It seems clear that MF will maintain an advantage in sensor resolution, would it only be because Sony will carefully ensure that their most expensive sensor remain attractive to sell in sufficient quantities.
Cheers,
Bernard
MF is clearly going mainstream now with a bunch of cameras under $10K, and Fuji who are a big brand in Japan are backing it.
To secure the resolution advantage in the light of the next batch of 70-80 Mp 35 mm systems, Fuji, Hassy, Pentax could all ship fullframe MF 150MP at $10K today if they wanted to, and make a solid profit. But they'd have to write off their brand new lens systems. Sony would be really happy to sell them all the sensors as they would amortize the production over 3 years of large volume sales, exactly as happened with the now obsolete 50Mp 44x33 sensor. Sony Semiconductor Solutions's parent company Sony (SNE) would be making substantially more profit on one 150MP sensor than on an A7 body, or worse a Z7 sensor, so what do they care? But if the majority of existing customers eg. Hassy and Fuji get killed by someone who leapfrogs, corporate management may not like it.
Actually,
Pentax would have an immediate evolution to fullframe MF as a reasonable choice,as the camera design costs are low with drop-in sensors, and tooling costs are really low with no mirror box to source and calibrate and
the current Pentax MF dSLR product is now clinically dead .
Ricoh is large enough to be able to afford this sort of "practical joke" on their competition, especially since the 645Z seems to have sold ok, so their MF division might get the quarter for another game of pinball. So my guess is they will let Hassy and Fuji have their day in the sun,
wait until Fuji's geeky japanese customers start to understand that they are paying a lot for something that is barely better than 35mm, and then have a serious debate whether to launch, and attempt a serious negotiation with Sony. An announcement might come in about a year when the new 60 or 70 MP 35mm sensors launch, and
when the Internet is full of pixel peeping of the Hassy and Fuji 100MP vs the 70MP Sony and Nikon top end systems with $6K Otus-class glass. Because Ricoh is a Sony customer, Ricoh have access to the Sony 35mm chip roadmap and so
Pentax marketing already know today exactly when Fuji and Hassy's 100MP systems will turn old.
Of course everything there is true also about
Leica, who have their obsolescing Leica S system, and a need to keep their Sinar division supplied with chips for backs. They may face technical difficulties in obtaining adequate yields for an independently fabricated high-resolution fullframe chip, and BSI seems almost a necessity. Unless some generous third party heavily subsidises an independent chip supplier (eg. for remote sensing applications), and makes the product freely available, I would expect Leica and above all Sinar to fall into the Sony camp quite soon for their large format chips.
I think a debate over imaginary cameras is as much fun as a debate about second card slots, no?
Edmund
