Pentax 6x7 | My Mistakes
The Time Has Come
Finally…I have gotten my hands on a Pentax 6x7! It’s a medium format camera I used to get butterflies thinking about, but its price always scared me away. If I had a dollar for every time I shopped around, added one to my cart, and didn’t end up purchasing it, I’d probably be able to buy an additional 6x7. That being said, in April of this year I finally had enough of window shopping and took the dive.
I purchased my camera and metered prism all from the same Ebay lot. It cost me $400 + and additional $80 in shipping and import duties. I bought the camera from one of the many Japanese camera stores on Ebay, and I believe I got a tremendous deal. I should also mention, I bellied up to the bar and bought the *not cheap* Takumar 105mm lens. The lens alone cost about as much as the camera body and prism.
Included in the Ebay lot came a 5 pack of expired film. The box I received was Fujicolor 400, which expired in 2002. For the record, that is two iterations before Fuji Pro400h. Fujicolor 400 became Fuji Pro400N which subsequently evolved into Fuji Pro400h. This pack of film alone is actually worth a bit of money. Individual rolls of this stuff run for about $50 on Ebay and are particularly hard to find. That being said, I had no intentions of flipping the film only because my curiosity far outpaced my desire for a quick buck. Although as you’ll learn that may not have been the best decision.
THE LEARNING CURVE
My excitement to shoot on this camera ended up working against me. I was blinded by the excitement of finally being able to shoot the legendary Pentax 6x7 with the Takumar 105mm combo. I opted to shoot my first roll of film on Fujicolor 400. It was the only film I had at the time because I somehow managed to forget to buy more film. A soon to be expensive mistake. In true double whammy fashion I made two critical errors when shooting these first rolls.
Trial and Error
I did not take the time to properly research how best to expose this camera; especially with the 105mm. The Takumar has a button that switches between “Auto” and “Manual” mode. These are not auto and manual focus, but rather auto and manual exposure. I knew this going into the shoot, but I didn’t realize that in manual mode, the aperture rings are already in the stopped down position they will be in when you release the shutter. This means that when you’re looking through the viewfinder, it will be quite dark. So dark in fact, that finding focus is damn near impossible. Thus, I regret to inform you that on some of my shotsI missed focus (booo). The effect is even more present if you’re closing down quite a bit; such as anything beyond f/5.6. This is where auto mode comes in handy. Auto is perfect because the aperture ring will not move to the stopped down position until after you release the shutter. This allows you a nice and bright focus window. One thing to note, is if you’re like me and have the metered prism, it will not give you a light reading in the manual mode. It will just sit there menacingly… doing nothing. I didn’t know this on roll #1 and figured my meter was broken, and was quite frustrated! In retrospect it’s all a bit silly, but maybe my newbie mistake on the Pentax 6x7 will save you on a future roll. As for roll # 1, almost all of the shots were very underexposed. I totally blew it. None of the shots are of value and are also out of focus because I could hardly see through the finder.
An example of an underexposed image taken on the Pentax 6x7
The Metered Prism
The metered prism is far from ideal. The reading it gives out is rudimentary, but it will get the job done. Believe it or not that isn’t the biggest issue with the prism. The worst part about it is actually finding the window to view the reading. When looking at the viewfinder there is a tiny window at the bottom of the eyehole in which you can view the reading. It is in such an unnatural spot, that in order to read the meter you must lower your eye level to almost below the viewfinder entirely to read the meter. Naturally, doing this pulls your attention away from the subject you’re photographing. This can cause you to miss key moments because you’re caught up trying to double check your metering. Other times, the meter is nowhere to be found, leaving you no choice but to either fire on instinct or pull out your phone to meter the scene that way. The latter of which takes a long time, and if you have a dynamic subject (picture an impatient dog moving about) you’re certainly going to miss some shots. I suppose if you had a separate light meter you would be doing the same song and dance. However, my frustration comes from having a metered prism that's a temperamental bastard and should work right. I shouldn’t have to rely on an external meter if the internal meter worked properly, but sometimes I’m forced to do so. To be honest, I’m about ready to just purchase a proper external light reader and forget about the internal one entirely.
Finding My Stride
Ain’t nothing gonna break my stride, nobody gonna slow me down (oh no)
So after that first roll of Color400 i was really disappointed. Undeterred, roll 2 was bound to be better, and for the most part it was. I still had some issues metering correctly, however, I got much more usable results. This camera has presented itself with a learning curve I didn’t expect to face, but my struggles on it deserve to be documented. Hopefully you can learn from the small (yet important) mistakes I made!
