HD PENTAX-D FA645 MACRO 90mmF2.8ED AW SR – Mini Review

HD PENTAX-D FA645 MACRO 90mmF2.8ED AW SR

I was lucky enough to test out a prototype of the lens a couple of months ago. It’s big, heavy, and a lot of money. It’s also tack sharp, and with shake reduction built in, quite possibly the perfect travel lens for a 645D shooter. As I have an upcoming trip that would be ideally suited to this lens, I bought one last week, and have been using it both in and out of the studio.

Here’s another image of Rie in the field of cosmos flowers. Camera settings were 1/200 f4.5 ISO400  I shot the image handheld. The bokeh in the background looks great and the sharpness of the image is excellent.

HD PENTAX-D FA645 MACRO 90mmF2.8ED AW SR

When you open the image up at 100% you can see how I took the photo by looking in her eye. There’s me in the middle holding the camera. To my right is the farmer who wandered past and was press-ganged into holding a reflector. My friend, Shawn Miller, is standing just out of shot. He’s holding a Lastolite diffusion panel, the bottom of which is just visible on the left side of her iris.  Behind me is Shawn’s Nissan Terrano and behind that is my little Suzuki Swift. You can even see that I’m standing on the banking giving me a little height so that I keep the flowers rather than the sky in the background behind the model.

HD PENTAX-D FA645 MACRO 90mmF2.8ED AW SR – Image Crop

The autofocus on the camera is slow compared to a 35mm camera, but this is to be expected.  Also the advantage of the super sharp high definition optics will only be noticeable if you eliminate all other weak links in the image quality chain. A bad photo taken with an expensive camera and an expensive lens, is just a bad photograph in high definition.  However, if you hit that sweet spot and get everything right, the images this camera and lens combination are capable of are stunning.

Now on sale in Japan at Amazon Japan for ￥ 349,783
Available for pre-order in the States through B&H for $4,499.95