To shoot medium format has been a yearlong dream, but I have to admit I didn’t know it would be such a mind blowing experience. The Pentax 645Z (51,4 mega pixels) arrived on the market in 2014 and was the first camera to ever exceed 100 points in the DxOMark sensor test. For some unknown reason the score and review wasn’t published before 2017. There is plenty of info to be found on the internet concerning the camera specs so I won’t cover that in much detail. What is of greater interest to me and hopefully the reader is the medium format experience.
Does size really matter? Why some pros switched from DSLRs to medium format
Digital medium format cameras hit the market in 1992, with Leaf’s release of the DCB. At the time, this 4mp back launched what would be a tremendous resurgence of medium format photography, primarily within commercial and portrait markets. But why? These systems cost anywhere from 4-10 times what flagship DSLRs cost. Are they really that much better?
Breathtaking 8K Time-lapse of Patagonia
If a photo is worth 1000 words and a clip has 24 frames a second, how would you even rate an 8K timelapse? Videographer Martin Heck challenges the assumption that such a movie can be described with words at all (I vote no).
Aside the obvious technical challenges of making a 100,000 photos time-lapse while traveling 7500 kilometers for six weeks in southern Chile and Argentina, Martin had a small (or rather medium) thing to take care of. Martin shot this movie with a medium format Pentax 645Z camera. That helped bring the total volume of the project to just over 4TB of footage.
5 Cameras Get Put Under the Microphone to Hear Their Shutter’s ‘Clack’
It’s a sound many of us either take for granted or have been conditioned to tone-out entirely, the ‘clack’ a camera makes when the mirror lifts and shutter fires. But there’s something magical about it.
Like the roaring exhausts of two supercars, no two camera shutters sound the same. They have their own personalities defined by the format, camera design and speed at which the shutter goes off.[Read More…]
Pentax 645Z Announced – It’s a Beast!
Pentax is one of the only few camera companies out there that still produces and manufactures medium-format cameras.
Today they they’re announcing their newest medium-format entry, and it is a 51.4mp, (almost) 4k video CMOS sensor beast.
