Pentax 67 for Professional Photographers

Pentax 67

By Anne Ahira

The incredible longevity of the Pentax 67 has made it famous among photographers and shutterbugs.

In an industry that is depends on continual technological advances and improvements, it is rare that a camera remains popular for very long. But the Pentax 67 is indeed a rare camera.

First introduced in 1969, the camera remained essentially unchanged until 1998 when it was updated with the release of the Pentax 67II.

The original Pentax offered a 100mm lens and a focal length of 6X7, hence the name. It was an especially popular camera with professional photographers because it looked and handled just like 35mm cameras.

For professional photographers the Pentax 67 made and still makes a fantastic tripod camera, since it is a medium format camera that does not have the speed to be a snapshot camera. Although, it is important to purchase a heavy tripod that weighs more than the actual camera or you may get a lot of blurry shots due to vibration.

Advantages

The Pentax 67 is an extremely versatile camera with a large selection of compatible lenses. This is due to the fact that the device has been around for more than thirty years now. Not only are there great new lens that you can buy, but there are also reliable second-hand lenses that can easily be installed.

The metering of the Pextax 67 gives users three reliable possibilities: center weighted average, matrix and spot. The spot metering focuses on the area in the center focusing circle as does the center weighted average. The Matrix metering is said to be particularly effective.

Users also praise the viewfinder, which is said to be clear and bright, much brighter than competing models. According to all of the reviews that we have read, the image is easy to focus for nearly any lens that is used.

Probably the main selling points of the Pentax 67 is its incredible electronically controlled shutter that boasts speeds that range from four seconds to 1/1000 of a second for automatic exposure on the A setting. The B setting, on the other hand, allows long exposures for specialized photography.

Lastly, the camera has a convenient mirror lockup lever located right beside the shutter release. It is a cinch to use even when the camera is on a tripod, and since it is often not needed when it is hand-held, this is when you will be using it.

The mirror lockup also activates the meter lock, which is extremely useful during the metering mode when pictures have to be reframed.

Disadvantages

It’s difficult to find much wrong with a camera that has been around for more than thirty years and some of this might seem like knit picking, but here goes. 

The first complaint of a select number of users is that the camera does not have a hot shoe. This means that a bubble level cannot be used, which does matter much since a flash must be attached regardless.

As we mentioned, there is also vibration or shutter bounce that can result in blurred images if you do not purchase a heavy-duty tripod. Again, you need one that weighs more than the camera to achieve optimal levels of performance.

The camera also has fairly slow sync speed of 1/30, which can and often does preclude daylight flash use, but this is the case with most cameras in its class.

Lastly, the Pentax 67 does not have LCD illumination. Again, this is not the end of the world, since most of the vital information you need like F Stop is displayed on the viewfinder screen.

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