[Silent Street]

Hasselblads are very commonly not actually purchased by professionals, but leased (commercial novated lease). There are commercial systems upward of $100,000 in use. This is very tax effective and less stressful than buying a system outright. Where I am there are advertising agencies using the 645Z and Hasselblad V series all on lease agreements (four years). It's nonsense to buy a camera outright and potter around in the vegie garden with it.

[TomB_tx]

Back in the 1960s an elderly woman came in the camera store where I worked saying her eyes weren't so good any more, and asked for help loading film. She pulled her Hassy out of a shopping bag. Later the shop owner bought it from her and gave her an instamatic. She was quite happy with it.

[Sperdynamite]

And the award for least thought out idea ever goes too....OP! Congratulations!

[zapp]

Hi there,

I have just received the British Journal of Photography weekly e-mail and one of the equipment previews relates to a new piece of Hasselblad equipment; namely a digital back for the older, V series of cameras (Swedish company goes 'back to the future' by releasing the CFV-50c CMOS digital back for its V System cameras)

Hopefully, Pentax will see the light and introduce a digital back for the 645. Personally, I think they missed a winner by not having done so. There are a lot of manual 654 cameras out there and I for one would love to use mine with a digital back. And the body already comes with a battery pack built-in. But now it just resides in a box, worth next to nothing!

I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Rex

Most people do not realize how crappy interchangeable backs can be on old cameras that do not allow for fine alignment in the focus plane. Fitting the sensor inside the camera makes many adjustments much easier - for better images. Interchangeable backs only make sense if you want to fit the back to other types of cameras. Pentax never had bellows camera or tilt/shift bellows cameras or a wide angle cameras in their line, so it would be pointless to make interchnageable backs to fit other brands.
Mamiya used to sell the camera as add on to their backs, so did PhaseOne.
Nobody cares about the price for the camera anymore. Nobody careas at all about old cameras. Even third party manufacturers like Leaf and Phase One don´t make interchnagebale backs for Pentax.

[shuttles12000]

I'd like to see a 6x6 equivalent. Imagine a big glass waist level viewfinder with built in shroud for easy daytime viewing.
Put it on a Rollei 6008 styled body, and attach Pentax lenses. 49MP in a 7000x7000 array. Yummy! It would be so easy to make it Mirror-less too