This shoot was my first real go of the GA645, and it is a
really nice camera to use. Despite it
being compact for a medium format camera, it totally dwarfed the other two. Not
only that, it weighed almost three times as much as the feather weight X100.
The camera is relatively easy to load and use. Any familiarity with a roll film camera
previously will help the user load the camera, but it's no harder than a Nikon
FE2. The only tricky bit is winding the
film to the appropriate starting point, and also remembering to click the
bottom spool locators into place.
When in use it couldn't be easier. I used aperture priority and off I went. The viewfinder is where all the action
happens. The finder frame automatically
corrects for parallex and changes substantially from infinity to minimum focus distance
(approx 0.7m). There is a read out that
gives an approximation of the distance from the subject, which is all adjusted
by pushing the shutter half way down, just like on a D-SLR.
Being almost totally automatic, the GA645 is much closer to
the X100 than the completely manual Leica in terms of ease of use. It really is not much more than point and
shoot.
The film I used was some out of date Kodak Portra 160
NC. This is a low contrast film,
designed to be used for weddings and softer portraits. It was probably not appropriate for the
subject matter, but a good trial film.
I am looking forward to the results!
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