The H4's seem to be good cameras, well accepted by their users, but they are suffering from the economy and the D800 effect. At the rate the MF market is shrinking (my dealer says 50% of a couple of years ago) there will be no market to save if the product isn't slimmed down and speeded up a bit.
I don't wanna offend the dealers here, but existing users would happily pay the dealer $500 for a firmware update offering the features below which could be done with a firmware update, and a price cut of 30% across the range would have done more for sales than the expense of a "new model" release, the issues of old and new stock dealer inventory and spare parts, and production retooling, etc etc.
This relabelling of a firmware update is a case of marketing execs inventing an excuse to keep their jobs while minimizing R&D. More is being spent on the plastics -enlarged buttons- product shots, the web site, the prospectus and updated price lists than on engineering. If they really just want to save the marketing department, they might as well subcontract all the engineering to Fuji who have the necessary resources inhouse.
Now, a new sensor and Liveview and integrated GPS and Wifi, with a web server like the D4 to relay Liveview and images to an iPad and remove the computer tethering, yes that would make sense. At this point the novel features of the dSLRs are turning compelling when they used to be marginal.
Maybe it is time the MF guys got the message that we expect *them* to make cameras, with which we take pictures, and which *our customers* then use to market image and hype.
Edmund
It's actually a shame that the H5D got a bit buried under the awful Lunar thing. The H5D actually brings a bunch of small but oft requested features to the H line making it a worthy upgrade. Here's the list from Hasselblad:
More accurate focusing with True Focus II
New Immediate Focus Confirm
New print ready Jpeg files
New compressed multi-shot RAW files for faster and smoother workflow
New Camera Configurator
Larger and more ergonomic buttons
Larger, easier to read display style
Updated Graphics User Interface
More programmable buttons
New and improved weather sealing
New and faster processors implementing Hasselblad Image Processing Architecture
They also announced (again buried) the 24mm lens (pretty amazing for MF IMO) and the macro converter which apparently out-preforms extension tubes (I guess glass is sharper than air!)
Nick-T