I feel safe in my conviction that I’ll never be using one of these Mamiya beasts, or its Leica, Leaf, or Hasselblad cousins. They’re just too… big. As medium-format digital photography becomes more capable and affordable, it eats away at the hearts of the last die-hard filmies (which I’m one of at times). After all, when you can hit the shutter and get a 160MB 16-bit TIFF instantly, the things you can say in favor of film start looking kind of desperate.
This big ol’ camera uses a Mamiya body and camera system with new AF and a big 3.5″ screen they claim is the biggest in the industry (really?). The Leaf digital back is big and allows for a nice wide 7.2 micron pixel size. It costs $15,000, which is totally reasonable for pro photography, and although the megapixel race is leading Canon and Nikon to catch up with the image size, their sensor size limits the clarity of the photos.