Review: Hasselblad X1D and therefore the rough luxury of medium format digital.
In a remarkable amendment of focus (yuk yuk), Hasselblad is gap its high-end imaging tools up to a wider vary of individuals than ever before. And it begins with the X1D, the world's smallest and most transportable mirrorless medium format camera. A medium format for the lots, almost.
X1D sample shot: ISO 800, 45mm, f/3.5, 1/125 sec (download full size)
X1D sample shot: ISO four hundred, 45mm, f/10, 1/180 sec (download full size)
X1D sample shot: ISO 1600, 90mm, f/4.5, 1/180 sec (download full size)
X1D sample shot: ISO 3200, 90mm, f/5.6, 1/180 sec (download full size)
Let Maine state out front: I've ne'er shot medium format before. this can be the primary Hasselblad I've ever set my grubby paws on, and therefore the most costly camera I've ever utilized by an honest margin over Sony's a9. however as a semi-pro shooter with a 0.5 good eye and a style permanently gear, i'd be precisely the market Hasselblad is targeting with the X1D.
This should be associate discouraging camera, given its Swedish pedigree, the scale of its device (some seventy % larger than a full frame) and therefore the indisputable fact that it arrives at New Atlas HQ in its own, branded, pressure-stabilized pelecaniform seabird hardcase.
But it is not. Not once you've it insured, at least. whereas Hasselblads, and medium format cameras generally, have usually been nice massive hefty beasts, the corporate looks to be placing out on a replacement chapter, with the goal of creating this stuff as accessible and friendly as attainable. Thus, the X1D is little. it is the smallest medium format camera on the market, somehow compressing its monster 50-megapixel device into a body smaller than a Canon 5D. perhaps even a 7D, for that matter.
Hasselblad X1D: a lot of diluent and lighter than my previous 5D2.
This makes it the primary Hasselblad you'd really need to require outside the studio. Or a minimum of, the primary in an exceedingly very long time – this company has been creating cameras since 1941, and did create it way enough outside the studio to travel to the moon, after all. however the X1D, for all its machined metal beauty, is correct "stick it on a strap and wear it around" transportable, and that is a giant deal.
It's also very simple – to a shocking degree. Controls and buttons ar unbroken to a blank minimum, and they are not conveyable, therefore you get what you are given and say thanks mister. Hasselblad. The rear bit screen likewise shows basic info and offers very little adjustment on the far side brightness and whether or not you wish overexposed bits of image to flash throughout playback.
Even the configuration menus run uproariously, refreshfully shallow for such a high-end piece of kit. i can not bear in mind the last time I used a camera with therefore few choices to manipulate. In going mirrorless, Hasselblad has taken things nearly to smartphone levels of simplicity.
I have totally searched my feelings on this and i am still undecided wherever I land. the easy management layout works o.k., for the foremost half, it helps this camera look dead horny and it focuses your mind on lighting and composition rather than menu choices. On the opposite hand, there is a heap of stuff you simply cannot do, like set the factor for back button focus, or use a thumbstick to select your focus purpose, or … currently that i believe of it, what am I continuously wiggling with on different cameras anyway?
Hasselblad X1D: rear touchscreen is basic likewise
The payoff for the dearth of buttons and thoroughgoing menus is quite simply simplicity and a spotlight on shooting. The X1D's processed aluminium body is associate actively stunning piece of metalwork that feels costly, bomb-proof and special in your hand. Touches just like the pop-out mode choice wheel and therefore the neat manner the battery pops in and out while not a
"door" to talk of ar cherries on the ice-cream sundae of a sweet style that is nearly corresponding with the worth tag.
Shooting with the Hasselblad X1D
Let's begin with the negatives here. an odd alternative within the digital age, however we'll proceed. The X1D is maybe the foremost fussy camera I've shot within the post film era, and one among the toughest to nail an attempt on outside ideal conditions.
In some ways, it's just about purpose and shoot. there is not associate awful heap of things to manipulate. you utilize your thumb on the rear touchscreen to pick out associate optical device purpose – of that there extremely are not that a lot of – set your exposure settings for whichever mode you are in victimization the front and rear dials, then look around the superb EVF finder – this can be a mirrorless, on balance – and it's 0.5 down on the shutter button to focus, full all the way down to shoot.
