Will share more in an upcoming formal post on this camera. But the short version for now is that I have had quite a few Fujifilm cameras, film and digital. Ranging in size and format from a digital APS-C point and shoot to two versions of their film 120 film 6×9 Texas Leica (OG and III) and everything in between. But none stuck and I moved on. Fine cameras all. I just pivoted elsewhere. Have come close to purchasing their digital medium form offerings more than once. In fact if they had offered phase detect AF on their more pedestrian offerings, I would like already have a GFX camera.
So why a Fujfilm GA645?
Simple:
- It is the only fully automatic, compact, medium format film point and shoot I am aware of.
- Stellar lens performance. Naturally. It is
- While it could not be described as inexpensive by any rational means, within the realm of the insane vintage medium format price escalations it is relatively “affordable”.
- I could go on but will stop here and elaborate further in a review post.
Has less to do with it specifically being a Fujifilm camera and more to do with the fact that only Fujifilm saw fit to make such a camera… So it has to do with being Fujifilm then?… Moving on. The original target was a GA645Zi I had been eyeing for quite some time at my local camera shop. But when I went in to rescue it I found out that it had already been rescued by an employee of the store. For a moment I was left reeling in the grasp of a GAS fit and started looking for something else to get from there. But I stopped myself. None of the other things I looked at were what I was looking for. As I stated above, a:
“fully automatic, compact, medium format film point and shoot”
Another Fujifilm medium format offering was as small, but lacked AF and AE. I have that game covered already. Already had a larger medium format camera with the option of full automation. Another medium format offering they had (Two of them in stock actually) was so eye wateringly expensive that it was far out of my reach. So after digging through their display case and straining to make a case for things that are not what I am looking for I drug myself out of the camera shop empty handed. Went home and searched for like options from other brands and found none. But there was good news. While I like the GA645Zi and would have picked it up if it were available there was another variant I wanted a bit more. The original GA645.
Why?
- Prime lens.
- f/4.
More on this later also, but having a prime medium format camera allowed me to even swap a prime for a zoom on another camera at said same camera shop. Anyhoo… I am getting into the weeds and ahead of myself. Back to the task at hand.
Test roll. Two in fact. This is two of two.
It arrived and looked good. It was lighter than I expected. When I picked up the box I thought that there is no way that there is a medium format camera in here. But there was and it was also smaller than I expected. All is good so far.
But does it work?
Yes, I am happy to report. Here are the resulting images with some thoughts after. 15 of 16 will be shared since. The 16th turned out fine camera wise, a hip shot to test blind composing, but the guy behind the camera did not choose an interesting composition for this test. One exposure has flares, but that was user error. Add in some another self own and this camera did well in spite of my best efforts to make a hash of it. More on al lof that below. The film of choice was Lomography 400 which was developed at home using Cinestill CS41.
Second roll self owns.
- When loading Lomography 400 I neglected to change the film speed from the prior roll of 160.
- No issue. I changed the exposure about five pics in but I can not tell a difference.
- Had heard mention of a fat roll issue and then I saw it first hand on my second roll.
- The roll was… fat. An apt description. I did not read up more on it but it seems to be caused by rushing when loading film and not taking care to make sure the film is tight on the take up reel.
- Not a big issue. Did not impact most of the images. One pic above had flare due to light getting in on the side.
Second roll thoughts.
- Did not disappoint. Everything I expected.
- As stated smaller and lighter than I expected which made for a perfect carry around camera.
- AF and AE were spot on. Use Aperture priority most but Program mode worked perfectly as well.
- So much to do was made about it being noisy that it was actually less noisy than I expected.
- The benefit of low expectations I suppose.
- Start up makes a bit of a racket but focusing was not that noisy and the shutter and film advance were not loud at all to my ears.
- Flash worked as billed. I can see myself occasionally using it indoors and for fill flash outside.
- While not magnesium, which would have likely driven the price up, the grade of plastic used is not offensive and feels built to last.
- While I do like the gold color scheme of the Zi will admit that I rather like the plain black color scheme here.
Given its small size I thought this camera would go unnoticed, but surprisingly in short order I received a few “nice camera” mentions while out and about over only a couple of hours of use. Interesting.
Well. That is a wrap for this second post. A proper review to come likely followed by many analog therapy posts to come if things continue to go as well.
Happy capturing.
-ELW
Eric L. Woods 