I’m more of a point and click camera person and am very happy with my 5.1 Mega Pixel Sony Cyber-shot (recommended by our camera buff Marc) but after reading up on a new 22 Mega Pixel monster I thought it only right to report it here.

I’ve never heard of Mamiya before but if you know your cameras I’m sure they’ll be a familiar name (they’ve been around for over 60 years). Their calling this new 22 Mega Pixel beast theMamiya ZD digital camera and it will be available in Japan any time now whilst the rest of the world will have to wait until early 2006.

Physically the Mamiya ZD looks like a conventional 35mm D-SLR camera and can also accommodate existing Mamiya’s 645AF lenses (which may a least be some cost saving). But it’s the resolution of this beast that made my jaw drop.

22 Mega Pixels means it boosts a resolution of 4008 x 5344 pixels (so 21.418752 Mega Pixels to be exact :)) and it can also capture images at the rate of 1.5fps (frames per second) which is pretty quick IMO considering the amount of data involved.

Due to the large file sizes storage could be a problem. It accepts both CF and SD cards so you may want to find a cheap wholesaler to buy them by the bucket load as they are going to fill up fast. You can get the images off by connecting using Firewire. I’m guessing they’ve ignored USB 2.0 and concentrated on Firewire for performance reasons. Although technically USB 2.0 is faster (480 Mbp to Firewire’s 400 Mbps) in practice Firewire is significantly faster for sustained data transfer.

If you’re after a professional camera you might want to check out the Mayima when it’s released. I’ve not been able to find a RRP price for it but I’d expect to out of most amateur photographers price brackets.

[Mamiya found via Trusted Reviews]