Mamiya M645 J

Wind it and you hear the difference right away. No motor, no crank-and-clunk of a film insert, just a long crisp lever stroke that cocks the focal-plane shutter and advances the film in one pull. The M645 J was Mamiya cutting fat off the original 645. They took the mid-seventies body, pulled out the self-timer and multiple-exposure capability and a few finder options, and sold a leaner 6x4.5 SLR to people who wanted the negative without the price. It is the bottom rung of the early 645 line, which is most of the reason it still sells.

The shutter is a focal-plane cloth-and-metal unit running from a full 8 seconds down to about 1/500, with flash sync at 1/60. That is the ceiling, and you build around it. You do not get the 1/1000 of the later 645 Super or Pro, so in bright sun with fast glass wide open you will run out of shutter before you run out of light. Plan for it. The fifteen-frame 6x4.5 negative on 120 is the reason you carry it anyway: nearly three times the area of 35mm, framed vertical by default, which suits portraits without rotating the whole camera.

Loading is straightforward. Film goes on a removable spool holder inside the back, the same way the original M645 loaded. None of the early 645 bodies took interchangeable mid-roll magazines, so do not buy the J expecting to swap color for black and white between frames. That trick did not arrive until the 645 Super in the mid-eighties. The finder is waist-level or prism depending on what you bolt on top, and through a clean ground glass it is bright and large enough to focus carefully. The body is dense aluminum and feels it. This is not a light thing to wear around your neck all day, but the weight gives you a steady platform.

Here is the part worth knowing before you commit. The J has no built-in meter. Metering on this body meant an optional CdS metering prism finder, and a J that lost its prism or never had one is a camera with no reading at all. Even a metered example is suspect now, because those CdS cells drift and fade with age, and most of these bodies are forty years on. This is the case for an incident or spot reading off the Zone Light Meter app: place your shadows where you want them, set the aperture and that 1/500 ceiling, and you have the meter the body never came with built in.

People cross-shop the M645 J against the Bronica ETR and the Pentax 645, and against its own metered siblings in the Mamiya line. It usually wins on price. The trade is the slower top shutter and the lack of any internal meter. For a student moving up from 35mm, or anyone who wants Mamiya 645 glass without paying for the later bodies, it is a cheap way into a big negative. Get the light seals replaced before you trust it, meter it yourself, and it will earn its keep.