The new camera, which is fitted with a traditional 50-megapixel Multi-Shot Hasselblad sensor, will be released in the first months of 2011 at a price yet to be determined.

“All data capture is based on some kind of sensitive sensor, of which each pixel has been prepared with different filters,” explains Hasselblad’s Peter Stig-Nielsen. “The most common pattern: in each block of four pixels, it has 2 green, one red and one blue.”

He continues: “At Hasselblad we’ve worked for years with Multi-shot, which moves the sensor between different shots. If you move sensor for one pixel in one direction it generates full colour information for each pixel. And additional half-pixel movements doubles the resolution in two directions.”

Hasselblad adds that “capturing six shots with the sensor positioned accurately at a sequence of quadrants of the basic six-micron pixel, colour information from the Bayer-patterned pixels is used to create a 200 megapixels capture.”

According to Stig-Nielsen, the camera will appeal to high-end commercial photographers in the cars and jewellery industries, as well as for museum photographers looking for accurate colour and high resolution to document paintings and art treasures.

However, to achieve full resolution from edge-to-edge, photographers must keep the camera still for 30 seconds.

If they use the predecessors of the two newly-redesigned 50mm and 120mm lenses, photographers will, however, lose on some of the resolution. “The old lenses will still work, but they will not give you full resolution from edge to edge,” says Stig-Nielsen. But, Hasselblad tells BJP, the new models, as well as the whole range of H lenses, will be perfectly suitable for MS200 capture.
 
The camera is now in the final testing phase – for stability and colour accuracy – and will be released in early 2011. All current H4D-50MS cameras will be offered this new capture mode, but will have to send their cameras back to the factory for calibration and firmware upgrade.

Visit hasselblad.com.