I can’t stress enough how good for a medium format film camera this AF system is. Don’t get me wrong I am not saying manual focusing is bad as I shoot manual with the 105mm, but having a great AF system if needed is paramount. The Pentax 645n AF system made the Mamiya’s look silly, you might as well shoot in manual focus with the Mamiya. It snapped into focus immediately and rarely had to “search” for the point of focus. The first thing I noticed with the AF lens on the Pentax was how vastly better the AF system was.

I never had any problems with it, but once I took a shot with the Pentax I knew right away how much better the Pentax was. We actually still have it as a backup, mainly because it was my first medium format camera and I have a little sentimental attachment to it, but I haven’t shot it since we got the Pentax bodies. Also, I am not a techie or a data nerd so bare with me if this is put forth in a more simplistic point of view.ġ. So this will be mainly comparing the Mamiya 645af and the Pentax 645n. The only other medium format camera I have shot is the Contax but it was only a couple times so I don’t feel that I have shot with it enough to make a valid comparison between the two. It was more recently that we bought two Pentax 645n bodies along with the Pentax FA 75mm 2.8 and the Pentax 67 105mm 2.4. I know this is a Pentax 645n review, but the Mamiya was our first medium format film camera, which we shot for a couple years and it has helped us see what the Pentax 645n offers compared to it. We thought we would try film out and see what happens, so we bought a Mamiya 645 AF. We had always loved the film photography of some of the industries best, such as Jose Villa, Jen Huang, Elizabeth Messina, and Jonathan Canlas to name a few. Back in 2012 Ashley and I decided that we wanted to get into the world of medium format film.

Contax 645 vs mamiya 645