Fuji Ga645 Zi Opinions?

I have a chance to get my hands on one of these Fuji Ga645 Zi.

I have read a few sites, all seems wonderful medium format P&S with autofocus, all seems positive. I thought I'd come here for a final reality check as someone is bound to know these cameras.

I would be primarily thinking of this for Street and urban photography.

I used it for years - was basically a medium format Point & Shoot camera for me. Loved it. Fill flash worked great. Given the lens speed is on the slow side, I used to use 400 speed film, even for outdoor shooting. It also inspired me to try out the other Fuji Med format cameras like the GS645 and GA645Wi

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Good luck,

Dan

Simplicius said:

I have a chance to get my hands on one of these Fuji Ga645 Zi.

I have read a few sites, all seems wonderful medium format P&S with autofocus, all seems positive. I thought I'd come here for a final reality check as someone is bound to know these cameras.

I would be primarily thinking of this for Street and urban photography.

Click to expand...

I have owned a GA645Zi for about five years and really like it. It is relatively small and compact, feels good in your hand, has a great variable focus lens, and the automatic focus and exposure systems works very well. A few years agoi I used the camera extensively in Mexico and wound up making about 1200 exposuers . For the kind of work you plan to do I would rate this as about the perfect camera.

Sandy King

It is a great camera for street/urban photography, providing you use 400ASA film.

It has all the advantages of a consumer point-and-shoot camera; namely, for most subjects, it's easy to get a good, well exposed photo with the minimum of fuss.

Unfortunately, despite its "Professional" branding, it retains many of the disadvantages of its smaller/cheaper brothers. Fuji did not redesign the layout of the many buttons to make it easy to manually control more than one variable at a time (exposure, focus, aperture, speed, etc).

Setting the aperture is easy, setting shutter speed slightly harder and setting focus distance quite hard. So if you want to meter on one object, focus on another, and set the aperture/speed, you need very long fingers with an extra joint or two.

That said, the large negatives and quality lens makes for great prints and big enlargements.

Andrew

Hi - I've owned one for about 4 years and love it. It's light, robust, has a great zoom lens, can take 120 or 220 film, has a usable pop-up flash (though the GA Strobe is best) and produces beautiful, sharp images. I agree with the comments about shooting with 400ASA film (great Fuji film!) and you do have to be careful when loading the film to get it right. Other than that, it's a winner!

Buy it..Quick!

I have one of these and I absolutely love it. It is easy to use, handy to carry and takes absolutely stunning pictures. Mine weighs 2.05 pounds fully loaded with batteries and 220 film. I carry it around in the inside pocket of my vest so it is immediately ready for use. It is not quite as small as my medium format folders but it has a modern, sharp, zoom lens, auto and manual exposure modes, autofocus and auto film advance. The pictures I am getting are so nice, and the camera is so easy to handle, that I am seriously considering selling my Canon EOS-1 Ds full frame camera.

Very fun camera. I like the frame orientation. My main complaints were: it's a bit noisy; the zoom range is almost too tight to matter albeit handy for some things; and eventually I simply wanted a wider and a longer option in one 'system' camera, so I jumped to the mamiya 6 system. Afterwards I still missed the Zi from time to time! It's really fun and the EBC glass is superb and very contrasty- great for landscape/travel.

I just got a GA645i. Very cool little guy. I had to really learn to focus and watch the numbers in the bottom to amke sure I was on track with the focus point. Very nice negs. easy to use.