That 0.5 press takes a small amount an excessive amount of effort for my feeling, however that stiffness is mirrored in however laborious the lenses appear to figure to realize focus. It appears like groups of Clydesdales ar actuation the weather around within the barrel of those X-series lenses. Focusing is slow and deliberate, and it is also fully crucial given the X1D's hefty 50-megapixel output and therefore the skinny depth of field.
Hasselblad X1D: smaller than most full frame DSLRs. this can be not a drill.
Since there is not that a lot of AF points to figure with, you usually ought to get focus, then compose and shoot. If your subject moves throughout this method, which could take 0.5 a second, you miss the shot. Thus, the X1D is deeply frustrating to purpose at youngsters, animals or different fast-moving objects. Taking it to a sports event would be the photographic equivalent of whipping.
The maximum frame rate, too, is as slow as a wet week, hovering around a pair of frames per second. however forward either the camera or the topic ar liberated to move, you are going to require to think about every exposure terribly fastidiously anyway. i can not imagine several things during which i might be burst-shooting on this factor.
While we're whiny, i'd likewise mention that I've ne'er used a camera that looked as if it would accumulate most dirt on its device. Be terribly careful once dynamical lenses outside the reach of a vacuum-sealed chamber, as a result of you are going to note any speck that produces it in.
And that's as a result of the photographs out of this camera, once you nail focus, ar therefore spectacular that imperfections want daggers stabbing your eyes.
The X1D's exposure metering system is completely very good, and extremely reliable. Likewise the car white balance, significantly once you've individuals in your shot. And Hasselblad's Natural Color answer computer code produces a number of the foremost gorgeous skin tones I've ever seen.
Take this shot, done outside in associate alley in natural light:
X1D sample shot: ISO four hundred, 90mm, f/5.6, 1/250 sec (download full size)
Now, take a {better|a more in-depth} look – or perhaps better, transfer the total size image. centre on the face and eyes. Go past one hundred pc if you'll.
Eye detail from one among the sample pictures on top of.
You could licitly send that to your doctor for identification. It's wondrous, you'll trace the lines in her eyeball veins. you'll nearly feel the feel of the skin, this camera allows you to grasp your subjects intimately. It appears like thereforeme reasonably violation gazing another person so closely. however here's the problem: get some shots like that, and your definition of what is sharp, and an honest shot, narrows to a knifepoint. Take a glance at another, from identical shoot:
X1D sample shot: ISO four hundred, 90mm, f/5.6, 1/180 sec (download full size)
And again, take a glance at the total size image.
Eye detail from another of the sample pictures, showing however skinny the depth of field is...
So the back eye is almost sharp, and therefore the front one's soft. simply a hair soft, however I will see it. i am not shooting wide open, either, this can be at f/5.6. and therefore the overwhelming majority of my pictures from this shoot ar off like this – infinitesimally, however enough to frustrate once you grasp what the camera will do once you nail it. And you are doing get the sense that if the optical device was faster, otherwise you may zero in additional exactly on a degree and hit the trigger quicker, you'd nail a lot of.
X1D sample shot: ISO 1600, 90mm, f/6.3, 1/2000 sec (download full size)
The corollary to the present, of course, is that since you are victimization leaf shutter lenses, with their costly clicking sounds, you'll fold the aperture and use high-speed flash set up to 1/2000th of a second if you've a lighting kit with you. however that kind of drugs goes against the movableness of this factor.
X1D sample shot: ISO 3200, 90mm, f/5.6, 1/180 sec (download full size)
Get yourself an issue that is not moving, and you'll merely prepare to be astonied. Shoot a lapidarian piece of wood, or a fine piece of metalwork, and you'll critique the accomplishment much better through the lens of the X1D than through the optic. The detail and sense of three-dimensional house merely blow my little mind, motor-assisted by a number of the truest color I've ever practiced and an enormous dynamic vary of nearly fifteen electron volt that preserves detail and alter dark shadows and bright skies. The device is associate absolute revelation.
