Yes it does, via firmware update. This came straight from the mouth of Christian Poulson, president of Hasselblad.
What Troy is doing (may have already done) is update the firmware to what is in the H3D-II, essentially making it the same (save for the hardware (CCD cooling and 3" LCD) differences).
By the way, according to Poulson (who is also the engineer who designed the Imacon Flex-Tite scanner), for every 8 degrees C you cool a sensor, you cut the noise in half; and the H3D-II is, due to redesign of the heat sinking, has about a 7C lower temperature. He pointed this out to encourage us to keep the power turned OFF as much as possible.
It would be interesting to see the thermal transfer from Troy's camera to the aluminum housing: If he's getting enough cooling, then he can safely run at (the equivalent sensitivity of) ISO 800 without a bunch of chroma noise in the shadows...
Questions for Dr. Mustard:
I have never shot MF digital underwater, but I have shot a lot of medium format film underwater.
The main issue with medium format is that it is hard to realise the superior image quality of the sensor in most UW shooting conditions. Shooting through too much water significantly degrades image quality much faster than differences between sensors. There is a role for MF in very controlled conditions - such as pool or UW studio photography. But for wildlife/diving photography the disadvantages easily outweigh the advantages.
When you write "shooting through too much water," how far are you talking? Specifically, my interest lies in about 30 feet to shoot reef life in Cayman, where the water is pretty clear.
Perhaps the biggest problem with medium format underwater is the lack of depth of field of the larger image size. From my experience this becomes very significant in the lighting conditions and subject sizes we typically work around underwater. Generally underwater we want our subjects as close as possible to the camera. For wide angle on medium format I often found that this would render the background out of focus - which did not look very nice.
What aperture range were you shooting at? Which film were you using?
The reason for those questions is that film has drastically improved the last 2-3 years, especially Fuji's professional products, with the implementation of the two electron emulsion: Basically, for a given grain (dye cloud) size, the sensitivity has doubled... Allowing you to stop down your Hassy's lens to get back your DOF.
Try this: Pick up a 120 roll of Fuji Pro 800Z color neg film and take it for a spin in ambient light conditions, especially with your lens stopped down to f/8 or f/11; and then compare the images to what you got with older 100 & 200 speed films.
[The new Provia 400x chrome film is also quite good; but, like any E-6 film it is very susceptible to blown highlights, since the latitude is rather narrow. You may want to pick up a roll as well, since it's great for wildlife.]
This may be less of a problem with digital backs. First because they are cropped therefore increasing the apparent DOF for a given subject repro size in the frame. And second because the large pixels size means that the ISO can be racked up more than on film, allowing the aperture to be stopped down.
Actually, no on this one: Most digital backs only go up to ISO 400. Troy's H3D will go up to 800; and I *think* the new firmware he has in it will allow it to go to ISO 1600. This is one area where modern 35mm format dSLR's actually excel, with quite good performance at 1600 & even 3200.
In fact, those of you Canon 5D shooters are lucky: You can set your ISO dial to 3200 and mode to RAW, then shoot at E.I. 2500 (i.e. dial in +1/3 EV for slight overexposure), and you'll get rather quiet shadow details because of the slight overexposure.
The other problem with medium format is lenses. Many medium format lenses do not focus close enough for underwater photography.
Dome or flat port? Do you use extension ring(s) with your Hassy?
And the flip side to the advantages of the cropped MF sensor digital backs is that it further limits lens choice. The most commercial type of underwater shooting is wide angle, generally with fisheye lenses offering corner to corner 180 degrees.
Is this more of an individual shooting style issue than anything else?
Nobody earns much shooting macro!
Let me tell you a little story, to give you the direction I want to head.
The underwater macro gallery exhibit in the American Express building lobby by Michael ("Mickey") Maurer two years ago inspired me to submerge my camera gear. (The exhibition was shepherded through production by Lisa Fiel (who also had this exhibition a block away in the Conde Nast (4 Times Square) lobby; and the curator for both exhibitions for The Durst Organization was (is) Lanny Powers).
The issue Mickey had is that because all of his images were shot on 35mm film, very few of his enlargements were over 16x20 inches; while Lisa's prints shot on 6x45 were as large as 40x50 inches.
Due to the nature of the fine art market, digital reproductions (like from a Lambda) are a no-no: A few were Ilfochrome; the rest of them were either enlarged directly (for the few negs) or had a 4x5 interneg made first, and then put in the enlarger.
[At this point, Stephen Frinks' comments just arrived; so I'm going to break here to address it.]
