The GetDPI Photography Forum

Great to see you here. Join our insightful photographic forum today and start tapping into a huge wealth of photographic knowledge. Completing our simple registration process will allow you to gain access to exclusive content, add your own topics and posts, share your work and connect with other members through your own private inbox! And don’t forget to say hi!

Pentax 645Z - oh boy!

jon11

New member
Yes, more about Sony than Pentax which I have not used and have no clue about, so I differ to you on that and how it fits your specific needs.

Since you haven't used the S enough to have a clue on it's ease of operation, maybe you should do the same? There are enough accomplished photographers using the S who think it is easy and friendly to use anyway.

I think where we differ is that we're it up to me, I'd have a totally analog camera with a digital sensor … something akin to my Leica M monochrome. So, you are arguing with a Luddite :ROTFL:

I didn't spend $50K, but yes it wasn't inexpensive to indulge my specific tastes and predilections. But I sold an even more expensive kit to get it.

Lively discussion to say the least :)

- Marc
i agree i need times, but a camera with four button, menu related with just a will and exposure time analog control, i0'm sorry but is not the maximum of usability. i can operate easily the 645d without even look at the command.
 

hcubell

Well-known member
Ben Rubinstein;579611 In any case I diverse. The DF is a nasty lump of dog doo. At a price that's an utter disgrace. P1 has the C1 users and tech users over a barrel. Pay our horrifically over inflated prices because you don't have a choice. [/QUOTE said:
If Pentax can offer the exact same Sony 50MP chip in a complete camera for $8,500, I see no reason why Pentax could not build a removable back with the Sony chip for even less. It could be designed to be used with tech cameras, the Hassy H2 and H4x, and (OMG) the Phase/Mamiya DF. Whether the market is there or not is another matter. This would totally upend the marketplace, because I really doubt that Phase or Hasselblad can wring more from a CMOS chip like the Sony. From what I have read, the pipeline from the chip to the raw file is much less subject to variation, so less secret sauce in the pipeline.
 

torger

Active member
I think the market for an affordable back is there through landscape amateurs, but now is not the right time. We need CMOS with better wide angle response first. A little larger size would not hurt either.

However I don't think it fits the big companies way of making business - making a back to be used with some other manufacturers camera - won't happen. The most likely way to get an affordable back I think is Sony making a new Mf mirrorless system with short flange distance, that can be modified by some mechanical shop to a tech cam back.
 
Last edited:

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Actually Ben, I am operating out of ignorance here. I look at the Canon 5DMK-III and do not see a direct dial for EC. Are you saying you do not have to press a custom button and then adjust EC? How's that work?

Sort of a non-issue for me anyway because I use manual exposure more 80% of the time with the S, especially in situations where comp would be necessary.

I'm just about 100% manual exposure with the Sony A99 and A7R because you can see exactly what you're getting in the electronic viewfinder.

Boy, you'd think Phase would have dealt with their body issues by now. They have such good backs that it's a shame the body lags so much.

- Marc
Hi,

In either Av or Tv mode the back wheel is exposure compensation. Like that on every canon other than the rebels since the beginning of EF cameras I believe. I understand the back wheel on the Nikons does the same thing.

I wonder if P1 have the technology to advance their body? Pentax like Canon/Nikon have had over a decade of body innovation driven by the DSLR market which has been a fierce marketplace for advances in technology. Mamiya have barely advanced beyond their film bodies to be frank. There has not been the competition and market to drive the advances. Their engineers have been away from the cutting edge for way too long. The entire MF business has been like that. Sluggish innovation without a market place drive to innovate. Yes the H4D had true focus and the IQ backs and these were both innovative but when set against a backdrop of what has been happening in the DSLR world it's been rather slow and relaxed.

Now we get the 645Z which is a modern DSLR even up to the tilting screen and multiple cross AF points with the same 50 megapixel sensor that the competition is marketing as the best thing since sliced bread, for barely over the price of a Canon 1Dx. I assume Sony is going to be the next out there.

My dealer keeps telling me to wait for Photokina before choosing whether to buy another DF body. I'll ask what I asked earlier in the thread. Does anyone imagine that the replacement P1 body, if it is actually going to happen, is going to come in at a price which will not have us rolling around laughing on the floor for the sheer chutzpa of it relative to what else the market place will be offering by then? This is a real question. I'm running 3 studios at present. For two of them we're using D800e's. Our MF studio has a camera which has had two shutter replacements in 7 months and a mirror replacement. I have a cheque book ready for another DF body but it would be irresponsible to pay that kind of money if there is a better solution available for a fraction of the price (total cost). Of course being tied to C1 means we are somewhat hostage to Phase One. Can't pretend that it's engendering warm feelings for P1 pricing though. If I had my way we'll be buying an RZ. Might still happen.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Legitimate question and has been since last Photokinia and Phase one has still yet to come out with a new body. Sorry as much as a fan I might be its irresponsible at this point to keep making the promise to its end users and not delivering a product. Sorry no marketing spin will work at this point. There cheating there customers plain and simple. And yes I'm waiting for a phone call. Tough **** I said it and I mean it.

