The Pentax 67 has to be one of the most drooled over medium format SLR cameras ever made. For great reasons too! The Pentax 67 is a film SLR that is more or less designed to be portable and shot handheld by fashion photographers and portrait photographers. For many years it was well regarded and even today, there is some fantastic work that is often done with the camera. Between this, the Pentax 67 II and the Mamiya RB67/RZ67, lots of photographers really have a tough choice figuring out what they want.

The truth is that it really depends on your style and it also really depends on how good you are at being able to create photos.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Fairly portable vs the Mamiya system

Heavy

Good lineup of lenses

Good selection of diopters that can help

Various finders

Great feel in the hand

Depth of field preview with the lenses

Leaf shutter lenses available for a fast flash sync.

Cons

Changing the focusing screen to get a brighter one could be difficult

1/30th flash sync

Reloading can be a major pain and sometimes needs to be done carefully

Gear Used

We tested the Pentax 67 with the Interfit Honey Badger/softbox, Kodak Portra 160, Lomography Color Negative 400, Lomography Earl Grey 100, Pentax 45mm f4, Pentax 105mm f2.4, and Fujifilm Superia 100 that was expired for years.

A big thanks to Lomography who developed and scanned the film for us.

Tech Specs

Just head over to Camerapedia. You’re much better off getting the details about this camera there.

Ergonomics

The Pentax 67 is a big, burly film SLR camera. It may appear small in these images, but it only is comparatively so to a Mamiya system. This camera is pretty much Fujifilm GFX 50S sized. So when a lens isn’t attached, the massive mirror is exposed.

On the side of the Pentax 67 is how you detach the lenses using the little sliding button under the two PC sync ports. When you’re using these ports, be sure to hold the cord in.

Up top we can spot the Pentaprism in addition to the controls. The shutter speeds are on the left (it goes up to 1/1,000) and on the right is the film advance and the shutter release.

The bottom of the Pentax 67 has these two little buttons, sort of. If you push them in and turn one way they’ll loosen and let you change the film spool. When twisted the other way, they’ll tighten.

The back of the Pentax 67 has a film door, obviously. Plus there’s a big viewfinder. This one has a -2 diopter attached because, well, I’m still pretty blind. Opening the back of the camera requires you to pull a lever and then physically try to open the back of the camera vs the back simply just popping open. Perhaps that was designed to prevent mistakes from happening.

Build Quality

This configuration of the Pentax 67 has no electronics. So I didn’t mind taking it out into the rain at all. In fact, I had fun with it in the rain. The Pentax 67 is made of a whole lot of metal and absolutely nothing about this camera feels cheap. Instead, it feels like a serious camera meant to do work.

Ease of Use

Shooting, advancing the film and changing the settings are all pretty simple. If you have the metered prism you can use that but otherwise you should rely on a handheld light meter. My only problem with this camera came with loading the film. Sometimes you need to carefully feel the advance spool lest the little pressure plate that holds the film together presses too hard.

When film isn’t in the camera, you need to find a way to trick the camera into thinking that there is film inside so that you can fire the shutter. To do this you’ll need to open the back, press down on the film counter, twist it to advance it and then close the film door back. It’s a pain but it works out for the best in the end.

Focusing

Focusing with the Pentax 67 is pretty standard and done manually. There are different finders and focusing screens for the Pentax 67 but changing the screens is difficult vs the Pentax 67 II. Additionally, there are a number of different diopters for the Pentax 67. If you’re...