Table of Contents

• Not the Most Beautiful Camera…
• …But Practical and Reliable
• Adapting Lenses From Other Brands
• A Camera Build For Professional Use
• A malfunction I encountered with the camera

Not the Most Beautiful Camera…

The first thing you notice is that this camera is the complete opposite of the gothic charm of the Pentax Spotmatic (1964–1976) or Pentax 67: it is essentially a large rectangular box with five buttons and an LCD screen, to which a grip and a prism finder have been attached.

…But Practical and Reliable

The Pentax 645 (1984) was my first medium format camera and as a user of 35mm camera I encounter no problem mastering it.

It features the controls and automatic modes you would expect from a 35mm SLR. The only added complexity comes from changing the format 120 film.

The camera is not charming, but is highly functional and reliable.

Otherwise it is a lot heavier than a 35mm camera – 1.3 kg without a lens – because of its film advance motor.

Focusing is manual on this first version, while the film is advanced automatically by a rather noisy motor.

Adapting Lenses From Other Brands

One major advantage – especially if, like me, you do not particularly enjoy the rendering of Pentax lenses – is that its flange distance allows lenses from different mounts to be adapted.

For my part, I adapted a Zeiss 150mm f/4 (Hasselblad V mount) and a Mir 45mm (Salyut mount) using commercially available adapters.

A Camera Build For Professional Use

The Pentax 645 was built for being by profesionnal. It will be especially useful for shooting in studio or wedding photography when taking quickly take a series of shots is necessary.

The autofocus integrated in the next versions of the camera allows you to be even faster and efficient.

Otherwise if you are – like me – a landscape photographer, these functionalities will be no use when not bulky for you.

A malfunction I encountered with the camera

Be careful, however, not to handle it too roughly when loading film, or you might experience the same mishap I did: tear out one of the small cylinder that guides the film, which then causes film flatness issues.