Mythbusting: Pentax 6x7 & Hasselblad 500-501

venchka

venchka

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If you wander around forums like this one and APUG, sooner or later you will encounter various and sundry Truths. The Gospel According to Noted Experts in the Field.

One such Truth: You can not hand hold a medium format SLR camera. The Pentax 6x7 is high on the list of cameras that may only be used on a tripod. The Hasselblad 500 series follows close behind.

Many people put great faith and stock in MTF Charts. They point to them religiously as the One Great Source of Truth About A Lens. I don't photograph MTFs. Do you?

To all of the above I say, "Bunk!"

First up, my real world approximation of an MTF Chart. Hasselblad 501cm, Zeiss 80mm Planar, Tmax 100, hand held.

Wine+Fest+TMX-H80016-10.jpg



Next up: Pentax 6x7, SMC 150mm lens, Kodak Portra 160VC, hand held.

Wine+Fest+160VC006-4.jpg



A noted Leica Lens tester likes to use a blank brick wall to show the qualities of a lens. I prefer a brick wall with a bit of character and interest.


Wine+Fest+160VC009-6.jpg



Wine+Fest+160VC004-2.jpg



So, the next time you encounter such claims as, "You can't use Such and Such camera without a tripod.", who you gonna call?

Mythbusters! 😀 😎
 
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Nice photos Wayne, although the first one isn't really sharp 😉
 
Thank you!

All of these suffer from my crappy $150 scanner. The first negative is sharp. Or at least has fine detail.
 
I've shot my 4x5 field camera hand-held plenty. It can be done- but: put ANY camera on a tripod and it will produce better results than hand-held. Try it with anything from your MF to your tiny digital P/S- and be sure you use a cable release or self-timer.
 
I don't think anyone would really suggest that you cannot handhold mf cameras such as the Hasselblad or the Pentax. What most people say is that in order to get the best out of the cameras you should use a tripod. The argument being that you would not be using mf if you didn't want *the best*.
All this, of course, is only true if sharpness is all you're after. If you use these cameras at slower shutterspeeds there is some minor camera shake visible at high magnifications but it's mostly neglectable. I have sometimes used a Hasselblad at 1/8 or 1/4 and the shots came out perfectly fine.

One other thing you will often see on internet forums is people pretending to make a technical point while all they're trying to do is showcase some of their photos 😉
 
Hasselblads are fairly easy to handhold. I usually don't, but when I use it for portraits I often prefer to handhold so I can move with the subject easily. The Mamiya 645 Super and Pro are very easy to handhold if you get the winder grip, almost like a 35mm camera and if you're used to huge 35mm cameras like a Nikon F4 or F5 or a Canon EOS 1 series, then the M645 is about the same size and weight!

I would not handhold a Mamiya RB/R&-67 camera though. They really are too bulky and heavy and are really not designed to be handheld. Pentax 6x7 handles like an overgrown 35mm SLR and is fine.
 
Another revelation....

Another revelation....

Should I decide to purchase the Hasseblad, I see no reason to buy the slower 150mm/4.0 Sonnar. The SMC 150mm/2.8 is faster and certainly sharp enough for my purposes. It's also paid for. 😀 😎
 
I've never heard that about hand holding a MF camera. Your format size should have nothing to do w/ that, it's about shutter speed and how stable your hand holding skills are. If anything, a MF camera should be more stable than a smaller camera as the extra weight will help out w/ shake. Maybe people are talkng about the mirror slap on a Hassy and the fact you might need mirror lock up? Well, if the speeds are high enough no worries.
 
Obviously it's gonna be sharper on a tripod, but sharpness isn't everything. Victor Hasselblad was a big hand holder so I hear...

With my 500c/m I do like to be at about 250th of a second to safely handhold without noticeable shake, but I don't let the amount of light I have limit my ability to make a picture if I need to. As far as the pentax 67 it has always been thought of as a great portrait camera because of the slight softening due to the large mirror mechanism.

