Pentax 645D As Seen By Me

Hey guys... Currently in school and have got nothing to do so I shall do my own.... Err... Pentax 645D opnions by myself? Ignore the title and what I just said, basically it will be a little thought by myself about the Pentax 645D digital medium format camera. I won't be posting test images for 2 reasons.

1. They aren't mine
2. I never took any since I don't and will never have a set (in the near future) to play with because its too ex and I don't know anyone from Pentax, so yea... On with the thoughts!

And by the way... Here is the link in case you didn't see my previous post.

First off... Lets talk about the camera body itself. The front looks like the old film medium format cameras and the shutter area seem to be the same as Nikon cameras but of course... There is only so many ways to design something, so no matter though I PERSONALLY do not like the way Nikon turns their cameras on and off, if Pentax follows the same, I probably won't like it much cause I always turn it off by accident.

Moving to the back, and instantly I'm kinda dazed by the number of buttons because my own Mamiya 645 has none on the back cause its film, mainly dials. The buttons on the back of the Pentax 645D is more or less on par with my E-3 in the number of buttons but this Pentax has a mode dial. which has the standard P A S M, along with USER which I believe is customize, B which is bulb, X is something new to me and TAv, I think its similar to program shift, not really sure about that. We also have a screen on the top panel.

The grip reminds me of the E-1 grip, big and thick just the way I'd prefer due to the fact I have big hands. It uses SD cards and I believe SDHC as well, and can take 2 cards instead of one. Call me old fashion but I'd prefer CF cards. We also have DC in, video out, USB as well as HDMI which seems to be becoming a norm.

Inside, we have a 40 megapixel sensor. A lot of people asked me, "how many megapixels do I need?" and frankly speaking, is a very old question that I'm getting tired of answering. If you got the dough, go get the Pentax, 40 megapixels can print billboard size with ease. But prepare to buy loads of hard disks as well, 1 jpeg is approx 15 megabytes. 40 megapixels is just too much for me, I'd stick with my E-3's 10 megapixels and my E-P1's 12 megapixels thank you very much.

Similar to my E-3's auto gradation feature, the Pentax has a D correction function for either highlight or shadow, not sure if there is both but most likey not needed so might not be present. The D correction highlight recovered a little bit from what I can see, not too bad really. But the downside is, there is only on or off, not a big down side for me considering the D correction shadow has off, low, medium and high. But due to translation issues, it says off, weak, in and strong. The weak isn't so bad but not much seems to be recovered, the in and strong seems to reduce contrast so its a no no for me.

We also have HDR on it, though not really the HDR we're used to where colours are saturated and details are retained in both shadows and highlight. This HDR, to me, seems similar to the auto gradation on my E-3 and the exergerated one seems a bit flat.

I'm not so picky on noise and the Pentax 645D has a range from 100 to 1600 and it seems pretty good at reducing noise and still being sharp. As expected partially due to the bigger sensor since in the film days, as far as I understand, the equivalent ISO rating for medium format or even large format as compared to 35mm film, is less grainy. But when I started, I only use 35mm, I've only ventured into medium format recently.

There is 8 settings for the scene, brilliant, natural, person, landscape, ya, faintly, reversal film and monotone. Take those names with a pinch of salt again due to translation issues. I never really venture into these, not even on my own DSLRs and I shoot mainly RAW now, so I won't touch on this and would let you see for yourself.

As for Out Of Camera (OOC) JPEG and RAW files, the RAW seems to be brighter after conversion and flat whereas the JPEG seems duller and darker.

In terms of colours, its not really to my liking, I can't really explain it, but there is something off about it as compared to Olympus, which is reputed to be good with OOC JPEGs though I mainly shoot RAW.

Conclusion, this is a big camera where I will not use it anywhere else but in the studio shooting for companies. 40 megapixels is overkill for me and the price is just too much for me, I can actually buy a Zuiko Digital 300mm f2.8 lens with that money! If I save a little more, that gives you a rough idea of the price.

Please take note though... Whatever I say here is not based on touching it but by looking and it is my opinion, which we're all entitled to. If you like the Pentax, good for you, if you don't, look for something else. If you don't like what I said, too bad for you as well, if you like what I said, thank you very much. Take what I said with a pinch of salt as we all are different, we all see different, what I see may not be the same for what you see and what I feel is definitely different from yours. This is my own personal opinion of the Pentax 645D.