I might be done with 645 as a system

mweintraub · Oct 21, 2015

Sirius Glass said:
Yes, there is a difference. A small difference that is not even beginning to make the investment in MF equipment. 645 does not compare to 6x6 and larger.

6x6 is essentially only 1.5cm larger in one direction. Not a huge difference.

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Sirius Glass · Oct 21, 2015

mweintraub said:
6x6 is essentially only 1.5cm larger in one direction. Not a huge difference.

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15mm out of 60mm is a significant increase. 30% increase over 45mm. Exactly how is a 30% increase not significant? Would you consider a 30% increase in your salary insignificant? You do not need to apologize for your bad choices, just accept them and not try to blow smoke up our noses. Jus' sayin' <<wink>> <<wink>>

mweintraub · Oct 21, 2015

Awe, did I ruffle some of your zeiss feathers?

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Sirius Glass · Oct 21, 2015

mweintraub said:
Awe, did I ruffle some of your zeiss feathers?

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No, I was just jerking your chain. Hasselblad has 645 film backs that I would not even bother to use as door stops.

cowanw · Oct 21, 2015

I did think, once, I would like to have a Contax waist level finder, but realized that you really cannot use it in portrait mode. I suspect that is one reason why Hasselblad 645 backs are not to popular.

Theo Sulphate · Oct 21, 2015

mweintraub said:
6x6 is essentially only 1.5cm larger in one direction. Not a huge difference.

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It's not one direction - it's area that's important. Area is important because the choice of the lens' overall image (circle) is based on the image area (format) of the negative.

6 x 4.5 is 27 sq cm

6 x 6 is 36 sq cm

That's a 33% increase - quite a bit.

Alan Gales · Oct 21, 2015

Sirius Glass said:
Hasselblad has 645 film backs that I would not even bother to use as door stops.

You think that's crazy, Mamiya made 645 backs for the RZ67 too.

I used to shoot a Pentax 645Nll. It was a lot of fun for hand held people shooting. It was like a slightly overgrown 35mm camera with a better viewfinder and larger negative. I shot it instead of a 35mm camera. It had matrix metering, autoexposure and autofocus. I also owned a Mamiya RZ67 at the time which I almost always used with a tripod and studio strobes.

MattKing · Oct 22, 2015

6 x 6 has lots going for it, but the extra negative real estate compared to 6 x 4.5 is only of value in use, if you print square, which mostly I don't.

Mostly I print on to 8 x 10 or 11 x 14. If I print from a 6 x 6 negative, I "waste" almost 25% of it. Whereas from 6 x 4.5, I waste almost none of it.

And you know the saying: "Waste Not, Want Not".

There are lots of good arguments for 6 x 6, but the "larger than 6 x 4.5 negative" one is poor, at best. Because in most cases, I and many others don't get to use that extra negative for any good purpose.

My 6 x 4.5 negatives give me negatives which are essentially of the same quality as my 6 x 6 negatives, save for the relatively rare times when I print square on to a larger paper size.

It doesn't matter whether the 6 x 4.5 negatives are exposed with my 645 camera, or by using the 645 back for my RB67.

And the 6 x 4.5 slides I get from either one are really, really nice when projected. A lot better than a 6 x 7 slide would be, as I don't have a 6 x 7 projector.

Alan Gales · Oct 22, 2015

I don't see any sense buying a 6x6 if you don't print square. Just buy a less expensive 645 camera. Wedding photographers used to prefer 6x6 even when cropping because they could decide on orientation later and they liked not having to flip the camera on it's side. Today wedding photographers shoot digital and flip the cameras on their sides.

Of course if 645 is not large enough then go 6x7.

Roger Cole · Oct 22, 2015

Dismayed said:
Nonsense. Go in the darkroom and print an 11x14 with 35mm and with 645. You'd have to be blind not to see the difference. The 645 neg is 2.7 X the area of a 35mm neg.

I have to agree with this.

645 is also the effective size that many (not all, but many, probably about half) of my 6x6 negatives turn out after cropping in printing. I crop as required to make the photo the best I think it can be.

Theo Sulphate said:
It's not one direction - it's area that's important. Area is important because the choice of the lens' overall image (circle) is based on the image area (format) of the negative.

6 x 4.5 is 27 sq cm

6 x 6 is 36 sq cm

That's a 33% increase - quite a bit.

If you print it all.

About half the time, as I said, I don't.

Now it DOES give you the freedom to do that.

Matt may have said it better than I did.

Roger Cole · Oct 22, 2015

Alan Gales said:
I don't see any sense buying a 6x6 if you don't print square. Just buy a less expensive 645 camera. Wedding photographers used to prefer 6x6 even when cropping because they could decide on orientation later and they liked not having to flip the camera on it's side. Today wedding photographers shoot digital and flip the cameras on their sides.

