All posts tagged: pentax 645Z

Friday Night Lights

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My friend Chris said his son was playing football on Friday night and invited me to come along and take a few pics. Jonathan is a Tiny Mite football player. This is tackle football for kids aged 5 to 8. They put on their pads, helmets, and mouthguards then attempt to decimate the competition. We had a few minutes before the game so I took the Pentax 645Z, a 25mm wide angle, and the B1 strobe onto the edge of the field. A few quick shots while there was a little color still in the sky and we were done. I don’t know anything about American Football (I believe one team used a refrigerator as a player in the ’80’s). However, when I wanted Jonathan to give me his game face I simply said show me Hulk and got exactly what I wanted.

Okinawa – International Destination Weddings

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Okinawa is a popular wedding destination for mainland Japanese, and more recently couples from Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China. I teamed up with the Marine Bijou wedding chapel, and model Yuki to produce some stock imagery that I can use in future projects. I shot with the Pentax 645Z allowing me to provide clients with huge data files if needed. For the “pre-wedding” images I used only natural light then switched to Profoto strobes in the chapel and on the beach. Outdoors in the blazing sunshine, one assistant (Chris) held the Profoto B1 in a white softlight reflector, while another assistant (Cody) held a large Lastolite diffusion panel that put Yuki into soft shade. The strong tropical sunlight really brought out the colors in the ocean, while the diffuser and powerful strobe allowed us to avoid harsh shadows. I got a great series of images so a huge thanks to Marine Bijou, the make up artist, Yuki the model, and assistants Chris and Cody. If you’ve found this blog because you’re looking for a wedding photographer in …

Awa Odori – Time to put on your geta and dance

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Along with portraits I needed to get some images of groups dancing at the festival. There are several areas where they dance, but I based myself at the largest venue where hundreds of spectators watch the event from terraced seating. Organizing a press pass meant I could get much better images than shooting from the terraces, but even press are restricted to where they can go so not to impede the dancers or spoil the view for spectators. I shot hundreds of images between 6pm and 9.30pm, but nearly all the best shots came from a period of about 10 minutes during twilight just after the floodlights came on. Overall a great festival. If you’re ever in Japan between August 12 to 15, it’s definitely worth checking out.

The Tobacconist

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Met up with photographer Trevor Williams in Okayama and spent the day checking out Naoshima Island in the Seto Inland Sea. Driving around the island we spotted an old store squeezed between more modern buildings. Murao is an 83-year-old tobacconist who defiantly sells his cigarettes and non-safety matches just has he has done for more than half a century. The sign next to his window says, Kyo mo genki da! Tobako ga umai, which roughly translates as, Today I’m also healthy. Tobacco is delicious. The future of tobacconists is literally on Murao’s doorstep. A cigarette vending machine with taspo age identification sits beside his store. Murao however doesn’t seem worried. Against all the odds, he’s happy and healthy, still puffing away.

Pentax 645Z and the Double Big Mac

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The new Pentax 645Z sensor is 51.4 megapixels. Great for image quality and an amazing amount of detail, but this can lead to a few issues. A 64GB memory card can hold only 566 images.   (Compared to 712 images on the 40MP 645D  or 1198 on the Pentax K3) Larger files mean that it’s slower to download the data from the SD card, and slower to import into Lightroom, and slower to create 1:1 previews, and slower to edit in Photoshop. With the 645D, I’d got used to setting things running on my old Mac Pro 1.1 and then taking the dog for the walk or making a cup of tea. Recently, however,  when shooting more frames, and at higher resolutions the speed of my workflow was no longer efficient. I wanted a Mac with 32GB RAM, and a PCIe SSD with about 500GB of memory. The easy option would be to look at the new Mac Pros, but a model with the specs I wanted would be around 5,000 dollars. Instead, for around half …

Soma Nomaoi Festival – Shutsujin Ceremony at Nakamura Shrine

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The Soma Nomaoi samurai horsemen festival takes place each July in Fukushima Prefecture. Following the devastation of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami it was cancelled, but it restarted once again in 2013. I attended this year to document one of Japan’s great festivals, and the resilience of Fukushima’s people. Preparations for the lead samurai and his horse at the castle beside Nakamura Shrine. Breakfast of champions. Sake and cucumbers at Nakamura Shrine. Gearing up. A priest from the shrine places the helmet on a samurai rider. Time for a quick portrait. New camera, same technique of getting up in people’s faces. Priestess helps one of the youngest riders get ready. The little girl was actually the daughter of the Shinto priest. Statues at the shrine show the importance of horses to the area. The priestess like all of the other participants on horseback was an excellent rider. The mounted samurai were followed by pikemen and priests carrying a mikoshi (portable shrine). The samurai and priests then parade south from Soma to Mina Soma and the …

Pentax 645Z – High ISO Performance / Dynamic Range

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The 645D is an amazing camera. I use the present tense, because the arrival of the 645Z does not diminish it all. The CCD sensor, however, does have a restricted ISO range from 200 to 1000.  When I bought the 645D this was not an issue for me. I was used to using my Pentax 67II camera  with Provia 100F or on rare occasions Provia 4ooX. This inability to shoot at higher ISOs meant that there were times that the 645D was the wrong tool for the job. Several indoor events, including the yuta ceremony in the cave were shot with the more flexible K5 / K3 cameras. If I didn’t have a tripod with me, there were times that I’d simply miss the shot. The new 645Z has an ISO range of 100 to 204800. Although the upper end of this range is not suitable for commercial work, the results at 3200 are very good. The above shot is an example of where 645Z enabled me to get a shot I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to get. While …

Pentax 645Z – Just the facts, ma’am

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The Pentax 645Z digital medium format camera will be available for purchase at the end of June 2014. It’s predecessor, the Pentax 645D, went on sale in June 2010  for 848,000 yen. You can pre-order the  645Z at B&H for $8,496.95  or from Amazon Japan for ￥777,110. The 645Z uses a 51.4MP Sony CMOS sensor unlike the 40MP Kodak CCD sensor in the 645D. The sensor remains the same size at 43.8mm x 32.8mm, this means it is a crop 645 sensor. The sensor is the same one used in the 50 megapixel Hasselblad H5D-50C camera ($29,000) and Phase One IQ250 digital back ($37,000). At around $8,500 dollars, the 645Z is a third the price of it’s MF digital competitors. The use of a CMOS sensor allows the 645Z to offer live view, a video mode, and a higher ISO range. The PRIME III image processor is significantly faster than in the 645D. The camera can now shoot at 3 fs rather than 1 fs in the 645D and instant reviews will be quicker. The autofocus system and metering systems have also been improved. The …

Pentax SMC DA 645 25mm F4 AL (IF) SDM AW

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I recently purchased a 25mm lens for my Pentax 645 system. This is one of the new lenses designed for the digital 645D / 645Z cameras alongside the DFA 645 55mm and the DFA 645 Macro 90mm. A few important facts about the lens: At 25mm when used on the 645D it is equivalent to 19.5mm on a FF 35mm camera. This is one of the widest medium format lenses available.  I also use the excellent 645 35mm. It’s a heavy beast  at 1040g and expensive US$ 4,996.95 at B&H (although still several thousand less than the Hasselblad 24mm). Occasionally they appear used on Ebay, which is where I purchased mine. As with the 645D body, the 90mm, and 55mm, it’s weather sealed so can stand up to the elements. This really separates the Pentax system from other medium format digital systems which are more suited to a controlled studio environment. The front element is curved, which means filters are designed to be inserted internally. The filters are 40.5mm and polarizers can be rotated with a nifty dial on the holder. Interestingly, this …