Mamiya have announced that from September their cameras will be made by Cosmo Digital Imaging Company, Ltd. There is no mention of a sale from Mamiya though.

after all that big build up to their fancy new big MP medium format digital tech too....

It wasn’t an issue for me because of the price range. But I’m glad I didn’t buy one.

maybe they didnt fancy their chances pitching their new cam against Canon's next beasty weighing in at half the price :-)

It seems that the rapidly dropping price of used 22meg medium format backs has hurt sales of the ZD.

Just read a review of the new ZD cam in Amateur Photographer magazine and I was surprised that it faired quite poorly indeed. Poor levels of colour noise (the noise at ISO 400 was considerably worse than an EOS 1DS Mark II at ISO 1600) and a limited ISO range coupled with questionable build quality and firmware issues seams to be spoiling the party. Mamiya offer a low pass filter to help alleviate colour noise and aberrations but they will charge you $2,500 extra for a filter that is in essence a botched work around to compensate for a failing in the sensor over and above the $15,000 asking price for the camera body itself. Moves like that don’t instil any kind of consumer confidence in their product. Maybe they should have gone the Nikon technical support route with the D200 and either given out the sensor for free or told their customers to run out only small prints or squint at them if they are large.

Lol, 20D worth even more now;-)

In theory the lack of the filter on the ZD was supposed to give you sharper images. You could slip the filter in to control noise at high iso settings. However all the sample shots I saw looked quite soft to me. I didn’t realise the filter was a very expensive optional extra, for the asking price you would expect to get a complete camera.

They really seamed to have made a gaff with that - if you add the filter and an equally expensive mamiya lens to the kit you could buy a PhaseOne 30MP camera back, body & lens bundle for the same money or since it was outgunned by its 39MP brother, a Hasselblad H2D 22MP - both of which are true medium format digital cameras unlike the trick mamiya system that emulates medium format.

That’s true Phil, correct me if I’m wrong but doesn’t the Phase one system rely on a computer hook up for storage? Making it a studio only system. While the Mamiya is using compact flash card making it as portable as a 1Ds or whatever.

There is an article about The Mamiya ZD Saga that has some differing opinions about the ZD in use. The sample photo they have is much sharper than any other sample I’ve seen too.

that was true of the old PhaseOne's Rob - but all the new ranges now dont need to be tethered - are fully portable - and use CF cards.

And that’s another nail in Mamiyas coffin. The more I learn about that project the more convinced I am that their main problem was lack of digital know how and the subsequent long development time. I’m sure they would have had a huge success if they had got it out eighteen months earlier.