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Hasselblad

A big dumb button

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My wife Sara and I used to have this running joke leading up to her birthday each year.  Each year I’d say “Honey!  What would you like for your birthday?”

and she would reply “I’d like a Hasselblad”.  Usually with a big smile on her face, in a wink-wink-nudge-nudge kind of way.

Then I’d say “Ha ha, no, seriously, what would you like?” and we’d both laugh and move on to more serious things.

Hasselblad.  The 500c/m.  Man.  That camera.  It’s like the Rolls Royce of cameras.  It would send shivers down our spines and we’d get all giggly any time we’d talk about it.

Hasselblad.  We both wanted one.  For me, the Hasselblad 500c/m is the perfect camera.  It’s this beautiful, perfect melding of function and art mixed together.  It really is a work of art; this little square box and can come all apart and attach to other things to make other types of cameras.  If he was a Transformer he’d be the classiest one.  He’d probably have a swirly moustache and wear a top hat and speak in an elegant accent.

Calibrating your Epson v700 workflow with a $16,000 Hasselblad Flextight

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I recently had a few prints made from some medium format negatives. The prints are for a specific purpose so I wanted them to be of the highest quality possible, this meant taking them to a local specialist where the film was scanned with a Hasselblad Flextight X1. The Flextight is about the best quality scan you can get, before moving up to dedicated drum scans that can be messy, time consuming, and expensive.

I realised I could use this as an opportunity to compare how good my Epson v700 scanner is to the Flextight scans, and also to try to improve the scans from my v700 by calibrating the workflow. You could also apply this to the v800 models of this scanner as they are effectively the same. Note that I’m not considering wet scanning, as I’m dealing with medium format film.

DJI and Hasselblad’s “new” aerial photography platform is a flying 100MP medium format camera

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DJI have just announced the “World’s First 100-Megapixel Integrated Aerial Photography Platform”. And it’s a beast of a rig. Made with a DJI Matrice 600 with Ronin-MX gimbal and Hasselblad H6D-100c, it’s definitely a force to be reckoned with. But it’s not really a “World’s First” anything, or even all that new. It uses a drone that you can already buy, a gimbal you can already buy, and a camera you can already buy.

It’s essentially a 100MP upgrade to their previous medium format drone which houses the Hasselblad A5D. I am a little surprised it’s using the same Ronin-MX as the previous drone, given the recent Ronin 2 announcement. Although the Ronin-MX is no slouch, either.

The next mirrorless medium format cameras may have 100MP sensors and great low light performance

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Recently, Charbax at ArmDevices visited the Sony stand at CeBIT when he noticed a couple of large sensors on display. Also on the wall behind them he spotted Sony’s medium format sensor roadmap. This roadmap shows two very promising sensors on the way for 2018.

The first is the IMX461, a 100MP upgrade to the current 50MP IMX161 sensor which resides inside the Hasselblad X1D-50c and Fuji GFX 50S cameras. It would have the same physical size with double the resolution. This could hint at a pretty substantial upgrade in the next X1D and GFX models from Hasselblad and Fuji, respectively. The second is a new 150MP sensor to replace the IMX 211, as used inside the Phase One XF 100MP.

10 Things I’ve Learned from 10 Years Shooting with a Hasselblad

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This year marks the point at which I have been using Hasselblad cameras for over a decade. My first was a 201F in 2007, before moving to a 203FE in 2011 and adding a 202FA in 2015. They’re the classic 6×6 V series models, although have some additions on the more familiar 500 series that I will get into later. Over the years I’ve put several hundred rolls of film through the various cameras, not a great deal but enough to appreciate the idiosyncrasies inherent in shooting with medium format.

Hasselblad are introducing four new XCD lenses for the X1D medium format mirrorless camera

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Hasselblad’s X1D camera was announced last year with much fanfare. The world’s first mirrorless medium format camera. It’s been out for a little while now, and seem to have received nothing but praise. Now, Hasselblad are introducing four new lenses to the XCD lineup designed specifically for the X1D system.

The first new lens is the Hasselblad XCD 120mm f/3.5 Macro. This expands the X1D lens lineup which currently includes the XCD 30mm f/3.5, 45mm f/3.5 and 90mm f/3.2 lenses. The XCD 120mm f/3.5 is slated for release in June. Like the other XCD lenses, the XCD 120mm features an integral shutter offering full flash sync up to 1/2000th of a second.

DJI acquires Hasselblad, report says

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Hasselblad owners, are you ready to own a Chinese camera? If this report from Luminous Landscape is correct, you already are. and no this is not April’s fools.

According to Luminous Landscape DJI has increased their shares part in Swedish camera maker Hasselblad and are now the majority share holders. This practically makes them the owners of the company.

A rare interview with Victor Hasselblad from 1967

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The Hasselblad name is synonymous today with luxury and quality. When you shoot with one, it’s easy to see why. There isn’t a massive amount of information out there on the company’s founder, though. Born in 1906 in Gothenburg, Sweden, Victor ultimately ended up working in his father’s family store. After a familial dispute, he broke off from his father’s family store to open Victor Foto in 1937, specialising in photographic equipment and processing.

He founded Victor Hasselblad AB in 1941, to start producing cameras for the Swedish Air Force. It wasn’t until 1948 that the first civilian Hasselbad cameras arrived. In this video recently released by Hasseblad, we see an interview with the man himself, filmed by Swedish National Television in 1967. It was shot at his home in Råö on the Onsala Peninsula and offers a rare insight into the man and his life.

Hasselbad breaks into the mobile photography market with the help of Motorola

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Hasselblad seem to be going in some interesting directions lately. Between the world’s first medium format mirrorless camera, and their venture with DJI, the world was already quite impressed. This latest announcement, though, has me a little curious.

Let’s start at the beginning. Motorola recently launched the Moto Z Droid phone. This phone allows for what are called “Moto Mods” which are backs that magnetically attach to your phone, increasing functionality. The latest Moto Mod is the Hasselblad True Zoom, which replaces the Moto Z’s camera and adds a 10x optical zoom lens.

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