vord.exe

I can't really comment on the older Pentax 67's

but I used the Pentax 67II for over 2 years almost exclusively handheld and have never had any sharpness issues with it as long as I stayed above 1/60, in my experience 1/30 was pushing it but still doable.

I got it off ebay,

wouldn't buy it there anymore if I were to use it as my main camera though. But $580 seems an allright price with the 75 and 45 included.

I would like to get the 45mm myself in the near future.

Yes Alessandro,

I find it to be very reliable and easy camera to use.

I paid 350dollars for it including the 75mm,

to me that seems extremely good value for your money.

Personally i'd go with the Pentax 645,

I've handled the Mamiya 645 but found it quite awkward to work with and the lenses are not too good if you ask me.

The overall quality of the Pentax lenses is great and it's handling is quite practical and enables you to work quite fast when needed.

If you'd like to use the camera as you would a 35mm reflex camera then the Pentax is the obvious way to go.

But it's all very personal so the best advice I can give you is to try both out yourself and draw your own conclusions.

The Pentax 67II worked out just fine for me, i've almost done nothing but handhold it and i've consistently gotten good results at 1/60 with a bit of practice. I didn't find the weight to be that bothersome and i'm this stringy little guy.

I've recently switched to a Mamiya 7II which i'm enjoying very much, if you want the best handholdability, a rangefinder is the way to go. I find the metering system of the 7II to be excellent after some getting used to i love it. The only thing that might be bothersome is the minimum focus distance of 1meter, i haven't found this to be a problem for my kind of shooting though and if you need a tight portrait you can just crop afterwards seeing as how the neg is so big and the lenses are nothing short of amazing. I bought it new at Robert White's with the standard lens for not that much more then you're willing to spend.

The Bronica's are up there with the Mamiya's and Hasselblads

the Bronica SLR's are no longer made though and they don't seem to hold their value that well at all. All the wedding photographers are dumping them for digital so there's alot of them around.

Just about everything that's there to say has been said allready,

it comes down to your priorities I think.

With the Bronica you will be able to buy a more complete system for alot less

money then you would spend on building a Hasselblad kit.

But if you truely want the best optical quality there is even if you won't

really be able to tell then go for the Hasselblad.

If money really wasn't an issue i'd probably go with the Hasseblad,

but money hardly isn't an issue I think..

I've spoken to several professionals who have tried both systems extensively and actually prefer the Bronica system though.

The amount of plastic really shouldn't be a problem at all if you just be a bit carefull and this isn't the kind of plastic you'll find on a toygun, it's tough stuff and has it's advantages - more shock absorbent then metal, cheaper, lighter, less costly to replace/repair.

As someone above allready told you, just go with what feels right.

Both the Bronica and the Hasselblad should have shutterspeeds up to 1/500 and with both systems you'll have the flashsync at all speeds..

Some differences would be that the Hasseblad is a Mechanical system, so it does not rely on batteries to control the shutter, the Bronica works with a electronical system so it does rely on batteries to control the shutter.

A downside of this obviously is that you'll always need some good batteries in case they stop working, but imo isn't a real problem at all unless you are using it for heavy professional use, a plus side of this is that it is more accurate than the mechanical system, with Hasselblad the same shutter speed can vary from lens to lens and after a while you will need to service your lenses in order to keep them accurate. The other big difference is obviously the cost, Bronica's are imo one of the best buy on MF at the moment. You could also take a look at Bronica's SQ-A or SQ-Ai, these are basicly the same as the ETRS(i) but are 6x6 and not 6x4.5. You need not worry about optical quality because on both systems the amount of quality will be more than enough.

Mick

With 35mm film I usually go for Tri-X shot at 1600

and then develop in Diafine, which keeps the grain amounts quite low for 35mm, like some people said above, use prime lenses.

I don't entirely agrea with what is being said above.

Medium format does not have to that expensive.

Granted if you want to buy a couple of more lenses a Hasselblad system is not the best choice because the lenses are very expensive, but.. a casual shooter will use the Standard lens 99% of the times anyway.

You have access to a Darkroom so you can develop your own B&W,

so if you stick with mostly shooting B&W the devloping and film costs won't be that high, however if you intend to be shooting ALOT digital is obviously the way to go, but my advice is.. don't shoot too much, if you try and only take photo's you think are worth it, you'll get more out of your photography,

the Hasselblad will probably automatically make you think better about what you are doing then when you've got a digital in your hands (that's the case with me and many others I've talked to).

The 'Better' Epson Flatbeds like the 4990 and the 4870 work perfectly with medium format (less good with 35mm), and like I said if you learn good scanning techniques and learn how to properly sharpen in Photoshop you can get ALOT out of these scans, not quite up to the dedicated medium format scanners, but it's more like a 300 dollar price difference instead of the 1500 dollar price difference, these scanners will do an excellent job on medium format for under 500 dollar (850+500=1350, that's just about as much a "decent" consumer DSLR right? with the additional cost of film offcourse, but film really isn't that expensive).

You can get great quality with this setup IF you take the time to learn about scanning and sharpening techniques.

You can take a look at my gallery the few images that are in there are scanned with a Epson 4870 Photo scanner. If you'd like to see bigger examples you can always email me and i'll scan something.

You should go with whatever you think will suit your shooting frequency and subjects. Do some long hard thinking and be realistic.

I'd go with Jean-Baptiste Queru's idea, buy a decent TLR and a good a DSLR you can afford.

People mentioned digital backs being availble for the Hasselblad, which is true ... but they I don't know of one digital back that'll cost you less then 8000 dollars, so that's an argument you can pretty much ignore I think.

If you are willing to invest time in learning to make a decent darkroom print then go for the Hassy, it's certainly more fun then touching up your photo's on a computer in my opinion.

What you could also do is go for the Hasselblad and buy one of the Epson photo scanners, you'd get a very good flatbed scanner and a very decent filmscanner in one pretty package, this way like Jean-Baptiste Queru's idea you'd have the best of both worlds so to speak.

If you learn to some touchup methods in Photoshop, you could get way better results then you would be able to get with one of the cheap "consumer" DSLR's. I believe one of these ways would be the best choice for you.

Personally I've yet to be impressed with digital, maybe one of the high-end digitals would be able to whooo me but certainly not any of the cheaper DSLR's. But digital could be a good fast way of learning, if you don't let the camera do everything for you and read a bunch of books on the side. Which I recommend .. read books on photography, it'll help you.

Hope this helped

Mick