An American Peyote Scribble

If you define a professional camera as one that actually says professional on it, then the Fuji GA645 was my first pro caliber photo tool.  When first released in the early 1990’s it went for something near to 1500 USD.  Now they are commonly found on eBay for 300-500 USD.  For professionals it means a camera with near point-and-shoot convince and killer tack-sharp medium format "pop".

It really is point-and-shoot.  You depress the shutter button half-way, it focuses, depress further, it takes the picture.  Given its geometry and size, the GA645 is easy to hold steady in low-light situations.  As I mainly do travel and landscape with this camera, I haven’t found the f/4 lens to be limiting.  The automatic focus however, can be a bit limiting.  Once in a while I get my negs or transparencies back and find the subject was out of focus and blurry.  For this reason, in general the GA645 is for static subjects.  The focus distance is displayed in the viewfinder, so you can always look there to make sure it’s about right.  It’s also possible to do manual focusing, which is nice because the focus was easily fooled when I traversed from Bettmerhorn to Eggishorn in intermittent fog cover.  Shooting into  the rising sun can also screw with the focus, and in such situation using manual focus set on infinity is quite helpful.  The meter is dead on and I haven’t had any exposure problems.

There are a few accessories to pick up if one is so inclined.  The most available being a flash bracket and flash.  Somehow I’ve acquired one bracket and two flashes, both of which I never actually use with my GA645.  I use the bracket with my Minolta 7D and the flashes are radio triggered off-camera.  Since neither is produced anymore, they can be had on the used market for either reasonable or absurd prices.  The one useful accessory I do use often is the tripod bracket.  It lets you mount the camera and rotate around the axis of the lens, perfectly balanced and engineered.  A macro attachment is also available, but doing macro work without being able to check the actual focus is bit hit and miss – and with medium format film, a tad expensive.

I mainly use my GA645 for travel and mountaineering.  When you consider the quality of the Fuji EBC lens with the 6×45 format and a pack volume equal to that of a DSLR, it’s really a killer camera to take into the mountains.  My GA645 has been all through Europe, Greece, the American Southwest, and is still taking kickass photos.  Mine got a tad wet when I got lost on the Oberaletschglacier in Switzerland and slept next to a rock, but the next day it was shooting fine.  The sand dunes of Colorado also did little against the durability of the GA645.

The general risk with buying old discontinued Pro technology is that, if it breaks – you’re screwed.  So it’s actually sort of cool that you can still send in the GA645 to Fuji for a tune-up.  About two years ago I picked up some surplus GA645 parts from eBay, including some shutters and body pieces, so aside from Fuji, I’m somewhat confident I could fix basic problems should they arise.

So getting down to Brass-Tax, in the age of digital sensors and megapixels the Fuji GA645 is a film camera which still rocks hardcore.  If you have some spar funds I highly recommend picking one up.