My stuff

Pretty much the stuff listed at the bottom of the post. I didn't bother with filters, cases and cables etc. or my two non-Pentax lenses. For anyone who hasn't seen one before, the thing with four legs is an Asahi Pentax Copipod.




When I was putting them away I fired off the shutters as you do and came to the totally unscientific conclusion that this is the order from loudest to quietest SLR shutters

645, Spotmatic, *ist DS, Sfx, Sfxn _ would have imagined the DS would have been the quietest.

---

Ken
“We must avoid however, snapping away, shooting quickly and without thought, overloading ourselves with unnecessary images that clutter our memory and diminish the clarity of the whole.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson -

Nice collection! The Copipod looks useful, if a little scary. I'd love to see a side by side picture of the 645 and the diminutive DS with pancake lens. And good to see the trusty 280T - still good for digital!

Jonathan

No sooner said than done, Jonathan!




Ken

---

Ken
“We must avoid however, snapping away, shooting quickly and without thought, overloading ourselves with unnecessary images that clutter our memory and diminish the clarity of the whole.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson -

Thanks for that, Ken.

Strange how they're not altogether dissimilar, ergonomically speaking. And I like the view from above showing the comparison in respective distances between front elements & eyepieces - suffice to say that there's not quite room in my camera bag for the 645...

Jonathan

Biggest difference is the weight. DS is 695g and the 645 is a whopping 2kg!

I still love the 645 which when it came out was the height of sophistication but it's features are almost stone age now; but when you use it you really wonder if you need any of the latest technology. When it came back from a service a while back I ran a couple of rolls through it as a test - every shot using the built in meter and evry shot was perfectly exposed.

Ken

PS just buy a bigger camera bag. You can pick up a 645 on Ebay for £200 - £250.

---

Ken
“We must avoid however, snapping away, shooting quickly and without thought, overloading ourselves with unnecessary images that clutter our memory and diminish the clarity of the whole.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson -

Sometimes it's like the camera actually knows what exposure to use, isn't it?

---

lenscape
K20D, K10D, K-m, MZ3, Metz 58-AF1, Optio MX4 & Linux.(No Windows)
(Gone: *istD, ME Super, Super-A)

Am I right in thinking that there is an adapter to use the 645 lenses on the DS, and have you tried it ?

What would the angle of view 'factor' be ? ie. about 1.5x from 35mm to digital, "xxxx" from 645 to digital ?

Yes there is and no, I haven't bothered to buy one tempting as it is, I can't see much point in using a an enormously big and heavy manual lens when I'm covered with the same focal lengths (55mm and 75mm) with my DA lenses. Since 75 is the standard on 645 that would give factor of around 2.1x

I'm dead against this '1.5x factor business', perhaps because I've always used several formats and when switching between 35mm and 120, for example, nobody ever thought in those terms. A 55mm was the standard lens on 35mm, a 75mm was standard on 6x4.5, 80mm was standard on 6x6 and so on.

I read somewhere, perhaps here, that medium format lenses dont need to be as sharp as their 35mm equivalents because of the larger film size but I would have thought the opposite would need to be the case. Does anyone know?

---

Ken
“We must avoid however, snapping away, shooting quickly and without thought, overloading ourselves with unnecessary images that clutter our memory and diminish the clarity of the whole.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson -

I don't know why you would expect the opposite to be true. It stands to reason that a larger negative needs less enlargement, and therefore does not need to be so sharp.

G

---

Keywords: Charming, polite, and generally agreeable.

For enlarging to a given size, this is self-evidently true.

But I thought the raison d'etre for medium format (nowadays, anyway) was that because of the bigger negatives, more enlargement was possible than with a smaller format.

So if the purpose of using medium format was to allow you to aim at a much bigger print, why would the lens not need to be as sharp?

Is it that the increase in print size commonly produced from MF negs is bigger, but not bigger in as great a proportion as the negative size is compared with a 35mm negative?

Supplementary question:

How good are enlarger optics? (or is it, these days, all to do with scanner resolution?)

I can see where you are coming from on this, ChrisA, it does sound contradictory on the face of it.

Lenses have many more properties than sharpness. There are contrast, gradation, resolution and a host of other things.

However, in terms of resolution it is not necessary for a fine print at 16" x 20" to have as high a performance as it would be if the format were 35mm. In fact you get significantly better prints from say 6x6cm at this side with rather lower resolution figures. 16x20 inch prints would be challenging in 35mm terms and would need the very best lenses. Even then there would be a more obvious grain structure that would mar the smooth reproduction of tones.

A TLR Rollei lens might have a resolution of 32 lpmm and a SMC Pentax-M 50mm f1.7 might have a resolution of 96 lpmm. The former will give smoother sharper results whether it's projecting a slide or making a large print.

I hope describing things the other way round like this has helped to clarify it.

A Hassleblad Carl Zeiss 80mm lens might resolve 80 lpmm or more, so maybe that tells us something as well...

---

Best regards, John

how about supply and demand, and increased competition, driving r&d funding and rapid model releases forcing the development of 35mm to progress at a faster rate, resulting in higher resolution lenses getting to market?

there was some testing a few years back that showed 35mm lenses had in fact surpassed medium format.

now for getting higher quality prints, from negatives, medium format is more forgiving, and gives you more to work with. the higher cost of equipment, better skilled photographers, higher demands from customer, and better skilled printers and labs, yeilding consistantly higher quality prints.

on the subject of better skilled photographers, i'm speaking in gerneralities here as very few people start off in photography with medium format. remember 35 covers wide range of users, not just pros.

---

Fired many shots. Didn't kill anything.

It's a complex field, but there's no doubt that the best 35mm lenses will out-resolve the best medium format ones, but, as I've described above, that isn't really the issue.

I have somewhere an article comparing the inexpensive Seagull TLR with the Nikon Nikkor 50mm lens and although the Nikkor is a much better lens the big prints from the Seagull were better.

Certainly the Hasselblad will knock spots off the Nikon.

---

Best regards, John