Pentax 645Z Testing

[Smeggypants]

You are likely correct in your assessment, if you have a good DSLR to begin with, like a K3. At certain sizes the difference may appear minor although I still would notice the difference if I had also stuck the K3 on the tripod and shot the Pink hour straight afterwards.
But for those who require images to scale up to very large sizes 1m+ long edge, this camera really comes into its own. I have an exhibition starting in two weeks and I will get the pink hour blown up large for that. I suspect that's when I will fully realise what a great bit of kit the 645Z is.

Indeed and while most of us would never have the requirement for those display sizes, if you do have the that requirement then MF is surely the way to go. It's not such a rare requiremnet either. The world is full of large images on billboards, poster boards, etc I don't go out much but I see them everywhere when I do

[MattEmmett]

I thoroughly get your point Doc. Most of the issues with my pics are user error and I have no foreseen need to decorate the side of a double decker bus with one of my images.

On the other hand I do enjoy telling myself that Matt's pics are brill because he is using a much dearer camera

Oi!!!!!
There is some truth in that statement, if I posted some of my early abandoned images taken with the Canon 400D then you would certainly see a big difference.

[Dr Orloff]

Large images on billboards and bus posters are not about fine art quality - even though they are very large if you look at them closely they are made from massive dots, like golf balls. And that is fine because they are designed to be viewed at large distances. Medium format is massive overkill for that market.

I can see many uses and of course it's nice to use the best that there is. It would be interesting to see a side by side comparison of 1 metre wide prints taken with different formats. If anyone follows the excellent 'the online photographer' blog they might have noted the highly erudite Mike Johnston's views on what is good enough. I have virtually no experience of printing (I will rectify that when I get to the UK) - I printed an A4 sized image from my old Canon G3 - it was a little less than 4megapixels and yet the quality at that size was excellent with bags of really fine detail.

The question of what is good enough I find interesting and wide ranging and I consider it quite a lot. It certainly is the case that the skill of the photographer is the single biggest factor, I have seen plenty of terrible images from very expensive equipment.

I'm not taking anything away from the 645Z, it looks tremendous. I'm just looking at and not feeling at all jealous.

[aliengrove]

The main reason I was initially vacillating over the A7s was the pixel count (and the cost, though I've pretty much covered that now by selling all my Aps-C lenses and probably the K3 too). My only concern over pixel count has been cropping ability, as virtually all my aerial shots are cropped to 16:9 and I often have to crop out corners and edges due to the distortion from the windows. However, after experimenting with Autopano Giga, I'll buy it and use it for times when I feel I need more pixels. If it works as well as it seems to so far (using the trial version) I should be able to produce 40+ MP images if I so desire, which will probably only happen on shots of mountains or the occasional landscape. The ability to stitch large amounts of images easily, for me, will kill any desire for Medium Format.

For most (in fact nearly all) uses, 12mp is plenty. It should be here in a few days, can't wait to try it out!

[Smeggypants]

The main reason I was initially vacillating over the A7s was the pixel count (and the cost, though I've pretty much covered that now by selling all my Aps-C lenses and probably the K3 too). My only concern over pixel count has been cropping ability, as virtually all my aerial shots are cropped to 16:9 and I often have to crop out corners and edges due to the distortion from the windows. However, after experimenting with Autopano Giga, I'll buy it and use it for times when I feel I need more pixels. If it works as well as it seems to so far (using the trial version) I should be able to produce 40+ MP images if I so desire, which will probably only happen on shots of mountains or the occasional landscape. The ability to stitch large amounts of images easily, for me, will kill any desire for Medium Format.

For most (in fact nearly all) uses, 12mp is plenty. It should be here in a few days, can't wait to try it out!

I use PTGui for stitching many images works a treat.

[aliengrove]

I've used PTGui too; what I like about Autopano is that you just select a folder, it automatically groups the images that can be stitched, and you just let it get on with it. Control points aren't usually needed, plus you can stitch images taken from different angles, at different exposures, and even different apertures, which are the main selling points for me.

[Steve.Ledger]

I've not used PTGui but I have used Microsoft's ICE (Image Composit Editor). Looking at PTGui it's very similar to ICE, but ICE can also work with video.
► http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/ ... s/ivm/ICE/

I found it to be very fast.
Oh, and it's free.

[Darkmunk]

As some of you know, I took the plunge a while back and some things are becoming more an more apparent as I use it.
Depth of field (the good aspect of that) and general rendering is nothing short of sublime. Some rough comparisons at a recent wedding show the K5ii to be like a phone or compact in its harshness in similar conditions.
Wedding groups are amazing.
Cropping is a common thing and the Zed's files are a joy to work with; it keeps making me smile.
Conversely, I still stitch even the Zed's files, partly because I don't have a wide angle and partly because I'm greedy
I'm still not convinced about the colour saturation especially above 1600. Too early to tell, but it does seem to be a bit washed-out and not always in a way you can rectify (and why should you have more work to do?) Still time will tell, maybe it's me...
Extreme macro is proving disappointing, especially as that is one thing I was really looking forward to. Again, early days.

[Gravelrash]

Nice to hear your thoughts and experience on this Mark. I hope you join in more often.

[nass]

Extreme macro is proving disappointing, especially as that is one thing I was really looking forward to. Again, early days.

Hello Mark,

Could you elaborate on this?

Many thanks

-Johan