Of course if 645 is not large enough then go 6x7.

Nonsense. I love my Yashicamat 124. Show me a 645 TLR that I can use with a waist level finder with the option of printing either square or rectangular later.

I just don't understand why so many people break out in hives over cropping. It's just another creative tool. I cheerfully crop or not, as readily as I dodge or burn as suits me.

film_man · Oct 22, 2015

cowanw said:
I did think, once, I would like to have a Contax waist level finder, but realized that you really cannot use it in portrait mode. I suspect that is one reason why Hasselblad 645 backs are not to popular.

645 backs for V cameras only make sense if you have a 90deg prism. I had one and it works just fine. But the whole user experience is not that nice regardless, you have a crappy mask in the viewfinder and winding after the shot means you really have to take the camera off your eye.

film_man · Oct 22, 2015

Sirius Glass said:
Yes, there is a difference. A small difference that is not even beginning to make the investment in MF equipment. 645 does not compare to 6x6 and larger.

How does 645 not compare to 6x6? THEY TAKE THE SAME FILM. If you shoot square then 6x6 is better. If you do NOT shoot square and want to crop rectangular 6x6 is exactly the same as 645. You could argue that maybe you would be better off shooting 6x7 vs 645 but that is another argument.

Your argument is like saying that 6x7 is superior to 6x6. If you crop 6x7 square guess what, it is 6x6!

Roger Cole · Oct 22, 2015

You could say that 6x6 is more versatile than 645 because you can leave it square or crop to rectangular. Of course you can crop 645 to 4.5x4.5 square (or any smaller square) too, but then you really do get into significantly reduced area and closer to 35mm (unless you crop 35mm to 24x24 square...)

Square (and crop or not later) IS much easier to use with a waist level finder, and waist level finders are lighter and less bulky than prisms. My Yashicamat is way smaller, lighter and less bulky than my 645 Pro. OTOH it has a fixed lens, no mid-roll film changes, a rudimentary meter and ONLY a waist level finder (at least I've never seen a prism for one.) The 645 Pro has an excellent TTL meter, AE via the AE prism, a winder grip, mid-roll film changes via backs, and interchangeable lenses.

Theo Sulphate · Oct 22, 2015

film_man said:
How does 645 not compare to 6x6? THEY TAKE THE SAME FILM. If you shoot square then 6x6 is better. If you do NOT shoot square and want to crop rectangular 6x6 is exactly the same as 645. You could argue that maybe you would be better off shooting 6x7 vs 645 but that is another argument.

Your argument is like saying that 6x7 is superior to 6x6. If you crop 6x7 square guess what, it is 6x6!

There is a difference and cropping won't produce the same results. This is because the normal focal length for 6x6 is 80mm and the normal focal length for 6x7 is 90mm.

Consider this test: photograph a newspaper 10 feet away with a Hasselblad w/80mm and then do the same with an RB67 w/90mm, then crop the 6x7 negative. You will find the newspaper image on the cropped negative slightly larger (magnified) than the Hasselblad 6x6 negative. So, the details of the newspaper will be captured by more of the emulsion, more grains.

Don't think this is so or that it doesn't matter? Then try the test substituting 35mm film w/50mm lens and 4x5 w/150mm lens - then crop the 4x5 down to 36x24mm -- there is quite a difference.

I'll admit some naivete in my previous post regarding 6x6 and 6x4.5 because I didn't realize that 6x4.5 used 80mm as the normal lens like 6x6.

rbultman · Oct 22, 2015

Theo Sulphate said:
There is a difference and cropping won't produce the same results. This is because the normal lens for 6x6 is 80mm and the normal lens for 6x7 is 90mm.

Consider this test: photograph a newspaper 10 feet away with a Hasselblad w/80mm and then do the same with an RB67 w/90mm, then crop the 6x7 negative. You will find the newspaper image on the cropped negative slightly larger (magnified) than the Hasselblad 6x6 negative. So, the details of the newspaper will be captured by more of the emulsion, more grains.

Don't think this is so or that it doesn't matter? Then try the test substituting 35mm film w/50mm lens and 4x5 w/150mm lens. The crop the 4x5 down to 36x24mm -- there is quite a difference.

I'll admit some naivete in my previous post regarding 6x6 and 6x4.5 because I didn't realize that 6x4.5 used 80mm as the normal lens like 6x6.

I don't understand this. If, after the cropping, the negatives contain the same data (same area of the newspaper) and are of the same size (6x6, 645), the negatives are identical. There is no magnification. If you crop the 6x7 to 6x6 and the negatives do not contain same information then the scenes captured are different - no longer apples to apples. Same goes for any other format on the same film type (e.g. 120). Between film formats (e.g 35 vs 645), there is a difference due to the relative size of the negative. Whether this difference is significant or not depends on many factors including print size and viewing distance, has been exhaustively discussed elsewhere, and let's not get into that here.

