A Bit of HistoryAt the biennial Photokina trade show in Cologne, Germany last October,Franke and Heideckeannounced the Hy6 medium format camera. Simultaneous with this announcement both Sinar and Leaf announced that they would become OEM suppliers of the HY6 under their own brand names, bundled with their own digital backs.

Sidebar:The Hy6 medium format camera system is in fact “owned” by Jenoptik (www.jenoptik-los.com), who commissioned Franke and Heidecke to co-develop and then manufacture their camera. Franke and Heidecke, along with Sinar and Leaf are OEM suppliers of this Jenoptik camera system. Sinar is owned by Jenoptik.

A year has now passed, and Sinar has just started to ship their version of theHy6. I was fortunate to have received a full production test sample of the camera along with Sinar's 33MPe-Motion 75digital back. Due to heavy demand for this press sample camera I was only able to work with it for a week before returning it to Sinar. This limit...