Pentax 645N Lenses

The Pentax press release that came out regarding the Pentax 645 Digital being shown at PMA caused me to start thinking about what lenses I am interested in for the 645 Digital. I started looking through the lineup and a few choices came to mind.

Of course, Pentax has a nice lineup of 645 prime lenses. While I really like prime lenses, it is hard to beat a few zoom lenses for versatility. Because of this, I am going to concentrate primarily on zoom lenses to begin with.

Pentax makes several autofocus zoom lenses for the 645N series. These include the FA645 33-55mm f/4.5, FA645 45-85mm f/4.5, FA645 55-110mm f/5.6, FA645 80-160mm f/4.5, and FA645 150-300mm f/5.6. It seems as though the 645 Digital will have a smaller than 6cm x 4.5cm sensor which means that lenses will be effectively slightly longer in focal length as compared to using film. Because of this, the wider you can get, the better. That means the first lens on my list is the FA645 33-55mm f/4.5 lens. Another slightly longer lens is needed as well and to avoid overlap, I would choose the FA645 55-110mm f/5.6 lens. Both of these lenses are very compact and fairly easy to carry around. Once you get up to the FA645 80-160mm f/4.5 and FA645 150-300mm f/5.6 lenses, everything gets bigger and heavier.

More than likely, my initial kit will consist of the 645 Digital with D FA645 55mm f/2.8 lens along with the FA645 33-55mm f/4.5 and FA645 55-110mm f/5.6 lenses. Unfortunately, there is still some time to wait before the 645 Digital becomes available but I am going to start dreaming now. We may be surprised by some more lenses for the 645 that are optimized for digital coming up on the horizon but only time will tell. I am looking forward to the 645 Digital whatever the wait.