I had a chat with an engineer that among other things works in industrial imaging and 3D printing.
(they use very high resolution machine vision to analyze their 3D printing machine work... machines that make 3 dimentional prototypes).
He was up in the Santa Monica Mountains with his Fuji 6x17. We hit it off and I told him about me still shooting with the Fuji gx680.
We were here:
Cell phone... I was scouting and walking the dog.
He told me that a company is considering coming out with a digital back,
something that they were not interested
in doing without CMOS and live view. He said it was from a company that is invested in machine vision cameras.
It would be to cover high speed cropped video and very high res still in non crop in the same device.
A capture back for industrial usage and most likely broader photographic use.
I asked him what about the lenses.... he said the company already makes lenses of various formats.
Well I think I asked a few to many questions and he would not name the company.
So who could this be?
Likely candidates could be Fuji or Pentax.
Both make lenses in various formats as well as have a presence in industrial machine vision.
Also both Fuji and Pentax don't make FF 35mm DSLRs so they would not be hurting another product line, what with FF
making inroads into what much of MFD is used for.
I'm guessing Pentax. They have the capability to make inexpensive MFD and make/made lenses from compacts upto
6x7. The 6x7 lenses could be refreshed as tilt shift lenses for 645 sensor. Adapters for existing 6x7 and 6x6 lenses
could help transition into the format, especially for those with somewhat of a budget issue.
Ricoh, the owner of Pentax has a large industrial machine vision division.. specialized lenses and cameras, but low res.
The Pentax acquisition seems like a good path to obtain higher res know how, both optical and capture
as well as a consumer market.
Well I guess it's any one's guess....
Also Pentax did show a FF 35mm DSLR a while back and then canned it, but may be showing a new one soon.