X1D sample shot: ISO 3200, 45mm, f/4.5, 1/200 sec (download full size)
Indeed, I found myself being much more conservative than usual in my post redaction, simply because it felt like almost about any deviation from the first pictures was somehow creating things worse. maybe that is as a result of i used to be operating in Lightroom instead of Hasselblad's own Phocus computer code, that the native team here tells Maine is best tuned to the brand's cameras, significantly in terms of noise handling.
I have to mention although, I did not mind the X1D's device noise – not that I shot a lot of over ISO 3200. Such noise as there's shows up as a film-like grain that may not unpleasant to appear at. you'll see for yourself. Our normal gallery does not extremely do these pictures justice, therefore we've connected to full-sized JPG renders to the sample pictures within the gallery, therefore you'll transfer them and appearance at them life-sized by clicking on the links within the image captions.
X1D sample shot: ISO 800, 45mm, f/3.5, 1/125 sec (download full size)
Overall impressions
This camera, paired with my mediocre skills as a artist, has delivered Maine a number of the nicest and most elaborate pictures I've ever created. Its capabilities ar jaw-dropping. however despite its simplicity of style, you wish to use toil and constant attention to induce the foremost out of it. It encourages a awfully careful, thought-about sort of shooting, however conjointly puts you stressed, as a result of it narrows your definition of perfection and demands you produce work that lives up to its standards. To be honest, I rather like that pressure. It makes Maine want i am at the start of a learning curve, and that is continuously a superb place to be.
It's value noting that each one the difficulties we've distinguished here ar compared to cameras with a lot of smaller sensors. I actually have very little doubt that the X1D is one among the foremost friendly and usable medium format cameras ever designed, and it's that larger device size in and of itself that is the reason for most of our difficulties.
But what associate exciting step for Hasselblad! A medium format for the masses! Well, for a get few of the lots, however the X1D are going to be accessible to much more individuals than the company's costlier offerings, that go well into the type of cash that buys you terribly good cars. Some would possibly see it because the dilution of a complete that ought to neither be reasonable nor accessible, however I see it as a wonderful probability for the remainder folks to style the fruits of this Swedish company's excellence.
X1D sample shot: ISO 1600, 45mm, f/5, 1/100 sec (flash bounced off ceiling) (download full size)
And as long as we're obtaining sacreligious, how's this for associate idea? a great deal of what makes Hasselblad's gear therefore special is in its image process computer code – the Natural Color process rule, for one. that is a part of the rationale why the new DJI Mavic a pair of professional takes such astounding pictures, despite the very fact that it uses a puny inch-size camera device and a lens that merely should not be exceptional. So ... would not it's nice to check a full frame Hasselblad, with faster AF, that would contend on worth and performance with the Sonys, Canons associated Nikons of this world? perhaps even an APS-C? perhaps even one thing with a standard lens mount that would settle for the massive vary of glass bound competitory makers have gotten out there on the market and within the camera baggage of professionals and enthusiasts already?
Hey, we are able to dream. For now, the X1D sits in an exceedingly confusing spot at the highest of my most fascinating cameras list right next to the Sony a9. The Sony delivers a better proportion of utterly crisp keepers than the other axe I've pushed buttons on, however the sheer, visceral punch and quality of the X1D's pictures (when they hit) can't be denied. For landscapes, studio shots and enormous format printing, it's well worth the worth of admission.
X1D sample shot: ISO two hundred, 90mm, f/10, 1/180 sec (download full size)
The X1D retails for a body-only worth of US$8,995 within the USA, though you'll realize it one or two of thousand cheaper. In Australia, it's around AU$10,000. The lenses we tend to used were on the expensive aspect as well: the XCD 45mm f/3.5 at US$2,695 (AU$4,356) and therefore the XCD 90mm f/3.2 at US$3,195 (AU$5,445). you are doing well if you'll afford this method as a amateur, however at this worth purpose it's reaching to begin creating sense to a great deal a lot of professionals.
Now that I've sent it back to the bourgeois, if you do not mind, i am reaching to go and cry into the EVF of my video-centric Panasonic GH5, whereas you jump into the gallery and open up a number of those life-sized pictures to check simply however sensible this factor is.
