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Pentax 645Z Examples: Portraits (90/2.8)
These portraits were shot late in the day. The sun was casting a warm light onto high clouds for warm and beautifully even lighting. A real-world decision was made to use f/5.6 for some depth of field, which demanded ISOs from 400 to 1600.
Shooting observations while making these images:
- Fatigue begins to develop hand-holding the 645Z + 90/2.8 especially in portrait orientation; it is a large and demanding camera to handle.
- The metering is risky at best; some images taken at the same time (non-portraits) were overexposed out by as much as two stops. Portrait images were often underexposed by 1 to 1.5 stops.
- The mirror makes a lot of noise banging up and down, but Pentax seems to have done a terrific job on minimizing actual vibration.
- The optical image stabilization was welcome and is not noticed in operation (silent).
- Tight-spot single-point autofocus was used; it was slow and somewhat frustrating, often hunting but ultimately when settled seemed to be quite accurate. The spot was placed on the iris of the eye followed by recomposition as needed because there the grouping is highly central.
- The camera locked up in autofocus epilepsy at one point and had to have the battery pulled to restore function.
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Pentax 645Z + Pentax 90mm f/2.8