What you are wishing for is exactly what is and has been available in medium format digital photography all along. However, the ticket price to play is steep both for the camera body and the digital back. But at least if you have a Hassselblad film camera, you can convert to digital without sacrificing body or lenses, just buy the back.

Too bad the Rollei 35mm SLR 2000 series was not popular and continued. Then we would have at least one 35mm SLR based system where you could just upgrade the back to stay current digitally!

True. I recall a previous post by David Brooks to the effect that only Leica makes smaller camera bodies with sufficient precision for digital backs. What I'm hoping I suppose is that some bright engineers find a way to replace some of the innards without the digital back approach.
From what I can tell the medium format digital market is pretty small and not going anywhere right now as people switch to high end Canons and so on. But this could be an achilles heel of the smaller DSLRs; I'd be none too happy to find my $6000 camera becoming obsolete in a couple of years.

From what I have seen of the innards that are involved a digital back like those for MF cameras like the Hasselblad or Leica R series SLR's is essential, and that makes the "digital back" a more costly part of the package than the body itself. Camera like the Canon EOS 5D I am sure between 2/3 and 3/4 of the price goes for the sensor and its support and only a small fraction is involved in the cost of the rest of the body.

And, I think you are wrong at least from a professional perspective about medium format digital. Now nearly all higher-end clients are demanding the job be shot digital, and in many cases even the 16 megapixel MF backs are not enough resolution for many client requirements.

Very interesting. By the way, my only source on MF digital is a camera store that sells Leica, Canon, Nikon, Pentax etc. For my own amateur uses, I am currently stuck with film when wanting MF, but the pain and aggravation is pretty high compared to digital.

Being frustrated by fewer and fewer film and processing choices with medium format I won't belittle, but it is not the same as if because you make a living at it you have no choice but bite the bullet and try to find some way to afford the several thousands of dollars that is the price of the least of the digital backs for medium format cameras.

Agreed. Being a professor of entrepreneurship I have an interest in the way people try to make a living from photography. It strikes me that the field APPEARS to have low entry barriers, and certainly formal credentials don't seem to be among them, but the startup costs seem moderately high given the time it would take to build up enough business for a positive cash flow. I suppose this is another topic though.

Oh, one other issue: I would think that for pros with a good client base a huge advantage of digital is time savings. For amateurs the same issue arises; we make our living with other jobs and we'd rather spend what photo time we have taking pictures than feeding a scanner. For me, that's the main pain of MF film. Not that over a dollar a shot is a token expense either.

There are many kinds of professional photography, some as you say are easy to get into, most of which have pretty modest rewards for most practitioners. Servicing large commercial accounts however has a very steep entry level in terms of learning and investment, as well as very intense competition. Most who reach profitable, stable level of success have many hard years behind them, and the few that don't who rise unusually fast usually also fade fast.

Because there are so many enthusiasts and professional photography seems glamorous and these days refreshingly independent far more make the attempt than can be supported by the volume of business available. Survival can be precarious especially in some field like advertising and fashion.

I've spent most of my working life, fifty some years, doing photography and usually making a living at it. If you can call it a success I guess it is because I am doing what I love doing. But that is because I have found a niche that isn't profitable enough that anyone would want to push me out of it.

As far as I am concerned there isn't any time to be saved, and that is because the value comes from the time invested whether it is scanning, editing , retouching, printing. It is the experience of the process that is the value of most significance, and the photo at the end of the process has little or no inherent value except as a reminder of an enjoyable and satisfying journey getting there.

I can see that I wasn't clear enough. By suggesting that time saved might be spent taking photos I seemed to compare post-capture processing with capture. This wasn't the comparison I meant; one could use extra time any way one wants. The comparison I meant is between the time it takes to scan a negative or slide, especially a MF one, compared with the equivalent processing of a RAW image. At least in my experience the former takes an order of magnitude longer. Even beyond this point I find that it takes longer to clean up the image from the minuscule things that even ICE and an air gun fail to find. Now, it may be that the best way to scan would minimize this step.

For anyone who has one, and prefers medium format, considering MF digital is still very expensive, film is still a good option. To make scanning an efficient and effective option for color use an E-6 transparency film, or C-41 negative color with good scanner software - otherwise difficult to scan. for B&W shoot chromogenic C-41 process film which can be cleaned very well with digital ICE. The ASF/Kodak Digital ICE 4.0 in the latest scanners like the Epson Perfection V700 or Microtek ScanMaker i800 for those on a budget, works very well and very little post scan clean up needed.