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COLOGNE, Germany--For those who find Hasselblad's 60-megapixel H4D-60 camera a little too confining, the company plans to sell a 200-megapixel model in the first quarter of 2011.

The Copenhagen-based medium-format camera maker announced the product today at the Photokina imaging show here. Interestingly, it uses the same camera body as its current H4D-50MS, which will be upgradable, said Peter Stig-Nielsen, director of product development.

However, even in the rarefied air of the medium-format market, where image sensors are very large and very expensive, the 200-megapixel "extended multishot" technology won't appeal to everyone: each shot will take about 30 seconds to capture, restricting the camera to stationary subjects such as cars, watches, and jewelry.

That's because of the design of the Hasselblad multishot-series cameras such as the H4D-50MS. The current model uses tiny piezoelectric motors to shift the sensor a very small amount to combine two shots into one higher-quality image.

"We are now building it into a real product that's going to hit the market in the first quarter of next year," Stig-Nielsen said. "It is going to be an extension of the current H4D-50 multishot."

Most digital cameras capture color with a checkerboard of color filters called a Bayer pattern over image sensor pixels; each pixel captures only red, green, or blue color information. The multishot technology shifts the sensor so the same pixel can capture each of the colors, ridding the camera of the need to mathematically infer the missing values of red, green, and blue. … Read more

Most folks think carefully before spending $300 on a new camera. I'm more serious about photography, but I still swallowed hard before buying an SLR costing about 10 times that.

But brace yourself for even more sticker shock, because there are some professionals who spend more than an order of magnitude beyond what I did. This is the domain of medium-format digital cameras, whose sensors have roughly twice the surface area of a high-end SLR for maximum image quality.

Medium-format gear is beyond my means but not beyond my curiosity, so I was pleased with an offer to try one out. In this case, it was Phase One's top-of-the line products--the 645AF and newer 645DF cameras, the P65+ image sensor back that can be attached, and a handful of lenses.

Such gear appeals chiefly to fashion and commercial photographers, the types who produce full-page ads of glamorous models and diamond-encrusted watches. Lacking the gaggle of assistants, spacious studio, and forest of flash equipment common in this realm, I'm not equipped to put a modern medium-format camera through its full paces. But I'm not a bad or inexperienced photographer, so for those who've wondered what a medium-format machine is like, here are my impressions.

So what do I think of a camera with this price tag? … Read more

The medium-format market is mostly an obscure niche of the digital-camera industry. Prices are high, customers must have lavish budgets, and optics and sensor technology is different from the SLR realm.

Heck, most people hadn't heard of the brand names involved. Until now: This time it's Pentax that announced its entry into the market with a product called the 645D.

It's not going to rewrite the rules of photography. It'll be available only in Japan, at least for starters when it ships in May, it needs its own lenses, and it costs 850,000 yen--about $9,200. But there are enough interesting developments here that it's worth noting.

Medium-format cameras have been niche items for years, distinguished from SLRs chiefly by their larger of a film frame. Now that digital sensors are in and film is out, though, the comparative costs of medium-format cameras have surged, because making a large sensor is a lot more expensive than making a smaller one. Pentax's model uses a 40-megapixel Kodak sensor measuring 44x33mm, larger than a "full-frame" SLR that uses the 36x24mm frame size of 35mm film and a lot larger than the sensors in mainstream digital SLRs.

To go a bit beyond the press release, I recommend reading Luminous Landscape's interview with Pentax's Yasuyuki Maekawa about the 645D. It triggered a number of thoughts about medium format and Pentax's effort. … Read more

Epson is replacing its Stylus Pro 3800 medium format (17x22) printer with the 3880, rolling its latest set of technologies down the product line from the Stylus Pro 4880, as well as introducing a new version of its screening architecture.

The 3880 is getting the 8-color UltraChrome K3 Vivid Magenta ink set that's already been incorporated in most of Epson's other pro graphics printers, plus the same ink-repellent coating on the printhead to minimize nozzle blockages. With this model, Epson introduces Accuphoto HD2, an update to its screening technology with look-up tables co-developed with RIT; the new LUTs … Read more

A new tremor on Thursday traversed a photography world already shaken up by the arrival of digital technology as Phase One, a Copenhagen-based company that caters to professional photographers, announced a plan to acquire some high-end photography assets from Eastman Kodak.

To nobody's surprise, Kodak wound down its 35mm Kodachrome film product on Monday. In the rarefied realm of medium-format photography, where film sizes are much larger, and the demand for quality is much higher, the change to the digital era has been equally jarring.

Phase One, though, was digital from the outset, and it's become a force … Read more

Medium-format digital cameras, which have larger sensors and higher price tags than even high-end SLRs, didn't fare so well in earlier tests of sensor quality by measurement firm DxO Labs, but Phase One's newly tested top-end technology has risen to the top of the DxOMark Sensor test.

Phase One's 60-megapixel P65+ camera scored 89.1 on the test, edging out the Nikon D3X, which scored 88, according to data released Thursday. In addition, the 51.7-megapixel Hasselblad H3DII 50, an older model than Phase One's, scored 78.2. Click here to compare the two models and Nikon's D3X.

The DxOMark sensor test measures a camera sensor's dynamic range, color depth, and low-light performance. DxO Labs cautions that differences of less than 5 points aren't really distinguishable, and of course many other factors including price, lens quality, autofocus, and resolution factor into overall camera quality.

The P65+ features the best color performance yet, but DxO Labs said its comparatively good performance in low-light conditions helped it carry the day. … Read more

Phase One, a Copenhagen-based maker of professional-grade digital camera technology, has invested in and assumed some control over Japanese camera maker Mamiya.

Phase One and Mamiya already had a partnership for one medium-format camera through a partnership begun in 2006, but now the alliance is much tighter, with Phase One in the driver's seat for some key areas, Phase One said Wednesday.

"Phase One is making a significant financial investment in Mamiya Digital Imaging, thus becoming a major shareholder in the company behind the Mamiya brand of medium-format cameras and lenses," Phase One said in a statement. &… Read more

Casual home users might not need something like this, but the business world will definitely want the new NAS server from D-Link.

Last week, the company announced its all-new Stack DSN-1100 iSCSI SAN Array NAS server, which offers up to 7.5TB of storage and 425MBps of bandwidth. It achieves this high throughput speed thanks to IEEE 802.3ad Link Aggregate Groups technology that combines the speeds of the device's four Gigabit Ethernet ports.

The NAS server include five bays, each of which can take a 3.5-inch SATA (or SATA-II) hard drive of up to 1.5TB. The … Read more

It looks like Canon and Nikon weren't blowing smoke when they said their high-end SLRs cameras will compete with medium-format digital cameras used almost exclusively by professionals.

Given the image quality advantages that SLRs with larger "full-frame" sensors have over mainstream and much less expensive models with smaller processors, one might have expected another quantum leap from costly high-end medium-format digital cameras with sensors twice the area of top-end SLRs. Not so, according to new DxOMark Sensor test results set for release Tuesday by French test and measurement firm DxO Labs.

The company tested image sensors from several medium-format cameras--the Mamiya ZD Back, Leaf Aptus 75S, Hasselblad H3DII 39, and Phase One P45+. These are the sorts of cameras used by fashion photographers and others who need lush tones, fine detail, and lots of megapixels to handle big photos such as magazine spreads.

But none outperformed the Nikon D3X SLR, whose score of 88 gives it the current top rank on DxO's sensor tests. … Read more