Sorry Christopher, but this is simply nonsense.
But the reality is that thousands of pros purchase medium format digital backs because they do deliver what is expected and required,
Michael,
Yes, but that depends on genre and market and quite honestly a lot of "pros" find it easier to invest in cameras than new work, or better put work in a new way that might be uncomfortable.
There might be 10,000 medium format users but for money making professionals their are about 50,000 whose medium format cameras sit on the shelf in 2009 and bought a 5d2. (probably 50% of them live in Brooklyn and Silverlake).
Someone here mentioned workflow and hit the nail on the head.
Workflow is king.
On set and in post production, the dslr rules, the specialty cameras are just slow and cumbersome. They're fine for the amateur but in commerce and editorial the numbers have been ramped up so far, so fast that you'd have to be on a masochist to use anything that slows you down.
All this talk about the "camera" is nice but nostalgic. Today the camera is about 1/4 of the equation, what we do in front of the camera, in front of the client and after the shoot is what drives our art and our business.
If you shoot for a living, you have to turn a profit, be efficient, get it done and go on to the next sessions, gig, city, country.
It's all about time. Time on set, time management, time to deliver.
You have to have files that fit on portable drives and can be backed up on the fly. You have to have software that is dead stable and will run on laptops, Imacs and towers and do it without fail. You have to have a virtually universal file format that can go to multiple retouchers and you have to have a camera that just makes all of this easy (easier), which means the ability to move iso, see the image on an in camera lcd screen, focus through live view (quickly) and a system that is adaptable to video.
You have to be able to travel with one camera case, not 4 and if both bodies go down, be able to walk into any store from Delhi to Little Rock and buy a camera body so you can keep working.
2009 proved it was a no excuse world. If your in the communications/commercial arts business and turned a profit in 2009 you worked fast, probably for tighter budgets and produced no excuses content. Nothing can get in the way.
2009 put the same pressure on everyone and nobody escaped easily. The rich and famous down to the beginning student all saw the crunch and most of them reached for the appropriate tool.
I own a lot of equipment, in multiple studios and cities and can tell you that the most profitable equipment I own are the Canons, (well next to my laptop I do business on).
These forums can compare the difference between a 24tse and a 35mm rodenstock until the lcd's dim out on their Eizos, but at the end of the day it's not about the camera, it's what you shoot with the camera or better put what camera doesn't get in your way of shooting.
They're is no nostalgia left in the industry, at least not with digital. A pentax is not a pentax it's a computer with a lens, a "film" format is a 24" computer screen and today the most adaptable systems are the ones that will continue. The others will be marginalized.
This will be more true in 2010 than 2009. 2009 shook a lot of people and made them run lean, 2010 will see an increase in business, but the demands to produce more content, faster, better, easier even more intense.
I wouldn't have dreamed to try to produce the level and quality of work I did this year with slow cameras.
It's all about speed AND quality with no excuse and just as the news cycle has changed from 24 hours to 4 minutes, the advertising cycle has changed from 3 weeks to 3 days, sometimes 3 hours.
It also about allocating your resources where it has the most effect. $40,000 in personal work, building a video reel, broadening your repertoire, has a lot more positive effect on your business than any piece of camera equipment.
There is no going back and not just for the specialty camera makers also Canon and Nikon. Canon shook everyone with a 22mpx $3,500 still camera that shot video (probably surprised themselves) and if you don't believe me look at the price of last years $7,000 1ds3's, because they're going for 1/2 the price today and sitting on shelves.
This one is a no brainer. The 5d2 does more, costs less, so it sells more, is used more often.
IMO
JR