Mamiya offers sub-$10,000 medium-format digicam
Mamiya, along with competitors such as Pentax and Hasselblad, is working to bring the digital revolution to the higher-end, medium-format camera industry. On Friday, the company plans to announce a $9,999 technology bundle for a 22-megapixel camera.
Mamiya's ZD Back and 645AFD II camera
(Credit: Mamiya)The bundle includes Mamiya's 645AFD II camera, the 22-megapixel ZD Back and the 80mm f/2.8 AF lens, which is equivalent to a 50mm lens in terms of field of view of a more ordinary 35mm camera.
Medium-format cameras often use separate interchangeable "backs" that in the old days housed film but now house an image sensor. The new Mamiya ZD Back alone costs $6,999, and purchased that way or with the camera bundle it includes a copy of Adobe's Photoshop Lightroom software for raw image processing. It can shoot 1.5 frames per second, uses a 14-bit sensor that generates 12-bit images, and supports Compact Flash and SD cards.
Shelling out $10,000 for a camera may sound like a lot, but that's a notch cheaper than digital Hasselblad models that cost north of $30,000. These babies are geared for serious pros.
The ZD Back uses a CCD (charge-coupled device) image sensor measuring 48mm by 36mm. That's twice the size of an ordinary 35mm film frame, but considerably smaller than the 60mm-by-45mm film size 645AFD II can also accept.
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
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