Finally a competitor for the Mamiya DM and the Hasselblad range of medium format digital SLRs

http://www.pentax.jp/english/news/2010/201008.html

New 55 2.8 Lens for the 645 (medium) format:

http://www.pentax.jp/english/news/2010/201007.html

The physical sensor size and the focal length of the lens is a clear indication that the new MF D-SLR is a crop sensor (80mm is roughly the standard focal length for MF (50mm on 35mm))

I am actually pretty excited about this. If it is good enough and the price is right, I would be prepared to sell all my gear and buy one of these

Good stuff:

- 40mp
- 44mm by 33mm sensor size
- Full magnesium body
- Glass reinforcing over the LCD screen
- Dual card slots
- Dust reduction
- 98% FOV in viewfinder
- 3inch LCD @ 921,000 dots
- Side tripod mount


Could of been better stuff:

- Full Frame, or closer to it
- HDR button (kinda gay, don't really like HDR, unless it's done right)
- Only 14 bit files, where other MF D-SLR's have 16bit files
- No scroll wheel! (Maybe I shoot too much Canon lol)

This post was edited by lithfkn on Mar 10 2010 06:18pm

Damn, wish I could buy something like this!

Though if I were you I wouldn't jump so fast to sell all my gear to get one. I'd wait a bit and see what other people say about it.

What do you mean by 'scroll wheel'?

This post was edited by kratos on Mar 10 2010 07:05pm

This:

Oh, I've never seen anything like that. o.O

I only have the wheel like the 645D has, or so I would assume that wheel is similar to the one on my A300.

Haha, I ain't jumping ship just yet

I'm definitely going to read reviews, fiddle with it in shops and probably rent it for a day to see what it's like!

~10k is a lot to throw down on a camera, especially when it's a totally different brand/format.

Wow, only 10k? The others like Mamiya's models cost around 20k last time I looked.

Leica's S2P is nearly 28k.

This post was edited by kratos on Mar 10 2010 07:11pm

Yeah, only 10k

I'm pretty sure the DM22 by Mamiya is around the 10k mark. And the DM28 is around the 16-17k mark. The sensors are larger in the Mamiya though.

This post was edited by lithfkn on Mar 10 2010 07:12pm

Well relatively speaking it is only 10k.

Yeah true. The Blad gear is even more expensive

How so? You can buy certain 39MP backs for less than 20k.