[NZ_Ross]

645Z on TM: Pentax 645z Body | Trade Me

You should buy it Mark

[GUB]

Naaaa - far more commonsense thing for me to buy - 224 lenses sitting on my shelf and precisely none of them would fit it - what a buying opportunity!!.

[microlight]

224!! I'll only be bringing my 'normal three' to NZ next summer.

[GUB]

224!! I'll only be bringing my 'normal three' to NZ next summer.

If it is the three you have listed you have it well covered.

[MarkJerling]

You should buy it Mark

I'll leave it for Gub!

[MarkJerling]

Naaaa - far more commonsense thing for me to buy - 224 lenses sitting on my shelf and precisely none of them would fit it - what a buying opportunity!!.

[Kiwi645hauler]

645Z on TM: Pentax 645z Body | Trade Me

That is an absolute steal! Last time i checked for a customer Brand new they are approaching $16K!

[NZ_Ross]

That is an absolute steal! Last time i checked for a customer Brand new they are approaching $16K!

I agree, however with the release of the new Sony and the Panasonic S1R both able to do multi-shot very high res images at about the same price as this one is listed, it might be a moot point as to what you would buy for that amount of money. I know medium format verses full frame, DOF, etc. but...if I was spending $5-6K on a camera today, I am not sure it would be a 645Z.

[Kiwizinho]

I agree, however with the release of the new Sony and the Panasonic S1R both able to do multi-shot very high res images at about the same price as this one is listed, it might be a moot point as to what you would buy for that amount of money. I know medium format verses full frame, DOF, etc. but...if I was spending $5-6K on a camera today, I am not sure it would be a 645Z.

I see the new Sony has pixel shift, and they claim gives the equivalent of something like 200Mpixel images.

It's 5 years since the 645z came out, and while it was an still is an outstanding camera for stills, competitors are coming out with improved capabilities. Maybe if Ricoh put out an updated model with 100Mpixel sensor and pixel shift it might make it more relevant. A medium format sensor should have better low light performance than full frame, but low light performance alone isn't enough of a justification for such a big, expensive camera not to mention lenses, and if you're shooting in a studio, you've probably got control over your lighting anyway.


On one hand, massive megapixel counts all sound a bit of overkill, although I can imagine for anyone producing large prints for billboards or fine art, they make sense.

A 24Mpixel sensor allows printing at 20"x13" at 300dpi, which seems to be the expected resolution for professional reproduction. I've printed larger off a lower resolution image and it looked fine, but I can imagine professionals are fussy, so I can see why there is a market for cameras that seem to have insane resolutions as 20"x13" isn't actually all that big if you start thinking posters, billboards, that kind of thing.

Even my ghastly budget Vodafone phone takes pictures that don't look too bad as long as I don't view them larger than 6"x4" though, and I guess that's about the limit of what a lot of people do. (My phone is supposedly 13Mpixel, but even photos from the 3Mpixel P&S camera I had 15 years ago generally look better!)

---------- Post added 07-17-19 at 10:07 PM ----------

That is an absolute steal! Last time i checked for a customer Brand new they are approaching $16K!

Actually although as Ross points out, it's still a lot of money for a camera, it's one of the more realistically priced Pentax items on TM at the moment. There seem to be quite a few Pentax items on there at the moment with prices approaching the absurd for second hand gear, as they only slightly less than new prices, but with no warranty.

[GUB]

I see the new Sony has pixel shift, and they claim gives the equivalent of something like 200Mpixel images.

Are any of you using pixel shift?
I have to say I am fairly disillusioned with it.
Raw Therapee Pixel shift work flow - PentaxForums.com
It looks like 90% of the perceived gain is just from the extremely good sharpening process. So much so that I am looking to shift to Raw Therapee from Darktable just to use the process on my non-PS images.

[Kiwizinho]

Are any of you using pixel shift?
I have to say I am fairly disillusioned with it.
Raw Therapee Pixel shift work flow - PentaxForums.com
It looks like 90% of the perceived gain is just from the extremely good sharpening process. So much so that I am looking to shift to Raw Therapee from Darktable just to use the process on my non-PS images.

I haven't had the opportunity to test it yet but I will. I'm inclined to test it with the officially supplied software from Pentax.

Years ago I had a Fujifilm bridge camera that used what was at the time a new EXR sensor, and pretty much all third party software couldn't deal with the raw files properly, however with the Fuji supplied software, even though it was awful, it actually allowed me to get the full benefit of the EXR functionality. (It gave you the option to sacrifice resolution for either higher dynamic range or better low light performance by either combining pixels for low light performance, or recording exposure at two different points using half the pixels for each exposure to effectively give you a sort of HDR image.)

It seems re-purposing of camera functionality to enhance images in specific situations has been going on for years, along with associated issues getting software to actually recognise what the camera manufacturers have been up to.

[Transit]

[
Doesn't it leave you with a jpg ?

---------- Post added 18th Jul 2019 at 12:20 PM ----------

Naaaa - far more commonsense thing for me to buy - 224 lenses sitting on my shelf and precisely none of them would fit it - what a buying opportunity!!.

There will be some kind of gravity anomaly pull for Takumars in your direction I imagine

[NZ_Ross]

There will be some kind of gravity anomaly pull for Takumars in your direction I imagine

Try buying them when GUB is hunting, almost impossible

[MarkJerling]

Try buying them when GUB is hunting, almost impossible

Is there a Tak he does not own?

[NZ_Ross]

Is there a Tak he does not own?

I couldn't say, I suspect that information is released on a 'need to know' basis only...