Hasselblad H3DII-50: Hassi five-oh

The megapixel madness marches on. Get a load of the Hasselblad H3DII-50, a newly announced professional digital studio camera that packs a ludicrous 50 (!) megapixels.

Obviously, this isn't a point and shoot, unless you're the Incredible Hulk. It's designed for studio work when the finished images will need to be monster resolution, such as particularly big billboards, probably of men in tight underwear.

The KAF-50100 sensor has been developed by Kodak. It measures a whopping 48x36mm, compared to the roughly 4x5mm sensors you get in the average compact. Makes us feel a bit inadequate, that does. Continuing to prove that size does matter, the files produced will be 300MB.

Another feature that caught our eye is the ability of the body to support Hasselblad's new HTS 1.5 Tilt/Shift cradle. This tilts and shifts standard lenses, which creates the rather cool effect of real-life scenes appearing to be models. It's all to do with the way the brain processes perspective.

But Hasselblad is determined not to stop there, and will announce details of a new 645 sensor at the Hasselblad Future Technology seminar at Photokina 2008. If you've already shelled out for the 39-megapixel H3DII-39, you can trade up to the 50 for the difference in price. If you're a new customer, the H3DII-50 will be available in October 2008 at a price of $39,995 (£20,225), to which we would add: lend us a fiver. -Rich Trenholm