Wedding Second Shooter Duty: Pentax 645D – 75mm f/2.8 Edition

What started as a vintage digital medium format experiment turned out far better than I thought it would.

Seems appropriate timing since there is yet another impressive new digital medium format camera that was released recently.

The camera is capable of:

• Being an absolutely gorgeous device.
• 100MP wonderfulness.
• 1/2000s flash sync courtesy of the leaf shutter.
• Amazing image results courtesy of what could only be amazing Hasselblad lenses.

And I will be the first to admit that I have my Hasselblad weaknesses.

But before I get to the weekend’s wedding second shooter proceedings this video made two very interesting points for such a lofty price point.

• No video.
• Even though it has Phase Detect AF they found that AF performance was poor.

Let me discuss both of these points for a moment.

No Video

Many write this off as no big deal since this is primarily a stills imaging capturing device. I agree. But leaf shutters, amazing ergonomics, and flawless aesthetics aside there are two problems for me.

1. A less expensive, same sensor having GFX 100S has 4K video.
2. Do you know what else does not have video? My waaaay less expensive humble 645D.

Poor AF

The photographer in the video was getting better AF performance out of his years older Hasselblad medium format camera. Poor AF is a much bigger deal.

1. Do you know what has great AF?… A less expensive, same sensor having GFX 100S.
2. Do you know what also has great AF?… My waaaay less expensive humble 645D.

Am I saying my 645D is better, or even a direct competitor to those two cameras?

Pffft. Nope.

Am I saying that the 645D is good enough for my purposes?

Yep.

Already was pretty sure of this, but last weekend cemented it.

The Wedding

A fantastic wedding filled with fantastic people. Wilson agreed to let me tag along as he shot Christina and Manu’s special day.

The first camera that came to mind was the 645D. The first camera Wilson recommended I bring when asked was the 645D. This camera performed flawlessly out and about.

Now it would be truly tested. Why such high expectations? We are all fans of medium format cameras. Manu is on board. Wilson had a medium format film camera on deck that day.

As much as I enjoy 35mm or Full Frame cameras a wedding is a perfect use case for a medium format camera. Before I give my conclusion let me show you some samples from the day.

I am thoroughly pleased with the results. I literally could not be happier. 40MP is impressive, but there are higher MP options. The two cameras listed above, the newer 645Z, and the A7RIV offer many more MP, and my K-1 comes within spitting distance with 36MP. But it was image capturing surface area I was after. Here are the notes.

40MP

Plenty for my purposes.

AE

Spot on throughout the day.

Handling

Wonderful in hand and occupied the left side of my camera harness the rest of the time.

Colors

I am quite smitten with this old Kodak CCD sensor.

Bokeh and Subject Isolation

Check and check.

AF

Rock solid without a miss the whole day.

Wrap Up

Understanding your personal good enough.

I could not have asked for a better result. It was a perfect exercise in pursuing what works rather than going after the latest and greatest. And as a result I kept a good whack of cash in my pocket.

Well done Pentax.