Many thanks for your info Jim,
Now may I expand a bit on the subject of the Otus...
If you have a choice now, would you rather buy the Otus, or.. buy a Pentax 645z, (because if we can buy
Otus, i think we can also buy the Pentax----i know still double the price, but with the Pentax we also get a good lens kit)
What will be your main consideration..IQ or what..
I'm scared of Pentax's US support, and find the lens line to be a bit confused, with modern, expensive lenses, and older, cheaper ones. Tex, if you're reading this, could you provide commentary?
Happy to. The short answer to the first is that U.S. support for the Z is poor at this time. This is strange, given that Ricoh's support for business printers is good. Someone is not getting the memo. Sales support generally for Pentax in the U.S. is poor. Things are backordered for months, sales reps get little support and in at least one case i know of personally no samples. The Hoya damage persists.
The answer to the latter isn't so dire. The older lenses are readily available and very modestly priced, although not like last year and the year before! Among the 645 lenses, only the 45 seems to be a dud, and it's not
that bad. Several of the older A and FA lenses are terrific. None are as good as the Otus----but then how many lenses are? And in the Otus "line" there are just 2 FL's, and together they'll set you back $8280.00 from B&H today. If they ever come out with more than just factor those prices in. So, with Pentax 645 there's a real line of used lenses available, in manual or AF, primes and zooms, from a 35 (28-ish equiv. FL on the 645 digital sensor) up to 600 (500ish equiv FL), including 2 leaf shutter lenses. But then add to that the 67 lenses, another whole line, and one that has several fine lenses and another LS lens, plus a shift lens. There are several shift or t/s lenses available from 3rd parties. And all these at really modest costs.
On the new lens front, the situation is a bit more odd. The FL is extended down to 25 (21 equiv) in a prime, 28 (23ish equiv) in a zoom. There are only a handful of the new designs designed for digital---and as far as I can tell it's only the new 90 that could be said to be optically better than the best of the older designs. Not clear what the "strategy" is here, but note that the Z has been a lot more popular than expected, and has always been popular in Japan (as in, popular within a niche...)
In the lenses I have used, I have seen nothing to complain about, but only several have I used much due to personal pressures this last year inhibiting my shooting. I won't list all my lenses, but I'll just say I have put together a group of lenses more extensive than I have ever had before with any system, at ridiculously low cost considering what I've got (all used). BTW, I have just started my shooting season in earnest after a brief bit in the fall, and yesterday used the Z, the 45-85 in AF mode, and a Pentax 540fgz flash pre-dawn in 2 degree temps---not even a hiccup, and the Z started on 2 bars battery power. Me, on the other hand---couldn't see a dang thing because my glasses froze over, and my fingers were completely numb---never have my hands been that cold. So, now my only complaint about the Z is that it doesn't have a rubber or leather covering. That metal gets cold! (I lost my nice thin gloves for photo work...)
Also, it's not clear to me that the 645Z, with any currently-available lens, will provide materially better IQ than a D810 and one of the Otii, and the Otii have the potential to be used on lots of bodies, and I'd really rather not embark on a new system at this point. I'm hoping 50+ MP bodies from Nikon and Sony will close the gap to nothing -- or maybe the Otii will be better; it's hard to tell how good they really are on 36 MP cameras.
Well, this also becomes a more complex tale than just the lenses. Clearly the Otus lens tests higher than any other optic we know (that is available for our cameras...). But then there is the Z. If I have to choose between the current FF body options (and I have one, the A7R) and 2 Otus lenses, neither of them in an FL I use much (I'd use the 85 more than the 55, but mostly for repro work...), or a Z and the array of FL options I have with Pentax 645, it's just no contest. And the high iso performance of the Z is startling to say the least. And for me I still think the enlargement edge would go to the Z, or else it would at least equalize things against the Otus. I get the bit about system change/proliferation---it's not ideal. But I already had a jump start on a 645 lens collection from having a 645N. Also, Pentax is easier to move to menu wise---none of the Sony shenanigans (which are getting better). The Z is a straightforward camera.
So, for you antono, I don't see this as being an easy decision. I'd say it really has to do with non-Otus issues, to whit: do you want to be shooting medium format, with its inherently shallower DOF, or FF. It's been an adjustment for me, as I haven't been regularly shooting medium format for a while, and then it was with a fixed lens WA 6x9 rangefinder, always zone-focusing. Get out from WA, and that DOF gets small. I often have to shoot at f16 with the Z, or else slow down quite a bit to check focus, or adapt my vision to allow for some blur in my images, or find subjects that are more"flat". Don't know what kind of shooting you do.
I've got an H1, a H2D-39, and a bunch of Hassy V and H lenses gathering dust, so I'm once-bitten, twice shy.
Jim, you know you could be using those Hassy lenses with a Z, right? ;-}
