difference over APS-C to justify both formats, I agreed. But when they decided to use a sensor that is twice FF (and 4.5x APS-C) in area...yet make the body huge...that's when I disagreed :-)<br /> </p>

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<p>36x48mm is OK by me. After all, the top-of-the-line H3DII-50 Hasselblad tops out at that size. And it's $26K sans lens. If Pentax can deliver the same quality and usability for $10K then they may be able to skim off enough bottom-feeder pros to gain a foothold in the market.</p>

<p>I am not sure if it made much sense to retain backwards lens compatibility. But I also don't see that the lens mount would constrain the size of the body that much. Maybe there will be a smaller 645D II in the future if they have any success with this model?</p>

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<p>The interesting part is that this actually suggests the 645D might be USA-bound; previously it had been public suggested it may be Japan-only.</p>

<p>Theoretically one could design a smaller registration distance and keep compatibility with a smart adapter. This is roughly what Oly and Panasonic do with 4/3 vs. Micro-4/3. This seems to be a fairly smart approach if you expect the sensor to stay at that smaller size and plan to mostly release glass that only covers that size. If Pentax believes that sensor size will later grow to full 6x4.5 then it would be better to maintain the existing mount.</p>

<p>I'm not sure that having a user-replaceable back is so critical or even a good idea. It will only make the camera larger, heavier, and more expensive, make it harder to seal, and possibly dictate some sub-optimal ergonomic compromises. Note that Pentax resisted incorporation of interchangeable viewfinders and back for the film 645 as well, preferring to put out a good, smaller configuration at good value.</p>

<p>I personally doubt this thing is going to be in my budget but I have some 645 glass that should work well--though with a crop factor I assume I'll be wanting whatever new wide angle solution they come up with; and I'm sure that priced as new will be <em><strong>much </strong> </em> more expensive than the used glass that I've been collecting.</p>

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<p>Andrew, I don't know that Pentax is thinking about going full medium frame (FMF?) at a later date, but we'll have to wait and see whether the D-FA 645 lenses cover the FMF image circle or not. In a way, it'll be like DA lenses and APS-C all over again! I insist: Pentax should have stuck with this sensor size (48mm x 36mm) and designed a small body around it. It doesn't matter if other companies are doing this or not, releasing a camera with twice the sensor area of FF in a similar-sized body at a similar price as high end FF would have created a new niche and probably have become commercially succesful if a line of nice primes came along with it. Add a smart adapter for 645 lenses, and you've got yourself a viable system.</p>
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<p>It is very encouraging for me to see a 645D released in near future as I love to shoot with my Bronica SQA medium format. My biggest concern is the price tag. I am not sure how long I have to wait to see the price of an used body going for $2000. May be 3-4 years after its release! An used camera pricer than that - I am out. As an amateur, I will never be able to justify my purchase to my family :-( </p>
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<p>The film bodies at least do have a FMF size. More power to them if Pentax makes this new "645"D into a success. But the more I think about it, the less logical it all seems. With the cropped MF, it is twice the sensor area of a FF camera, which is then twice the area of aps models, which are larger than 4/3rd size. But many opinions seem to run that the double size of FF over aps means very little in the way of quality (even for wide angle shooting), while the double size of digital MF over FF format means a LOT, enough to lug around the added size/weight, put up with reduced flash sync, shutter speed, AF speed or no AF, lack of longer telephoto, far less focal length FOV range, and pay $10,000. If it were me, I'd wait for the D400 or D500 to pass the quality and features of the D3x and get that (or Canon equivelent) at far less cost.</p>

<p>By all accounts, the Nikon D3x quality is at least as good as the full size 6x4.5 film format can produce. It has none of the above disadvantages. And it seems inprovement will continue. This advancement will no doubt filter down to less expensive, more compact FF models, which will equal or surpass what is now produced by the D3x and Canon equivelent at a fraction of the cost. This will probably happen sooner rather than later. </p>

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<p>I'd rather not get stuck into using a new term for "full medium frame" when what is meant is 645. There are a lot of other medium format sizes, after all. But what is needed is some term for the sensor size of the Hasselblad H3DII-50 and 645D. At 48×36mm this is not even as large as the smallest medium format. So I vote SMF as the acronym of choice -- Small Medium Format seems oxymoronic enough.</p>

<p>Michael, I think the common wisdom might be that the difference between 35mm and <strong>film</strong> medium format means more than the difference between 35mm and APS-C. Because indeed it does, if one uses a measure like the diagonal size of the sensor as a metric. Going from APS-C up to 35mm means 50% more but going all the way up to 645 means gaining 150%. This is precisely why I just bought a 645N over some possible 35mm camera.</p>

<p>To be precise, these are the ratios:</p>

<p>645 : SMF : 35mm : APS-C = 2.5 : 2.12 : 1.5 : 1.0</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>By all accounts, the Nikon D3x quality is at least as good as the full size 6x4.5 film format can produce.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Who says that? The consensus I have ascertained is that while digital 35mm now matches film 35mm, medium format is still ahead by a significant stride, in terms of detail, tonality, etc. I have no doubt this will change when someone produces a full 645 digital.<br>

Not that I could afford it!</p>

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<p>If there wasn't something to gain, then nobody would be willing to spend the money on this stuff and companies couldn't produce or sell it. And I'm not talking about Pentax, where we don't know what the price will be or whether or not they'll actually sell any. I hope these companies know more about their respective market than we do. Some segment of photographers still believe it's worth spending a big premium on digital medium format gear. It follows that larger sensors provide some advantages along with their disadvantages. If the best of the 24x36 sensors is only matching 6x4.5 film now (not that I expect everyone to agree one way or the other on this), then it follows that larger (even though smaller than 6x4.5) sensors still have advantages that are useful for some.</p>

<p>John, I'm going to have to ask you to share some stock tips since evidence suggests that you have a crystal ball. The assumption that the files wouldn't rival the M9 or D4 would otherwise appear to be neither here nor there since not only have the D4 and 645D not been released, the M9 is so new that I'm guessing nobody here truly knows just how good its output is either. The 645D (again, if it actually appears) will have a larger sensor than either of these cameras. Isn't that usually a key ingredient in the recipe for better files? This sensor is made by the same company as other medium format digital back sensors--why should it not be competitive?</p>

<p>It is true though that the digital revolution has made MF less mainstream and more niche. It does seem to be a somewhat risky time to emphasize medium format because it seems likely that growing that niche will be difficult and that the players involved will be fighting over a pie that may not be growing much. Digital quality has become 'good enough' to the point where the workflow and cost of shooting advantages are compelling enough that some shooters who might have shot MF in the past would shoot 24x36 or APS-C sensored bodies today.</p>

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