The bottom line and listen closely folks are looking at alternates and this Pentax has some horsepower. Frankly I always thought buy a new back get a free body was the best marketing plan yet for Phase. Obviously never in there game plan.

I'm off to go shoot food today and I'm hungry too. Lol
 

hcubell

Well-known member
I think the market for an affordable back is there through landscape amateurs, but now is not the right time. We need CMOS with better wide angle response first. A little larger size would not hurt either.

However I don't think it fits the big companies way of making business - making a back to be used with some other manufacturers camera - won't happen. The most likely way to get an affordable back I think is Sony making a new Mf mirrorless system with short flange distance, that can be modified by some mechanical shop to a tech cam back.
I agree it is unlikely to happen, but there should be little doubt that it would be possible for a Pentax to make a back with the Sony chip, sell it for say $7,000 and still make a profit. It makes the $35,000 price of the Phase One/Sony CMOS back look like price gouging, plain and simple. Of course, if Phase were charging at a lower price point, the company could not have been sold at a valuation of $200M.
 

Shashin

Well-known member
...but there should be little doubt that it would be possible for a Pentax to make a back with the Sony chip, sell it for say $7,000 and still make a profit.
Only to people ignorant of the economics of the camera business...
 

KeithL

Well-known member
As I said on that other forum, I'm struggling to think of an uglier camera, but that said I'm struggling to think of a better value camera.

For me? No.
 

torger

Active member
Only to people ignorant of the economics of the camera business...
I don't think it's ignorant. That a camera company would make a back without a camera body is unthinkable of course, but the economy of it is not impossible.

It's quite simple - high price low volume or low price and high volume. Phase One as a company is stuck in their low volume model, but CMOS is making it easier to design backs with broader functionality making them more attractive for a wider audience. Tech cam with live view, a huge opportunity in the landscape amateur market. There's still some technical challenges left, but I don't think Phase One pricing is a law of nature, and I think Mf future looks bright, from a photographer's perspective.

I don't think the 645z will be the last time we say "game changer". We'll see more exciting products over the next few years, and I think some will have reasonable pricing.
 

Shashin

Well-known member
I don't think it's ignorant. That a camera company would make a back without a camera body is unthinkable of course, but the economy of it is not impossible.
So, Pentax (that has a philosophy of not making cameras with removable backs) makes a back. Who is the market? People with Mamiya, View/Tech cameras, Hasselblad? Small market. Small distribution system. Given the bias against the 44x33mm sensor of being perceived too small, it is still making an uphill battle against larger chips. Unlike the 645Z, where they also have revenues in lenses and accessories and where they have a large customer base, this is going into a saturated niche market. Volume is important and part of the price. So is secondary sales of lenses and accessories. A back without a system is really expensive to produce because the only revenue is with that one sale.

Then they need to do lots of R&D to figure out production for a whole bunch of cameras. What are the production tolerances on a DF? You need to know the production tolerance for the mounting of the back and the camera reflex viewing system impacts that a great deal. Then you are going to setup customer support for all of the problems the other manufacturer's cameras might have with compatibility? What about lens profiles? (What is the draw for DF or Hasselblad owners if the back does not work well with their system (no one thinks $7K is cheap and expects to have to work hard to make something work well.) All of this cost money. And we have not even discussed the cost of just making the back. Lot of things are going to have to be redesigned. Just because a back loses the rest of the camera, does not make it cheaper. There is more to this than material costs. Companies don't make their cameras expensive on a whim. There are real economics working here. If the $7K back made economic sense, you would have seen it long ago.
 

torger

Active member
I agree it's not for Pentax and not for this first CMOS sensor. For a very long time (in digital photography terms) an economical MFD camera was impossible, now look what happened.

I think the amateur landscape market is large enough to sell many thousands of backs intended for tech cam use, if priced right and having CMOS feature set (ie live view). Must work with wide angles though which they do not yet do though. Tech cam body / lens shortage could be a problem as they probably can't make that many units.

But you're right, there is not really a player that has the right profile today. The closest we may come in near term I think would be a new MF mirrorless camera system, it will happen sooner or later I think, not sure by whom. Sony and Pentax are the prime suspects.

CMOS makes it possible to make easy to use cameras that speak to many. MF was limited to pro use before as it had such extremely narrow use case due to their limited feature set. The technology is there to make volume products, which Pentax apperently is attempting, I hope it will be successful. Phase One could theoretically do the same, but I don't think they have the agility. They could choose to expand into institutional, industrial and luxury or use the new possibilities of CMOS to really grow MF.

Detachable back is a large challenge from a company structure perspective, due to back maker is not the same as camera maker, and the lens maker is yet a different party. That it's unlikely to happen I think is not due to a lacking market interest, but due to structural issues in the industry.

The best thing that can happen for MF now is that the Pentax becomes very successful, so the industry can see that there is a market interest for MF that is strong enough to sell $10k cameras in volumes needed to make profit. If the venture capital players become aware that there's money to make, anything can happen...
 

