How are y'all 645D owners holding up?
I think most of us are holding up okay.
Speaking for myself, I'm holding up very well! I've been shooting the 645D for a bit over 3 years so far, and I've found it suits my needs, temperament and style quite well. It's not a perfect system, nothing is. But I've found little about it to criticize, especially in regard to the final images I produce with it for others to see. In the areas where it did leave something to be desired, I've been able to work around it for the most part, and work the limitations into the style when I couldn't work around them.
I'm hopeful that the 645D II (or whatever it's to be called), which is now rapidly exiting rumour status, will address most of the improvements I was hoping for.
TBH, looking at the specs on it, SD cards don't really inspire confidence in me, where as CF cards(primarily because of their more robust sizing) seem to say "professional tool" more than "this is the same tech as my point & shoot!"
Performance of the fastest SD cards is not up to the fastest CF cards, but that's been irrelevant up to now for shooting, because the 645D is no speed demon anyway. It's perhaps somewhat relevant for downloading to the computer after shooting, but download speed hasn't been a concern for me. We'll see what happens with the 645D II, but I have no objections on SD cards so far. I'll also note that nobody whose opinion of my professionalism I care about, has ever had cause to remark on my use of a camera equipped with SD cards.
Lenses:
Which ones would you, *experienced* 645D shooters recommend as capable for BOTH FILM AND DIGITAL USE? I prefer FA(autofocus) lenses, but MF only lenses are fine too. Right now lenses would be used on film only, but potentially on the(still deciding if needed) 645D/645DII(vaporware right now) as well. Of course full-frame coverage is required(because I'm using film), but also because of *future* products that *might* require FF coverage as well..
So, I'm looking at the following as a lightweight, travel kit:
Pentax 645NII body(possibly 2 bodies, since no interchangeable backs like HB or Mamiya)
45mm FA
75mm FA
150mm FA
The FA 75mm and 150mm are both good choices for lightweight travel kit. The FA 45mm is not a great lens; I briefly looked at one on my 645D and got rid of the lens right away. Unfortunately the next choices are to go up to 55mm or down to 35mm, which may be awkward for your chosen way of seeing. If you were to have a single zoom, I could say the FA 45-85mm would be the one. It's larger & heavier than the nearby primes for sure, but it's a good optic covering what I've found to be a very useful focal range. I use this zoom more than just about all my other lenses combined. My next most commonly used lens is probably the FA 150-300mm. For a travel kit I often take those two zooms, either the new DFA 25mm or older FA 35mm for when I need something much wider, and the FA 75mm for a faster, lighter lens for just walking around the streets.
I've been shooting the digital 645 only up to this point, so all my lenses are held against the capability of that 40MP CCD sensor. I shoot both on the tripod at base ISO for exacting detail, and also handheld at higher ISO for dynamic stuff like street work. The lenses I use have mostly supported my shooting styles okay, though on occasion it would have been nice to have something like 3 stop stabilization to help out.
Ironically, in a move that reverses what most people have done, I recently acquired a 645NII to begin shooting B&W film for the first time ever. I've no doubt all the lenses I like on the 645D will prove equally useful on full frame film, though of course with different fields of view.
Lens adapters for V-series lenses:
I can't speak to adapting other system lenses to the Pentax 645.
Now, a couple of notes of follow up to Nick Devlin's experience report. My experience is kind of an alternative book-end to his. After checking out the 645D and dipping my toe in the water with it for some time, I went all-in with it. As I said above, it suits me to a tee. So much so that when I blew the shutter of my first 645D somewhere a bit past 50,000 actuations, I actually acquired Nick's 645D as a 2nd body. I also took his FA 150-300mm off his hands. So his decision to migrate onto the Nikon D800 platform was to my benefit, as I decided to double down on the Pentax.
I agree with him 100% that the Pentax digital MF system is fun and easy to use. I've used and abused mine in all kinds of circumstances and really can't complain about much of anything. I recognize what Nick says about the 2 main challenges he had, but I have not had those same issues, or not to an extent that I can't compensate for them. And compensating for them has become habit and straight forward enough that it wasn't worth looking back at a 35mm platform again. (I came from Canon DSLR's before the Pentax 645D.) Though I happen to think a Sony a7R with select lenses from my Canon 35mm kit and a few others, could be an interesting lighter weight combo. But I digress.
First curtain shutter shake can be an issue with the 645D, and I was hoping for electronic first curtain with the 645D II. It's too early to say if we're going to get it or not. But even if not, I find it's only with certain combinations of focal length and shutter speed, and knowing what those combo's are I can avoid it in a straight forward way most of the time. The worst case situation is with long heavy telephoto lenses tripod-mounted; then I use a rail that QR-clamps to the camera with a 2nd mount point bracing the front of the lens. That seems to work, but it's less convenient to set up. I've rarely missed image quality in terms of sharpness, except when I was happy enough to miss it as a stylistic choice.
Autofocus accuracy has not been an issue for me. I don't use AF a lot, but when I do the thing I've found interesting is that the 645D seems to own focus much better than my Canon 5D series cameras did. And the 645D can do it in very low lighting conditions. This, with a first-gen MF digital body whose AF system was mostly cobbled together from the Pentax APC-C 35mm body of the day and the legacy screw-drive system used by the FA 645 lenses. When I've wanted to use AF with my 645D, I've found it remarkably dependable for my needs. For most of my landscape stuff, I focus manually. This will become easier with the presumable Live View functionality on the new 645D II. But I can see the point about there perhaps not being enough stepping points in the legacy AF system to support fine focus on mid-range subjects. There may be no way to deal with that until enough new ultrasonic motor 645 lenses are on the market. But as Nick points out, these new lenses are drastically more expensive than the old legacy lenses, so the increased precision will come at a price.
To sum it up, I'm very happy I tried the Pentax experiment back in 2010 and glad I stuck with it up to now. And I'm fairly eager to see what the 645D II will add to the equation. I've told my local shop that if my phone # isn't the first one called when they have anything tangible in hand on the 645D II, there had better be a good reason why not... like the end of civilization or something similar.