[tuco]

Really! Don't you find the 75 kinda wide for a portrait lens?

Portraits come in all kinds of flavors and sizes. If you mean a classical head shot then, yeah, I suppose. But what about full body portraits of more than one person in the frame? Or portraitures of people doing things? I'd say even the 55/4 can be used successfully especially in candid situations like below. But of course you're milage may vary from my tastes.

67 55/4

[Silent Street]

Really! Don't you find the 75 kinda wide for a portrait lens? Sounds amazing; I'm off to read about it and check out the samples.

Wide? No, I don't see it that way, but others might if they are not positioned well, relative to the subject. For my most recent personal portrait of my sister in palliative care (low light and a rather grim scene), I was just 1.3m away from her. It goes without saying that a Pentax 67 makes a most ungodly noise and an oh-so-quiet hospital setting when the shutter fires...

[cjfeola]

Portraits come in all kinds of flavors and sizes. If you mean a classical head shot then, yeah, I suppose. But what about full body portraits of more than one person in the frame? Or portraitures of people doing things? I'd say even the 55/4 can be used successfully especially in candid situations like below. But of course you're milage may vary from my tastes.

67 55/4

Actually, I agree completely. I shoot a lot of what I call environmental portraits by getting in tight with an ultrawide: the 20/4 in my photojournalism days, and the 15/4 on my K70. So the first lens I bought for the 6x7 is the 45/4.

Cjf

[tuco]

So the first lens I bought for the 6x7 is the 45/4.

Cjf

Okay. Again my taste but I have the 45mm and tried it on people. Sure, you can but you can get a lot of distorted faces out near the edge of the frame from convergence/divergence if you don't hold that camera horizontal. For me, the 55/4 gets me decent DOF for zone focusing, lets me aim the camera up and down more, allows me to concentrate more on what I'm shooting (i.e. not worry about being horizontal so much and who is out on the edge of the frame) and with more successful people pictures. YMMV.

[cjfeola]

Okay. Again my taste but I have the 45mm and tried it on people. Sure, you can but you can get a lot of distorted faces out near the edge of the frame from convergence/divergence if you don't hold that camera horizontal. For me, the 55/4 gets me decent DOF for zone focusing, lets me aim the camera up and down more, allows me to concentrate more on what I'm shooting (i.e. not worry about being horizontal so much and who is out on the edge of the frame) and with more successful people pictures. YMMV.

Hey Tuco,

We're really saying the same thing. For example, I remember one of the earliest photo stories I shot where I got this the way I wanted. I shot a custom jeweler working on a commission. I used the 20mm to center him in the frame surrounded by his tools and a cornucopia of materials. I used an LX with a grid focusing screen to keep things laid out the way I needed. Then I switched to a second LX with my Pentax 100 Macro to show very tight views of just his fingers, tools and the work.

So I ended up getting the 200 f4; KEH had one for a fantastic price and I couldn't pass it up! Going to load up some Tri-X and see how it goes...

Cjf