Hasselblad X1D - Excited to what the future may bring!

[jake337]

I'll stick with my d750.

The 5dsr or the successor to the d810 also sound nicer, or even just the d810.

Pair one of those with a zeiss lens or just an art lens.

Cool beans. I'll be sticking with my Df till it dies as well but my next body will be medium format.

If the price was the same for the X1D add the D810 successor would you still feel that way?

High costs have been keeping the average Joe away from digital medium format. That may change in the years to come. With the 645z closely approaching flagship nikon/canon prices I can see the future is bright in digital medium format.

 

[chuasam]

No. I love the ergonomics and features of my D810.

 

[Solarflare]

I'll stick with my d750.

As long as I have lenses like my beloved Zeiss Makro-Planar 2.0/100mm, I'll need a camera body for using it.

I doubt many people will be able to use this system as their only system. Pure contrast AF which means no action or limited action; no macro, no zoom, no more extreme focal lengths ... this is for compact maximum image quality, but not much else.

And thats exactly what I personally was hoping for. A compact mirrorless camera that really has the pinnacle of IQ with that great Sony 44x33mm sensor and a trinity of finest prime lenses.

 

[Solarflare]

Great Interview of dpreview with a (the?) Hasselblad product manager.

'The X1D took only between 18 and 20 months to develop from the final concept to where we are today,' says Ove Bengtson. 'As it uses the same 50-million-pixel Sony IMX161 sensor, the same electronic platform and same processor as the H6D-50c most of the work was already done - designing a mirrorless system is relatively easy compared to our usual H cameras as there are no moving parts.

That maybe explains the curious design descisions when it came to the interface.

Theres a shutter release, two command dials and one mode dial on the camera, three more buttons on top (one hard to reach) and two behind, as well as five harder to reach buttons next to the backside monitor. Curious. There seem to be no way to quickly select the AF point when having your eye on the EVF. A four way button or a joystick. Obviously thats not an issue if you're a DSLR and only have a central focus point to begin with.

We discussed having phase detection AF points built into the sensor, but Sony was already too far down the road with the sensor development at that stage. We really do want phase detection but we'll have to wait for the sensor manufacturer.

Phase detection would be great, yes. Maybe dualpixel, even. And/or Panasonics bokeh analyzation.

'It is still early days for this camera but when it comes to market it will have touch AF and the AF points will be spread across the screen. You will press the AF/MF button and an AF point display will appear on the screen and then you can select the point you want to use.'

Very complicated and cant be done while the eyes are on the EVF.

Ove said that the company hadn't directly considered allowing the rear screen to be used as a touch pad while the EVF is in use, but that it would probably be a question of firmware and that they would consider it.

My face will press against the monitor when I'm using the EVF. Making it both impossible to use it for AF point selection and sending all kinds of false commands if touch is enabled. Systems which allow this need to have downward tiltable screens and/or EVF that can be flipped upward, and/or need to use rangefinder style placed EVFs - much like for example the Panasonic GX7.

I rather vote four way button or joystick.

'The touch experience for the user has been a major consideration for us, and we want the touch sensitivity to be the best there is. [...]

Good !

'We don't want to have to develop our own flash system, [...] Nikon agreed to work with us and we are very happy that they offer excellent flash units that will work well with our X1D.'

As Nikon flash units are overall apparently the best of all, basically unkillable and staying useable for decades, I fail to see any issue whatsoever.

'The new XCD lenses are designed and built to the same specification standards that we use for the H series lenses. We have to produce the best that we can and allowing reduced quality just isn't an option. In fact these have a short back focus which makes it easier to design them to really excellent standards. The lenses are designed by us and manufactured by Nittoh who have made many great lenses in the past, including the lenses for the X-Pan. These XCD lenses have no crosstalk and the angle of the light as it approaches the sensor is well within the limits. You'll notice that the exit pupil of the wide angle particularly is set well inside the barrel.'

Seems OK, but the lenses are one of the main points of uncertainty at the moment.

'To start with we will concentrate on fixed focal length lenses as we can make these small in line with the compact concept of the camera. [...]

Well I guess a 2x or less ultra wide angle zoom would be in order. Considering that thanks to the short flange distance, this system can really shine with wide angle lenses.

'The camera isn't designed to take a larger sensor,'

Well ... yeah ? One look at the mount and thats quite obvious.

The X1D really does mark quite a departure for Hasselblad

Not really ? The price point is surprising, the quality seems still to be typical Hasselblad. I can only assume they hope they get a lot of new customers, and I think they might.





Ken Rockwell about the X1D:

The real key will be how well Hasselblad has pulled off the ergonomics. If it's a balky, obtuse interface needing menus to do everything, all we have another rich man's toy. If it's well thought out and fast, intuitive and easy to shoot, we have a winner — and possibly the future of serious photography. Sensor size alone has little to do with anything when you know what you're doing, and even if it did, 33 x 44 isn't much different than 24 x 36.

Agreed. So far its not clear if this is a rich man toy product, or a camera for real photographers.