Regards,
Rob

rbultman · Oct 22, 2015

To me the flexibility of 6x6 over 645 isn't that you can decide on horizontal or vertical orientation later, but that you can "pan" that 645 window placed over a 6x6 negative during printing. "You know what, that waterfall really would look better on the left side of the print than on the right." With rectangular format, you are pretty much committed when you trip the shutter. "Sheesh, I should have placed Earth on the left side. I'll reframe that on my next trip to the moon." OK, you would bracket, or spray and pray, because moon trips are expensive, but that is a different solution now isn't it?

Regards,
Rob

Theo Sulphate · Oct 22, 2015

rbultman said:
I don't understand this. If, after the cropping, the negatives contain the same data (same area of the newspaper) ...

That's just it - the images are different - they don't contain the same data over the same area. A 6x6 negative shot at 80mm focal length is not the same as a 6x7 shot at 90mm then cropped down to 6x6.

Sure, you could shoot the 6x6 at 90mm and you would get the same result but that's changing how the systems are used as to what is wide, normal, and tele.

Otherwise, I could take a 4x5 image shot at 150mm focal length and crop part of it down to 24x36mm size and say that a 35mm camera with 50mm (actually 42mm) produces the same results as 4x5.

hsandler · Oct 22, 2015

One little trick that I like about using 6x6 compared to 6x4.5 even when I plan on cropping to horizontal later is that for architectural shots, I can use the extra vertical space on the film like front rise on a view camera. I can shoot a building and compose with it fit to the top of the frame, rather than centred, so as to avoid having to tilt the camera up to fit the building in. Then I crop off the bottom in printing. This reduces the keystoning effect and lets me keep vertical lines from converging.

mweintraub · Oct 22, 2015

Theo Sulphate said:
It's not one direction - it's area that's important. Area is important because the choice of the lens' overall image (circle) is based on the image area (format) of the negative.

6 x 4.5 is 27 sq cm

6 x 6 is 36 sq cm

That's a 33% increase - quite a bit.

6x6 to 6x7 is a 29% increase - quite a bit too. As Sirus would say: "Jus' sayin'."

Alan Gales said:
You think that's crazy, Mamiya made 645 backs for the RZ67 too.

And I have one. I will use it because the RZ67 lenses are amazing!

Alan Gales · Oct 22, 2015

Roger Cole said:
Nonsense. I love my Yashicamat 124. Show me a 645 TLR that I can use with a waist level finder with the option of printing either square or rectangular later.

I just don't understand why so many people break out in hives over cropping. It's just another creative tool. I cheerfully crop or not, as readily as I dodge or burn as suits me.

I don't think anyone would want a 645 TLR because it would be hard to use when you put the camera on it's side and use the waist level finder. You do make a good point, Roger. If you want to shoot a TLR you don't have a choice. I wasn't thinking about TLR's. I guess because I have never owned one.

I do think if you always crop to rectangle you would be better served with a 645 SLR camera than a 6x6 SLR. Of course you still have to flip the camera on it's side for portrait orientation. I feel the advantages (smaller, lighter weight, cheaper camera and lenses, plus optional matrix metering, autoexposure, built in motor drive, autofocus, etc.) outweigh the disadvantages. Of course that is my opinion and anyone is free to shoot what they like.

As far as cropping goes, I have no problem with it either.

Alan Gales · Oct 22, 2015

mweintraub said:
And I have one. I will use it because the RZ67 lenses are amazing!

Besides getting more shots per roll I don't see the point of using a 645 back on an RZ. If you like it, that's fine though.

ColColt · Oct 22, 2015

Bottom line-6x7 rules...largest negative you can get on 120 film before going to sheet film. What's not to like about that? It's no big deal you have to turn a camera on it's side to get verticals, we've all done that for years with 35mm.

rbultman · Oct 22, 2015

ColColt said:
Bottom line-6x7 rules...largest negative you can get on 120 film before going to sheet film. What's not to like about that? It's no big deal you have to turn a camera on it's side to get verticals, we've all done that for years with 35mm.

6x9? 6x12?

And, yeah, 6x7 does rule.

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mweintraub · Oct 22, 2015

ColColt said:
Bottom line-6x7 rules...largest negative you can get on 120 film before going to sheet film. What's not to like about that? It's no big deal you have to turn a camera on it's side to get verticals, we've all done that for years with 35mm.

Yep. And 6x7 lenses are one of the best.

About turning the camera to it's side, you don't have to with the Mamiya RB or RZ.

rbultman said:
6x9? 6x12?

And, yeah, 6x7 does rule.

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PPPfffttt. Who shooots that?

/s

I might be done with 645 as a system

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