Fred, do you know when both Minolta and Konica made their last medium-format camera? You do know they do not have the human capital to do it today because the engineers that made those camera, and lets put the fact to the side that they were film cameras, have long since retired and most are not likely even living. This is an important factor.
Yes I know very well when Minolta and Konica made medium format cameras. I have a couple.
What on earth are you talking about?
Do you seriously think that the industrial giant Sony can't put together something to compete with the Mamiya DF?
"They don't have the human Capital". These are the men and women that put phase detection focus points right in the sensor.
Sony recently made a 1 billion dollar investment to increase their sensor production from 50,000 to 60,000.
They have all the resources needed to develop a camera of any format if they chose to do so.
They also happen to make theatrical 4k projection systems with lenses that project form their 3 inch imaging device.
Those are optics with an image circle of 80mm. They can produce large format lenses without any problem, not
to mention their ongoing relationship with the optical giant Zeiss.
I guess you never heard of the Contax 645? Yashica/Kyochera had never made a MF camera.
Their first model wa the Contax 645 and it remains on of the best MF bodies ever made even today.
It is utter bullshit that some kind of superior engineers are needed to design MF compared to smaller formats.