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Thanks to all for responding. I use a Hasselblad for portraits and some landscapes but rely on my Maxxum 9 with 8 lenses for wildlife and most landscapes. I'm hesitant to make the digital transition because of rapid depreciation to get equivalent quality so I've been scanning negs. But the digital darkroom siren begs me to speed it up.
Don't blame you for being hesitant. The price of entry is madness given that the tech progresses SO fast at this point.
A year ago or so I was sorta where you were at and bought a G5 along with lens adapters for wide and tele. It was so unsatifactory that I sold it in two weeks and bought a 10D.
All the 10D did was make me wish I had a 1Ds because I shoot a lot of wide angle.
I've now taken the vertical/battery grip off the 10D, keep the 50mm f/1.4 on it almost all the time and consider it my fun/casual photography camera.
I'm quite happy to have gone back to film with the Contax 645 although not happy enough to go all the way back to 4 x 5 (I gotta sell that thing). I'll go digital again when digital makes sense.
Michael is fast with the gun when it comes to defending the price of heavy duty digital but he's just not thinking straight. Unless somebody brings the price of MF digital down out of the stratosphere it will cease to be very soon. Why professional photographers are willing to drop $33k for a back when a 1Ds does the same thing .... easier ... is beyond me. Something has to change fast or MF is as dead as the 454 Chevy.
The only photographers who actually NEED 22MP are landscape shooters who want to make truly large prints. Everybody else is throwing their money away. They rave and rave over on robgalbraith.com about how incredible the files are but the wiser ones over their remind them they don't need all those pixels for even a Vogue sized double page spread. Sure ... it's nice ... and exciting ... but it's not worth an extra $25k.
If nature and wildlife is your thing then wait for the next 1Ds and dump the Minolta. It's an incredible camera and the product is unbelievable. A year ago Michael was so in love with his Canon he started saying he was mostly into wildlife shooting 'these days'. I notice now he makes most of his images with his Contax and MF back and they are landscape images.
Or ... be happy with film. But regardless, forget about digicams and even the crop factor DSLRs. You will not be happy with anything less than the real thing.
Maybe Nikon will come out with a midrange priced full frame camera. Lucky you ... you can go either way.[/font]