But it seems Hasselblad is at least in the long run planning for this to be a camera for real photographers.




This little gem should be part of this collection:

The sensor features an Infrared (IR) filter mounted in front of the sensor.

OH. MY. GOD !!! Thats so awesome. Does it also have a battery to provide the digital sensor with current ? What about a shutter release ? Also, do you have any of that new fashion fancy water thats *wet* ?

Hasselblad says that they will be adding a 30mm f/3.5 lens at Photokina, with more surprises to come at Photokina.

So they said its f/3.5 ? Because nobody else said so.

You can simply touch the screen where it shows the aperture and shutter speeds and change them directly, without having to first press a button to bring up another control panel, as you normally have to on other cameras with touch-screens.

OR you could use the two command dials, which are under your fingertips already when using the camera, and not bother with the touchscreen for such basic tasks.

The focus system wasn't the quickest we've seen, but as the camera we were looking at was a pre-production model, it's possible that the camera's speed and responsiveness, as well as the focus speed, will improve as the camera gets its final firmware.

Well, thats bad.

Metering

• Centre-weighted - Average
• Spot
• Centre Spot

So ... no Matrix and no Highlight weigthened. Thats kinda sad. Guess with the dedicated exposure lock button one can work around it, though.




P.s.: I still seem to keep calling Hasselblad Hassleblad sometimes ... sorry its not intentional.

 

[unpopular]

The sensor features an Infrared (IR) filter mounted in front of the sensor.

OH. MY. GOD !!! Thats so awesome. Does it also have a battery to provide the digital sensor with current ? What about a shutter release ? Also, do you have any of that new fashion fancy water thats *wet* ?

Well golly! That is pretty slick. Well, I better get back to 1996 now. [steps back into time machine]

 

[Solarflare]

Fujifilm Medium Format More Affordable than Hasselblad X1D

So Fuji will also use the Sony 44x33mm sensor (yay!), it will also be a system camera (yay!) and it will be a mirrorless (yay!). Everything I hoped for.

I will believe instantly that a Fuji medium format camera with a 44x33mm sensor is a bit cheaper than the X1D-50c. But I doubt they will be MUCH cheaper. The sensor is, after all, the main factor why this camera is this expensive, and Fuji probably doesnt get a discount on this sensor, compared to Hasselblad. I also doubt they will be as well made as the Hasselblads, though I'm sure there wont be anything to complain about the built quality.

I expect them to be a lot better in respect to ergonomics, though. Doesnt really matter how good a touchscreen is - you cannot operate it while you have your eye on the viewfinder. And theres not too many other controls on that camera. In fact entry level bodies from Canikon have more buttons than this.

But the really interesting part will be the lenses. The XCD lenses are surprisingly cheap, but they are also not too bright. I'm really curious what Fuji will do in this respect.

 

[thereyougo!]

I do not think there is much need for a 4x5 sensor. Such a sensor would be astronomically expensive, and at any point that it wouldn't be the resolution of a 6x7 sized sensor would *far* surpass the performance of anything that sanity would require.

At those sizes, you can simply shoot slide film and use a drum scanner.

Have you seen how much drum scanners cost? Sure you can get someone to scan them, but you are looking at very high prices for them to do so.

Cameras getting smaller?

It aint necessarily so. Sensors are getting bigger, and companies are finding ways of fitting bodies around them in a more and more efficient way. The new Sony RX10 is a good camera with a massive zoom range and a sensor that we know performs well. Well worth considering for an efficient safari camera.

What IS happening is that the compact camera market has all but disappeared in favour of phones, and the more premium end is growing. These 1 inch superzooms didn't exist a few years ago.

I think there are exciting times ahead. It will be interesting to see what Sony, Fuji and Pentax do. I love my 645Z . Unfortunately Pentax tend to react very slowly.

 

[unpopular]

Actually drum scanner's manufacture price to quality ratio make them pretty obsolete. While the quality of a PMT drum scan is *by far* superior to any other method, for the market which drum scanners existed a high-end CCD scanner is plenty sufficient yet significantly less expensive in upfront cost and maintenance.

When drum scanners were at their peak they were the only way to scan at a production quality. By the late 1990s CCD scanners, while substantially inferior (and are still today), were good enough. CCD scanners have only improved since and by the early 2000s almost nobody was using them in a production setting.

As a result, drum scanners have flooded the used market, small desktop scanners can be found periodically for well under $1,000, and even very high end chest-freezer sized models that cost over $50,000 in 1995 can be found for under $10K. I've seen such units go unsold on ebay for like $2,000 (plus whatever it would be in freight). And I have to tell you, it was damn hard to tell myself there is no no way I had room for it when I saw it that bohemouth.

While I'm sure that someone is still making drum scanners and charging $20K for them, and the probably use very high dynamic range solid state diodes these days that perform even better than PMT, the days of the drum scanner are over.

The biggest barrier for people who want to get into drum scanning now is the technical overhead of actually using one. But I definitely think that for some hobbyists they should be attractive, and I am surprised that they haven't gained more popularity.