on Aug 11, 2019 11:09:23 GMT
As many of you know, my love of Yashica started with my passion for the Contax RTS and I still use their gear to this day. The fabulous Contax 645 is a big favourite but even its most basic accessories are ridiculously expensive when compared with most other medium format film cameras of the same era. In a previous thread, I have shown a C645 with a Mamiya 645 Auto Bellows N as the Mamiya bellows is about £1000 cheaper than the Contax one, if you can even find it.
The C645 only offers an AE Finder and a basic WLF Finder, the latter requiring the camera to only use spot metering. If you want to magnify the image when composing your piccie, you have to remove the WLF, connect the AE Finder and then add the Contax Magnifier-N which all takes time - not a major issue with product or still life shots but not ideal for portrait work. So I was looking at my Pentax 6x7s and wondered if their magnifying chimney finder might work - and it does.
So, here is a unique chimera of a camera - a mix of Contax 645, Pentax 6x7, Hasselblad Ixpress Digital Back, and via a Zoerk Adapter, a Mamiya 645 lens.
And at 132MB per image the level of detail is quite intoxicating and the only inconvenience is having to carry the Image Bank which both stores up to 850 132MB photos as well as providing power for the digital back. It may all be old technology by modern DSLR standards but if image quality is your principal criterion, this will do very well. The only problem is shooting fast movement in that the Ixpress back limits the Contax's available shutter speed to 1/1000s though I don't recall needing to use 1/4000s on the 645 to date when using film.