Responding to the swift and negative reaction to its just-announced Lunar mirrorless camera, Hasselblad's business development manager, Luca Alessandrini, forcefully defended the venerable camera maker's partnership with Sony in an interview with the British Journal of Photography. Alessandrini stressed that, 'This [the Lunar] is not a NEX-7 camera, just because we are buying components from Sony'. He makes a pointed distinction between the Hasselblad-Sony partnership and the 'rebranding' arrangement between Leica and Panasonic. Alessandrini also says that the decision to use an unmodified Sony sensor for the first Lunar camera doesn't preclude the company from making sensor modifications for future models.
In seeking to explain the company's long-term strategy and product design decisions, Alessandrini says that unlike other makers who have distinct looks for different camera classes, 'What we're doing is designing three cameras – a compact camera, a DSLR and a mirrorless – with the same style'. And as for criticism generated by the Lunar's €5000 price, he adds, '...we're not robbing people by making a huge profit on the camera. Our profit margin is the same as everyone else's; we're just using more expensive materials.'
You can read the entire interview at the British Journal of Photography's web site.