Great camera; lousy name
Written: Feb 04 '00 (Updated Mar 19 '00)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Rangefinder autofocus works excellently
Cons: Unlike SLRs, viewfinder always sharp; you take AF on faith
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| frank_vanriper's Full Review: Fuji GA645Zi Rangefinder Camera |
FUJI GA645Zi: Great Camera; Dumb Name
Product Review
By Frank Van Riper
Professional photographer, author and photography columnist of The Washington Post
Whoever came up with the name for this remarkably user-friendly medium format camera should be shot. On the other hand, the team that designed this camera should have gotten two weeks off with pay and rice wine allowance at a pricey Japanese country club.
To anyone looking to make the jump from 35mm to medium format, this may be the easiest bridge between the two camps. Though not without its flaws (with the possible exception of the nearly perfect Nikon F5, no such perfect camera exists) the GA645Zi is a wonderful camera that, most important, is a hell of a lot of fun to use. The fact that it comes with a superb zoom lens is photographic icing on the cake.
In short—a great camera…with a truly stupid name.
Am I making too much of this? I don’t think so. Quick: tell me the name of the camera without looking at the top of this article. Can’t remember it, right? You want to know two of the many reasons the Nikon F5 is a great camera? The “F” and the “5.”
But I digress.
Beautifully designed (it’s a handsome thing to look at) and intelligently engineered (for once it appeared the design team included a real live photographer), the GA645Zi already has created its own buzz in the industry for the number of firsts it offers to consumers.
For example:
(*) ZOOM AUTOFOCUS: The GA645Zi—I think I’ll just call it the “Zi” for short—features a fixed 55mm-90mm zoom lens (corresponding roughly to a 34mm-56mm zoom in 35mm.) A so-called hybrid autofocus system featuring infrared as well as passive systems, lets the camera automatically select the best focusing method for differing lighting conditions. My own tests showed the camera performing very well, in both focusing and all-important image sharpness—a function of the camera’s first-rate optics.
When a colleague of mine—who, like me, is a professional photographer--tested the Zi’s autofocus system, it worked flawlessly. In fact, he said, “I couldn’t fool it.” There is a manual override for focusing but frankly I didn’t use it. It’s not true rangefinder focusing; rather, it is a way to set focus from infinity down to one meter in various calibrated steps.
(*) AUTO-LOADING AND FILM ADVANCE: Once, a standard test for a potential assistant was how quickly he or she could load the ingeniously designed, but tough to master, Hasselblad film magazine. No such problem with the Fuji Zi. This is the first medium format camera that autoloads paper-backed 120 or 220 medium format film with the ease of 35mm. Not only that, a buzzer sounds when you are on your last frame.
Offering a 6-by-4.5 centimeter image area (hence the “645” in its long name), the Zi offers what many consider to be the “perfect” film format: rectangular, to allow for different composition in horizontal or vertical, and nearly three times the area of a 35mm frame. This format, somewhat smaller than traditional 6x6-centimeter square, means that the Zi offers 16 (rather than the usual 12) frames in 120 film and 32 exposures (as opposed to 24) in 220 film.
Other less dramatic, though still useful, features of the Zi include a built-in bar code scanner that reads film speeds (common in 35mm but almost unheard of in medium format), and an automatic pressure plate change for 120 and 220 films. The bar-code system initially worked only on Fuji films, though a Fuji spokesman said he anticipated other manufacturers will add the encoding information to their medium format products as well.
There also is a built-in pop-up flash and three modes of exposure control (program, aperture priority and manual,) as well as an ingenious imprinting system that lets you optically record date, time and exposure data outside the image area—a great feature if, like me, you hate imprinting on your photos.
From the above, it is apparent that Fuji wanted a product that incorporated the best automated features of 35mm. It has succeeded handsomely, and initial strong sales of the Zi—which lists at a healthy $2200—confirms that Fuji has once again come up with a winner. [Even more so, since at this writing—January, 2000--Fuji also is offering the camera with an attractive promotion. See dealer for details.]
In fact, about the only criticisn I have of the camera, aside from its unfortunate name, is of its unique autofocus system. And it’s really not a criticism, more an observation.
In true rangefinder systems, like that of the Leica M cameras, or in the medium format Mamiya 6 and 7, manual focus is achieved by matching overlapping rangefinder images in the camera’s viewfinder. Likewise, in autofocus single lens reflex cameras, one can see that the image is in focus as it snaps quickly from fuzzy into sharp. In each case, you can be certain of sharp focus because you have visual confirmation. But in Fuji’s hybrid system, the viewfinder is always sharp, and only the familiar whirr-zitt of the AF activation as you lightly press the shutter release lets you know it is working.
I suspect, however, given the excellence of this camera’s autofocus technology, that I would grow less apprehensive about this arrangement with each roll of film I shot.
[Check out Frank Van Riper's latest book: Down East Maine/A World Apart.]
END
Recommended:
Yes
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frank_vanriper
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Member: Frank Van Riper
Location: Washington, DC
Reviews written: 15
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