Pentax 6x7 worth buying?

Andrew O'Neill · Feb 19, 2014

Just go on ebay and you will see that MLU's are going for around that price without a lens. It's a great deal. Go for it!

cobbu2 · Feb 19, 2014

I rarely word my posts, if ever, this adamantly, but... what are you waiting for? The P67 is a superb professional photographic machine. The lens and accessories alone are worth the $250, so it's not worth wasting any more time trying to decide. If I already didn't have one I'd grab that deal myself!

Poisson Du Jour · Feb 19, 2014

It it is at all possible, I would be seeking to visually inspecting and handling the camera before settling for it at that price, irrespective of what the seller tells you.

DWO · Feb 20, 2014

The main problem is that the seller is difficult. He posted the beast on Craigslist over a year ago for $125 and I jumped on that deal. But he then refused to sell it saying he priced it too low.

So this week he said he wanted to sell it for $325 but would take $250, so I offered him $250. I haven't gotten any response to my offer.

Either way it goes is okay with me really. I'm not dying to get a 6x7 but for the right price I will try it.

dedhamvaleman · Feb 20, 2014

Oh, yes!

Definitely worth going for. The Pentax 6x7 is my favourite medium format camera. It is a joy to use, and has turned me from an awful photographer into one who is almost competent!

(Relates to your original post)

DWO · Feb 20, 2014

Looks like the deal will happen.

jwatts · Feb 20, 2014

you are about to score then!

tnabbott · Feb 24, 2014

I would get it.

Tom1956 · Feb 24, 2014

Definitely. No question about it.

Fixcinater · Feb 24, 2014

I just pulled my 2 6x7 (one MLU, one not) bodies out and wouldn't ya know it...the shutter got tripped somehow on the MLU body so the battery was flat and the frame is wasted.

Still, even just looking through the viewfinders is a fun exercise in "seeing" and somehow it is more appealing to my eye than LF's upside down and backwards. Maybe I shot enough in the past with a TLR + WLF that it makes sense, and I have yet to shoot that much LF, so that doesn't. Still the ground glass on the Pentax is bright even with the 45/4, and the colors almost look better than real life.

Poisson Du Jour · Feb 24, 2014

Fixcinater said:
I just pulled my 2 6x7 (one MLU, one not) bodies out and wouldn't ya know it...the shutter got tripped somehow on the MLU body so the battery was flat and the frame is wasted.

Still, even just looking through the viewfinders is a fun exercise in "seeing" and somehow it is more appealing to my eye than LF's upside down and backwards. Maybe I shot enough in the past with a TLR + WLF that it makes sense, and I have yet to shoot that much LF, so that doesn't. Still the ground glass on the Pentax is bright even with the 45/4, and the colors almost look better than real life.

Not "somehow", it is a fact that it is very easy for the MLU to be activated when the camera is packed away. Tape the MLU nib before packing the 67 away.
And carry spare batteries.

Argenticien · Feb 26, 2014

Poisson Du Jour said:
Tape the MLU nib before packing the 67 away.

That makes sense for short stays in the camera bag. The other school of thought would be, when storing any camera for a longer time, remove the batteries. It's a pain in the Arse because you're forever unscrewing and rescrewing battery caps (hint: use Dead Link Removed), but that's better than having a battery leak and corrode a camera. I try to do this any time I expect a camera will be on the shelf more than about a week. Especially if you're a collector with many cameras, so each body might go many weeks or a few months between uses, this makes sense. I've evolved a system where I remove a camera's battery, put it in a ZipLoc-style bag (small ones meant for pills), and rubber-band the bag to the camera--which visually reminds me to put the battery in upon next use. Maybe there's still risk of any leakage going through the bag onto the outside of the camera, but I doubt it; and I worry if I had the battery separately elsewhere, I'd leave the house without it.

--Dave

DWO · Feb 28, 2014

Update: due to random circumstance I was unable to get the camera. Hopefully somebody got a good deal on it. I appreciate the input from everybody.

DREW WILEY · Feb 28, 2014

Ha. Reminds me of a survey laser salesman that always packed his demo sample into its case backwards, where a bit of protruding foam packing
happened to hit the reset command button for correcting vertical, and so afterwards the leveling feature always looked at the world with a
crook-neck skew to it. The engineers and software folks spent months trying to figure out what was wrong, until I finally noticed the laser
beam flashing through the guy's plastic suitcase when it was allegedly turned off. ... But I've never, ever had a P67 mirror lock accidentally trip. There is a big distinction between how the traditional 67 and the 67II lock works, however. The older style consumes battery power when the mirror is held up, while the 67II conserves it. That is why amateur astro-photographers greatly prefer the II style camera for their long nite exposures on equatorial drive mounts.

Poisson Du Jour · Feb 28, 2014

DREW WILEY said:
Ha. Reminds me of a survey laser salesman that always packed his demo sample into its case backwards, where a bit of protruding foam packing
happened to hit the reset command button for correcting vertical, and so afterwards the leveling feature always looked at the world with a
crook-neck skew to it. The engineers and software folks spent months trying to figure out what was wrong, until I finally noticed the laser
beam flashing through the guy's plastic suitcase when it was allegedly turned off. ... But I've never, ever had a P67 mirror lock accidentally trip. There is a big distinction between how the traditional 67 and the 67II lock works, however. The older style consumes battery power when the mirror is held up, while the 67II conserves it. That is why amateur astro-photographers greatly prefer the II style camera for their long nite exposures on equatorial drive mounts.

There is an ingenious and simple trick around to turn the 67 into an ideal battery-less astrophotography camera. This involves triggering the mirror-up with the reset button on the front, then the shutter button (in Bulb, for example).

The problem of the MLU nib being activated in transit has happened to many, many people and it is circumstantial on the surroundings of the camera e.g. dividers pressing against the mirror box in the pack (as mine does). Additionally, the MLU has been known to be tripped when a photographer grapples with a lens change by holding both sides of the mirror box from above while removing the lens not a particularly brilliant way of doing it.

Pentax 6x7 worth buying?

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