[bobbotron]

Good grief that's overpriced for a 645 body! :P

A camera store in Vancouver has a NEW 645 kit on display in their Ricoh/Pentax section:

645 Body & grip: $999.99
645 A75/2.8: $399.99
645 A150/3.5: $659.99
645 A45-85/4.5: $1499.99

The boxes stick out like a sore thumb amongst the newer Ricoh/Pentax ones, because of their old style silver & red colours!

The store makes no effort in trying to get ride of this kit by lowering the price, so I'm thinking they like having it around as a conversation piece.

They also had a new Spotmeter V that now is proudly in my possession.

The problem with with buying a 30 year old "new" camera is that it probably still needs a trip to Eric for a CLA and also the lack of a warranty. (Something to work out with the store before buying it) I'd love to see the response you would get from Ricoh if you sent in the cameras warranty card for registration!

Phil.

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[Alex645]

Good grief that's overpriced for a 645 body! :P

True...but as I recall, that's about what I paid for it new 30 years ago, so it might be list price. Considering inflation, the dealer has lost money over the decades....and there are always a collector out there who will buy it just to keep it in the box to have the only body with zero actuations. Crimes against photography!

[redrockcoulee]

My problem with that, is I was always one of those guys who took his film to the "One Hour Photo." I like to see the negatives while the shooting process is still fresh in my mind. Chimping is perfect for me. Chimping with a flu card is even better. Being trained at Ryerson, I got in the habit of doing a shooting session, running to the darkroom and looking at a few contacts, before taking my set-up down. We even did that with models present a few times, just tell them to take a break and go for a coffee, and then rush around the darkroom like a madman.

I am considering getting a film tank for black and white, but see no point in doing so without a pretty good quality scanner. And, I was always really heavily weighted towards colour. So, I'm not even sure how much interest that would be to me.

As a huge fan of film I see little advantage of shooting film if you are not doing black and white and are already well set up in digital. I still shoot some colour 35mm because I have been given lots of film and most of it gets shot in a Holga panoramic that also has the ability to shoot pinhole so I get images I could not with a normal camera. I shoot less than 10% colour in my Hasselblad and none in large format. I still shoot 35mm in black and white as well again mostly because I have lots of film otherwise I would stick with medium format.

If I was you I would not think film and the 645D would be cheaper for you than if you need to get a good scanner and buying film etc. For me it would be more expensive as I got a Nikon CS8000 and a complete medium format system and the developing tanks and a darkroom so I could do my own colour developing if the two labs in our small city close down.

This is certainly not a situation where one size fits all. Because of the cost and the crop factor I more or less ruled out a digital back for me for my Hasselblads and it is still cheaper for me to shoot film plus I got the digital for colour as well. I do push or should say promote film as much as I can but there are times it is just the wrong solution and I agree it is not the best for you. Continue looking for a 645 in Canada or wait for the loonie to get one par by which time the 1000 Gigapixel Pentax back with ISO 7 million will be affordable or Alberta might have a balanced budget. Or there are always Loto 649 and LotoMax.

I sometimes think how nice a digital medium format camera would be but then I remember that I need to buy a lens cap and groceries and rent etc.

[bertwert]

A 645D on the marketplace now for 2200 USD (just over 3000 CAD) if you're still looking...