http://www.dpreview.com/news/1003/10031 ... ax645d.asp

Looks to be very interesting considering its price.

What do you think?

it's a bit sexy!

Its still a Pentax....

and its only 40 equivalent megapixels...

I'd rather get a D3s and Im a Canon man!



cheers

Russ

Been following the pre-release stuff on the pentax forum.
Great to see Pentax back in the medium format game.

Seriously good value for money. Not that I'm in the market though.

Now back to the FF Pentax debate. I'd like to see that happen, but doubt it.

This is bloody fantastic news,

Makes me consider purchasing a MF Body down the track, and a nice Zeiss Lens, and using it in studio for corporate jobs and fashion stuff!

It will be interesting to see it compared to Canon/Nikon's next Pro series offerings as I'm sure they will be in the same megapixel/price range. This verse a 1ds mkIV with 32mp+, ISO 102400 etc, etc would be interesting. Considering how versatile the 35mm body is, the Pentax had better have some amazing image quality to make it a logical choice, as aside from the DOF I can't see any reason why you would choose it over a next gen 35mm DSLR.

Am I missing something?

The sensor has 1.7 times the area of a 35mm camera so it's pixel areas are much larger, so less inherent noise. 14 bit A/D for very good colour depth gives 11.5 stops Dynamic Range, 44x33mm format.

Slow X-sync speed, slow frame rate, chunky.

Horses for courses. Half the price of the Mamiya announced yesterday which is also 40Mpx

Edit: It's 14 bit, not 16 bit. More discussion here: http://photo.net/medium-format-photography-forum/00VxZT

How useful is less noise if you only have up to ISO 1600 anyway. The dynamic range is something I forgot about though.

Slow X Speed - really ? OK compared to Canon /Nikons isnt it the same at 125th (unless you're specifically using Canon/Nikon's dedicated Speed lights with the High Speed option - meaning lower output).

Yes if comparing to the 40mp Mamiya announced 1st March though with sync speed all the way up to 4000th.

Waiting for Canon/Nikon isnt really an option. Its all about what's available now/this year. Not what may be released or what is rumoured to be available. Although I would personally be delighted if the 1Dsmk4 was available, I've been informed by very reliable sources that the 1DSmk4 wont be released this year.

Pentax may not be a name known to the digital prosumer market, but it has a great history in 6x7, and 6x4.5 or 645 market. At a price that is 1/2 of the recently announced 40mp Mamiya, I know which one I would seriously consider. Reading the specs of the Pentax, I know which one I would look at. Here's a first glance review from DPreview:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/1003/10031 ... ax645d.asp

Clunky ? And what medium format system isnt ? Well funny that, there was only ever one and that was the amazing Pentax 6x7 - the "Arnie" 35mm looking 6 x 7 camera. The curious and obvious question is why hasnt anyone tried to produce a medium format DSLR that looks like an oversized 35mm DSLR ? Seems so obvious to me ?

Oh this is what that beautiful camera looked like - I owned one for a while.

http://www.photoethnography.com/Classic ... ~mainFrame

BTW dynamic range for medium format users is traditionally not as useful as it's become for 35 DLSR users. FYI I barely ever use more than 400 - in fact only once in the last 12 months


I'd go for it

Well said Will.

Here's a view from a Canon user, which may be of interest.
No need for Pentax bashing, everyone should win in the finish.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read. ... e=34752840

Just want to point out that aside from the fact that the sensor is something like 30% bigger than a 1ds or d3 sensor, it also has higher quality components around the sensor, as well as having NO AA (anti-aliasing) filter on the sensor, unlike the 1ds and d3. The amount of detail from the larger sensor combined with lack of AA filter will be significantly larger than both canon and nikon.

If anyones used a medium format film camera they'll know what sort of detail it can pull out.

The absence of an AA filter may be more of a hindrance than a help I'm afraid.

They're there for a good reason.

It was something they worried about...

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/revie ... -1st.shtml

As mentioned in the introduction we decided not to fit the sensor of the 645D with an AA filter. This is a first for us and we were frankly concerned about possible issues like moiré. As the result of many trials and the analysis of many images, we realized that moiré was in fact not as big an issue as we had anticipated. This is especially true for landscape images where repeated patterns likely to generate moiré are few.

We also know that moiré can be removed with software reasonably easily were it to show up in some images like fashion shots for instance. Our feeling is that customers who would want to use the 645D for such applications have the level of digital skills required to deal with such issues anyway.