Shashin

Well-known member
That it's unlikely to happen I think is not due to a lacking market interest, but due to structural issues in the industry.
Interest is not sales. The market speaks for itself. There is no structural hurdle, the 645D and 645Z and Mamiya ZD show inexpensive MFD can be done. Fortunately, it worked out for Pentax, not so much for Mamiya. But that is still a lot of money for the market. In Film MF, anything over $1K was really expensive. And film MF cameras could be bought new for a few hundred dollars. Digital made things so much more expensive and left a lot of consumers behind. The folks buying the IQ280s and Leica Ss are not the ones supporting the market.
 

torger

Active member
I think Mamiya ZD was too early. The key with CMOS and current technology is that you can make cameras for very wide range of use cases and make it easy to use. Thanks to D800 and other high res SLR the high res photo interest has gone up, which increases interest to take it even further, which MF can do. With structural hurdle I meant tech cams, ie detachable back from manufacturer A, body from B and lens from C.

I think a $10k or even $15k state-of-the-art back would make a real difference from a $35k back Phase One style pricing. Many consumers would still be left behind of course, but a lot of new would still be invited.
 

fotografz

Well-known member
So, Pentax (that has a philosophy of not making cameras with removable backs) makes a back. Who is the market? People with Mamiya, View/Tech cameras, Hasselblad? Small market. Small distribution system. Given the bias against the 44x33mm sensor of being perceived too small, it is still making an uphill battle against larger chips. Unlike the 645Z, where they also have revenues in lenses and accessories and where they have a large customer base, this is going into a saturated niche market. Volume is important and part of the price. So is secondary sales of lenses and accessories. A back without a system is really expensive to produce because the only revenue is with that one sale.

Then they need to do lots of R&D to figure out production for a whole bunch of cameras. What are the production tolerances on a DF? You need to know the production tolerance for the mounting of the back and the camera reflex viewing system impacts that a great deal. Then you are going to setup customer support for all of the problems the other manufacturer's cameras might have with compatibility? What about lens profiles? (What is the draw for DF or Hasselblad owners if the back does not work well with their system (no one thinks $7K is cheap and expects to have to work hard to make something work well.) All of this cost money. And we have not even discussed the cost of just making the back. Lot of things are going to have to be redesigned. Just because a back loses the rest of the camera, does not make it cheaper. There is more to this than material costs. Companies don't make their cameras expensive on a whim. There are real economics working here. If the $7K back made economic sense, you would have seen it long ago.
This is exactly why Kodak got out of the MFD back business. The Kodak ProBacks were actually very innovative for their time and priced much more attractively than most competing solutions back then. But they didn't make MF cameras or lenses.

I recall all the hubbub required to fit a ProBack 645C to my Contax 645 … Kodak said it was the camera that was out of whack and Kyocera said it was Kodak's fault. Finally Kodak asked me to send in the back and camera and calibrated everything for me. To do that for all the different cameras that a ProBack could be used on would have been a daunting service task.

Eventually they decided that just making the sensors for other back makers made more sense. In the end, even that didn't work out so well.

Phase One is set up to do that sort of engineering. Hasselblad decided to close their system and concentrate on calibrating the camera/back/lens interface for each and every H camera. Both companies sell a comprehensive array of lenses and accessories that must be developed without the economy of scale enjoyed by the 35mm DSLR makers (at least for the time being ;))

- Marc
 

D&A

Well-known member
deleting images is so important now that card are so cheap? or format is a menu format card ok.
for example zooming with pentax 645d and k3 is a breeze , with a 100% magnification easy with a touch of the wheel...we won't talk about zooming with nikon cameras? i prefer a fast zooming option than a delete images in a step instead a two step. actually rarely delete images in camera.
The zoom -in feature on the 645D is both wonderful and useful as it is on pro level Nikon DSLR's. (why the D600 didn't have it, nobody can figure out). As for deleting images, regardless how many large cards I use, there are some specific applications where I must review and delete on the fly. Please respect that some individuals have certain work flow requirements and they may differ from yours.

The delete feature multi step as well as going through I think 5-6 menu pages to format a card in a camera at this level, was a unnecessary mistake in my opinion and simply emulated what is often found on Pentax 35mm DSLR's. Again a wonderful camera but a few operational features, has one wading through too many buttons to push..especially if one is shooting a fast paced event under near darkened conditions. Just simply expressing my observations in working with the 645D.

Dave (D&A)
 

D&A

Well-known member
i agree with you about iq is not only resolution. when i see my file from 645d is always a wow factor that prevails. and is not res. is tonal transition, colors, dynamic range in highlight, while the sony sensor are more in shadow. specular highlights are always much better treated also. my 645d rarely needs big tweaking, apart the time i am creative in cs6. the apsc from k3 for example are not so good out of camera.
i know at least 4 photog who had d800e and 645d and sold nikon for example.
I completely agree on what you wrote above regarding image characteristics of the 645D. It closely mirrors my experience and why I am so worried when the transition goes from CCD to CMOS and whether it remains nearly the same.

Where we differ slightly is on the menus and operation. Yes, it's good but in some cases it can be a bit of a kludge and slow and again this is in my many years of experiences. For others their opinion may be different.

Dave (D&A)
 
Top