Emotional?
My comments are based on intervews conducted by me as well as others with Christian Poulsen, the CEO of Hasselblad at Photokina in September. I am simply reporting what we were told. Nothing emotional about the information, other of course than my response to it.
And as for the Canon 1Ds being a closed system, that's a complete non-sequitar. A Canon system doesn't have interchangable sensors (backs), which the H1 and H2 do. I would agree that the H3D is like a Canon in that you buy the camera and sensor as a system. The H1 and H2 are more like a film based system which allows the photographer to choose their recording medium.
The situation is simply this. Hasselblad has huge debt, and can't make enough money to service that debt by selling just cameras and lenses. Their margins on digital backs are much higher, but they have to share that market on the H1 and H2 with Phase One, Leaf and Sinar / Jenoptic.
By making the H3 incompable with any back other than their own they want to force photographers to buy H backs. By creating lenses which reply on software to correct for optical abberations they lower production costs as well as lock out the competition (through patent protection).
It's a marketing strategy, that's all. And based on reaction by photographers and dealers so far, a highly flawed one. It's also thrown off course by the F&H Hy6, which likely blindsided Hasselblad. Soon there will be an alternative medium format system backed by all of its digital back competators. Without the Hy6 Hasselblad "might" have been able to force their program down our throats. With it, it seems to me to be a doomed strategy.
As someone who owns an H1, H2 and four H lenses this is of more than academic interest. So, if my tone seems emotional – well, it is. On the other hands, I am simply stating the facts as I know them. If anyone has definitive information to the contrary I'll be pleased to hear it, and publish it.
In fact, if anyone from Hasselblad reads this, I would be happy to provide an online forum for a debate on the matter.
Michael