Sony CMOS 44 X 33mm Medium Format Sensor: Will It Go Into a Sony Camera?

PhaseOne and Hasselblad are moving to a 50 megapixel 44 X 33mm CMOS sensor. Not that this is in my budget. Moreover, the last thing I want is a big clunky chunk to carry around; it won’t get used.

Costs scale up when the sensor grows to full frame from APS-C by a factor of 4X or more, and so the 44 X 33mm sensor probably doubles or triples the cost of full frame. Still, Sony is making the sensor and has the fab and all the know-how to make my dream camera, which I will call here the BFS-1 (use your imagination on those letters):

• 44 X 33mm sensor with no AA filter.
• Leaf shutter lens (so zero vibration) with fixed-lensZeiss Otus-grade 35mm f/2.8 lens (28mm equivalent field of view). Optimized for the sensor by being fixed and recessed into the camera body to keep the balance good and bulk down.
• High-res rear LCD and high-res built-in next-generation 4-megapixel EVF.
• Built-in flash to take advantage of that leaf shutter (full flash sync).
• Good grip, raw only at 14 bits (please no 8 bit lossy), WiFi and superfluous features omitted, USB3 port.

$8000 ought to be a very reasonable price for the above, using the Sony RX1R as a reference. But even if $10K, that would be 1/3 or 1/4 the cost of the PhaseOne and Hasselblad systems.