: Mamiya ZD on sale! The killer DSLR

Photography lovers, you have been waiting for a long time, and finally... FINALLY, the Mamiya ZD is available in Japan, pre-order now and get it delivered on the 21st! I sense a black hole however for 99% of our readers... let me enlighten you: Mamiya is THE reference for professional photography... and now they have gone all DSLR or Digital Single Lens Reflex! You already know the Canon 5D, 50D and other Nikons... well, we can say that these look like disposable cameras compared to this ZD (calm down, calm down, we're just trying to find a comparison so that everybody knows what we mean), and so this Mamiya ZD is a SMALL digital camera that weighs 1.2kg and offers 22MP (yep, twenty-two) for a reasonable 9200 EUR.

This is the info on the manufacturer's site:

"With over 60 years of experience in design and engineering of the world's best medium format cameras and lenses, Mamiya addresses the next generation photographer with the Mamiya ZD SLR medium format digital camera. The Mamiya ZD digital camera is the first integrated medium format digital SLR camera. With its built-in 22 mega pixel CCD imaging sensor it produces sharp, high quality rich tones in a surprisingly light weight, compact body that resembles 35mm D-SLR cameras.

Utilizing Mamiya's exclusive 14-bit A/D (Analog to Digital) converter, the 12-bit images are recorded at 1.5 fps, making it the fastest digital medium format camera. With its CF and SD storage options, built-in 1.8 inch LCD imaging preview screen and tethered FireWire® (IEEE1394) to Mamiya Digital Photo Studio software it provides the prefect solution for studio and/or on-location shoots.

Simple but powerful, Mamiya's Digital Photo Studio software offers a complete image capture, processing and editing solution in both MAC and PC based computers. Best of all, the Mamiya ZD digital camera is fully compatible with all Mamiya 645AF lenses."