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Pentax 645Z

Retailers report Pentax 645Z discontinued without a successor

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Japanese photography retailer Map Camera reports that production of the Pentax 645Z medium format DSLR (buy here) has ended. In a Tweet, the company said they still have some for sale as long as current stocks last. It appears that those stocks have now been depleted, as they are currently listed as sold out.

So far, there doesn’t appear to have been an announcement from Ricoh regarding the 645Z. It’s not showing as discontinued on the Ricoh website (yet), and no successor has been announced. Other retailers around the world are also still showing it as being in stock with no hint that the supply has ended or is about to. But that may change.

The milky way, a medium format camera and a f/4 lens – this is how it went

For several years I have believed that shooting with a medium format camera at high iso would yield a terrible result. I have thought that there is likely no point in even trying because the image will be ruined because of noise. However, this fall I brought my Pentax 645Z and the Pentax 25mm f4 out into the darkness where the zombies reign.

Why I switched from a full-frame DSLR to Pentax medium format

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

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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

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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’

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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.

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