As much as I would love to see an MF sensor in that price range, I just don't think it's feasible. Take a look at how much the competition's cameras cost, and while there's no doubt they make money off them I don't think the price could be knocked down 80% and still remain viable.

The D700 is around $2200 or so now street price, and the closest MF rig I can find to what I imagine Pentax could come up with would be the Mamiya (now there's a company I admire for doing their own thing and coming up with some truly classic cameras) DL28. Which is not cheap.
Now if they'd come up with a MF digital camera with good high ISO, *that* would be something exciting. The current ones are pretty much designed for tripod/studio work. How about a 20-25MP medium format sensor with optional pixel binning (to take it down to half res but with higher sensitivity) and ISO 25,600+ capabilities? Now we're talking!
brian s.: I did the same thing a while back, and look where it got me...
edit: by the way, Ken Rockwell (of all people) made a good point recently. When manufacturers state resolution it's always in megapixels making the jump from 10MP to 15MP seem much bigger than it really is (50% more pixels but nowhere near as much gain in horizontal/vertical res), but when they talk about sensor size it's alway by "crop factor" making a 1.5x crop factor not seem so bad when the sensor is literally HALF the size...
Last edited by pingflood; 01-19-2009 at 01:46 PM.