What is available now and what is comming in the realm of medium format cameras--are they affordable-will the new smalller cameras with megappixel resolution make these irrelevant?

What is comming in the datat storage arena?

I ask these questions because things are moving so fast in this area that it's hard to know when to make a big investment.

-- Michael Isenberg (mdisen@epix.net), February 16, 1999

Answers

What's a medium format camera?

-- Benoit (foo@bar.com), February 17, 1999.

I confess to not having tracked the medium format products at all. (Benoit - "Medium Format" means film sizes of 6x6 cm, 6x7 cm, etc: Larger than 35mm, not as big as 4x5 view cameras.) I've heard good things about the Megavision product, and of course, Leaf has been around in that market forever. As to whether the 2 megapixel prosumer units make the MF products obsolete, it depends on whether you're only looking at resolution & color quality, or if the lenses, etc you have on your MF camera are an important part of the equation. (One thing though: The CCDs on the MF digital backs are always smaller than the film frame, so you'll have problems trying to get a true wide angle.

A good resource for the pro side of the business is an email mailing list run by Pro Rental (I think they're at www.prorental.com). Good Luck!

-- Dave Etchells (hotnews@imaging-resource.com), February 21, 1999.