Count me in

Please?

please

It'd be cool to win something for a change...

It's sad to you go. Good luck with your next project.

Good luck out there buddy.

- Nick

I've never used a Contax camera but there's certainly nothing wrong with Hasselblad's products. Sure, the lenses are damn expensive, but you pay a premium for a good reason; and the build quality of all their gear speaks for itself.

This thing isn't meant for the hobbyists among us or even for the professional wedding photographers with $8,000 Canon bodies.

Hasselblad's are basically designed for extreme studio photography, and for situations where images by necessity need to be insanely large - you don't honestly think the latest billboard advertisement was taken with a Nikon D3 do you? Obviously, it's easy to mock the 40K pricetag and point out all the wonderful things you could purchase instead, but remember this is designed for corporations and photography businesses - not for one-man operations or to capture your son's latest soccer game.

Also keep in mind that 40K is simply the body only. A standard 50mm lens, which can be purchased for around 80 bucks in a Canon mount, might run 3K in Hasselblad territory; and you pay for a real difference.

Judging from Nikon's history of compacts, I wouldn't count on this model to compare to the G9. Nikon makes great DSLR's for sure but their point and shoot models are, for lack of a better term, junk; and don't feature anything close to what I'd call quality optics.

The G9 and other Canon compact cameras aren't without flaws either, but for some reason Canon seems to have a better handle on image quality in point and shoot models.

Shinigami:

For now at least, you're just going to have to accept the trade-off between size and image quality. Grips aside, DSLRs can only get so small because of the mirror mechanism, and quality pocket camera's can only get so small because of their larger sensors.

Sigma's DP-1 has a fix focal lens, yes, but I think more disturbing is its small max aperture of f/4. In other words, Sigma had to sacrifice so much space in the DP-1 to accommodate an APS (C) sensor, that it was left with zero room for a zoom, or even a moderately fast fix focal lens. I think for these reasons, compact cameras will remain in a lesser league in terms of image quality.

Also, you don't need to be a professional to own a DSLR anymore. Nikon's new offerings are not only well built, but their also damn small and easy to use; and while its a stretch to call the D40 a pocketable camera, you're simply not going to find comparable image quality in a compact package (for a reasonable cost).