On Wed, 3 Aug 2005, Herb Chong wrote:
according to CIPA, the Japanese camera industry body for statistics and some standards, Japanese manufacturers made 1,610 large and medium format bodies this year up to the end of June and shipped 3,575 bodies. the difference is made up of bodies sitting in warehouses waiting to be shipped since last year. i don't know how many Hasselblad and Rollei bodies shipped in the same time period, but i would seriously doubt that it was a lot more than these figures. that's the market that the 645D is headed into.
Thanks for this Herb. Can you dig out a figure that I think would be representative: would you know how many MZ-S were sold on the year before the *ist-D was launched? Same for MZ-3 and/or MZ-5n.
My theory is that a new, film 645 would be heading for that market you are mentioning, but the digital sensor changes things a lot. People suddenly find money for it.
Kostas
