There aren’t many medium format point and shoot cameras out there, so when I heard about the Fujifilm GA645 Pro I went down a rabbit hole trying to figure out if it was worth checking out. I already had my film slr and a Hasselblad h1 for photographing clients but I was looking for something lightweight that took medium format film to take on travels or to toss in my bag. I was really hoping for something simple with auto capabilities that I could just shoot without thinking while spending time with my family. I found one in Japan on Ebay that was near mint condition and I bought it.

-side bar- I buy almost all my film cameras from Japan. They tend to be in great shape and the descriptions are very informative. I’ve had good luck with sellers and usually get the cameras within a week (sometimes as soon as 3 days). -side bar done-

I got the camera right before some extended family came to visit last summer and I got to work testing it out. My favorite thing about the camera is it’s pretty easy to load, and it really is basically a point and shoot camera. It does have manual mode but since I was looking for something simple to use on the go I mostly kept it in auto. I did use the exposure compensation for backlit images and that worked out pretty well. It has a built in timer and flash which is nice, and I love that you can adjust the ISO if you want to.

My only complaint with this camera is the autofocus is pretty slow, and sometimes it misses focus. It’s not horrible but if you’re trying to shoot something moving even remotely quickly there’s a chance it’ll miss focus. One other thing I’d mention is that when you’re holding the camera as you usually hold a camera, the resulting image is vertical instead of horizontal. I actually really love this but just know if you want horizontal images you’ll have to hold the camera vertically, ha!

The bad news is one of the dogs knocked the camera over onto the floor and now it jams up near the end of a roll, whomp whomp. That being said, I still use it and love it, it’s a fun camera to shoot around town!

Have questions? I’d be happy to answer them in the comments! Want to book a session? Click here!