MTF charts and pictures of brick walls are for the lab, and people doing scientific/technical photography. This obsession is sharpness is a product of digital photography I think. People didn't used to be able to view their images as large as they could possibly be so quickly. If you can make a decent 11x14 from a 35mm negative, you got a pretty good lens. I'd say 16x20 for medium format. And viewing distance was once a consideration too.

On my D700 I have a pre-ai 50mm ƒ1.4, and it's one of my favorite lenses because of it's 'optical signature' so to speak. By this I mean softness wide open, tendency to flare, low contrast, and tack sharpness when need be. A modern Nikon 50mm ƒ1.4G may be a 'better' lens, but that doesn't mean I would be able to use it to make better pictures.

I'm not saying any Tamron lens is as good as a Zeiss, I'm simply saying I like an optical signature, which is often times a technical flaw.
 
It's all relative.

It's all relative.

Optical signature is lost on the zoom lens toting, MTF chart watching digital crowd. Do zoom lenses even have an optical signature? If they do, it must change with every silly mm of focal length.

Every person who owns a small sensor, field of view cropping digital camera that oohs and aahs over their "nifty 50" is really talking about an 80/1.8 or 1.4 lens. That focal length is certainly nice. I own 75mm & 85mm lenses. However, they are clueless when it comes to real 50mm lenses.

End of rant. Back to your regular programming.

A few weeks ago I was pondering the Hasselblad versus Pentax 6x7 dilemma and more than one person advised against using either without a tripod. That prompted today's showing off. 😀 😉 😎
 
There are plenty of myths and misstatements behind the "rules" about medium format. As earlier stated by Jamie, I think it goes back to the logic that if you choose MF for better quality it's then silly to handicap yourself by handholding. I'd suggest it's even sillier to hand-hold the 35mm which can certainly use any available help in improving results by limiting camera shake... also considering that in making the same size print, the smaller neg (and its faults) must be enlarged to a greater degree.

Bottom line, IMO: Hand-held MF gets better results than hand-held smaller formats. Tripod aids results, especially at slow shutter speeds, regardless of format. And, big solid tripod is a PIA to haul around especially on commercial aircraft or out hiking.

TLRs, and SLRs like Hasselblad, are clearly designed for convenient use hand-held at waist level. Put a prism finder on top and they get heavy and awkward. The Pentax 6x7 and its successors 67 and 67II are clearly designed for eye-level hand-held use. I have used my old non-MLU 6x7 for 33 years. I added a late-model 6x7 some years later, and now also have a pair of 67II. Obviously I'm very fond of the breed.

They're surprisingly easy to carry over a shoulder, as easy to use as a K1000 or LX for instance, and the output is impressively good. Not exactly a stealth camera, but then it doesn't seem to frighten the natives either! 🙂

061124-16big.jpg
 
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The Pentax really does have some limitations, I think, given the fact it has a focal plane shutter that can make a record skip from across the room. 🙂 But the Hasselblad is easily handheld. The issue with the Mamiya for me comes not from its weight but from the fact that it's not easy to use those focusing knobs -- you can't support the lens while focusing as you would with an ordinary helical-focusing lens. This is what makes the Mamiya TLRs a little hard to handle, especially when the bellows is extended.
 
The bottom line is that even down around 1/30 I still get an image from my Hassalblad that I'm happy with ... maybe not as sharp as it would be from a tripod but that's OK with me.

Nothing will match my Bronica RF645 in this area though ... it can provide genuine sharpness at 1/8 if you're careful.
 
I shoot everything from 35mm to 4x5 handheld, cant be bother with lugging around a tripod with all that weight already on you. You guys make me want to try the Pentax 67, and I'm struggling holding back buy a Hassy right now haha. And in line with what Keith said, my Mamiya 7 is very suitable for slow speed work, 1/8 is ok 60% of the time, good enough for me, its lens is slow anyway.
 
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