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A Hasselblad camera is like a Ducati motorcycle, almost no one needs one, but they sure are fun.
The last time I spent much time with a Hasselblad was in college. The art school had a couple of Hasselblad 500Cs you could rent. The waiting list to get one was months long. At the time I was a large format purist, shooting mostly with an older Toyo 4×5 field camera I'd found sitting neglected in the back corner of the supply room. Still, I was curious what all the Hasselblad fuss was about so I finally snagged one for the weekend. It was nice, though fiddly. It was compact, though nowhere near 35mm portability. It struck me as a camera designed around a series of compromises made with a different kind of photographer in mind.
Ironically, over twenty years later, I feel almost exactly the same way about the company's new X1D II. It's a wonderful camera that almost no one needs.
## Medium Format Digital
Like it's predecessor the X1D II is built around a 50-megapixel CMOS sensor. A sensor that measures 1.7 times larger than a 35mm sensor like you'd find in the Nikon 850D or Sony A7R IV. The sensor boasts a native ISO range of 100-25600, 14-stop dynamic range, and enough pixels to produce a really nice, rich tonality across scenes.
Aside from the sensor and the overall design, most of the second X1D is new. There's a new much-improved rear 3.6 inch display with much higher resolution: 2.36 million dots compared to the original's paltry 920k dots. The result is a clear, bright display that makes it much easier to review images and navigate menus.
The viewfinder resolution is also improved, with 3.69 million dots. Along with that you get a faster refresh rate of 60 fps. The result again is a much improved viewfinder experience. I found myself forgetting that it was in fact a digital viewfinder at all. Then the focus hinting would highlight edges in manual focus mode and I'd remember, ah, right, digital.
Other updates include a USB-C connection port, which lets you download the large image files of that 50MP sensor quite a bit faster. Since most images are around 100-megabytes or more, USB-C is a huge benefit when you're trying to dump a full shoot from the X1D to your computer.
The Hasselblad menu system hasn't changed much from previous versions and thanks to the huge screen I found it easy to navigate and, for the most part, completely logical in it's organization. For context, my primary camera is a Sony A7 II. I found the menu systems and iconography similar enough that I had no trouble finding my way around.
The touchscreen display is responsive and even allows pinch to zoom in preview mode. It can also be used as a kind of touch pad to control focus while you look through the viewfinder. It takes a bit of experimenting to get this down, but once you do it works as well as joystick/wheel focus controls. Occasionally my cheek would accidentally redirect focus, but for the most part Hasselblad's touch screen works very smoothly and quickly to direct focus. That said, Fuji's joystick mechanism is still my favorite way to control the focus point.
Using the X1D II felt just like using a DSLR, though there is a longer blackout time between shots and I found it do be, well, slow. This was a common gripe about the first model, which was, by most accounts, positively glacial. Hasselblad is heavily touting the speed improvements in this release, but coming from the Sony mirrorless world I was unimpressed with the performance of the X1D II. It wasn't so much that I wouldn't recommend this camera for action sports. I wouldn't, but I also missed ordinary shots like some Pelicans flying in front of the sunset because the blackout time was too long.
Hasselblad's strength and background is in studio work and it shows in instances like this. You'll never miss a studio shot with the X1D. You're even unlikely to miss anything in an outdoor portrait shoot or painstakingly set up landscape. But anything where speed matters, this is not the camera you want.
Hasselblad would really like the X1D to be the go-everywhere Hasselblad and, while it's nailed the portability aspect, performance still leaves much to be desired.
Another thing that's missing here is video. The X1D II lacks support for 4K video. Actually it lacks support for *any* video recording at all. There is, however, a video option in the menu system. I asked Hasselblad about it and was told that "video will be coming up in a firmware update." No details were given.
To go along with X1D II, Hasselblad has introduced a new version of its Phocus Mobile app for iPad. Phocus Mobile 2 can import and edit RAW files via USB or WiFi. It also supports tethered shooting and can act as a remote control for the camera. Due to time limitations with the camera I was not able to test the Phocus Mobile app. Note that there is no Android app available.
## Leaf Shutter Possibilities
Hasselblad has long used what's known as a leaf shutter and the X1D series is no different. At the risk of oversimplifying things, a leaf shutter is a shutter built into the lens, rather than the traditional mirror shutter found in body of a DSLR. Leaf shutters have pros and cons, but the big pro is that it can sync off-camera flash at nearly any shutter speed.
A typical DSLR can achieve flash sync speeds up to the 1/250 of a second range. The X1D II's shutter system can sync all the way up to 1/2000. That makes it possible to shoot with wide apertures even in bright sunlight and still achieve shallow depth of field.
This is useful for people who shoot outdoor portraits since you don't have to use large strobe lights to overcome the ambient light of the sun. Instead you can use a quick shutter and still increase your depth of field with a wide aperture. In short a leaf shutter opens up a range of possibilities that simply don't exist with a focal plane shutter.
Couple this with the portability of the X1D—whatever your other thoughts may be, there's no denying this is the most portable Hasselblad setup to come along in years—and you have a camera system that can do things your DSLR can't. Whether or not you're interested in these things will determine how well the X1D II is going to work for you.
At $5,750 plus lenses, which are also expensive thanks to the leaf shutter design, the Hasselblad is not a casual purchase. The 45mm lens I shot with will set you back another $2,695, bring the total outlay for body and one lens to nearly $8,445. On one hand that's less than the sticker price of the first X1D ($8,995).
On the other hand, should you spend that much money on a camera? Probably not.
Unless you're already a professional photographer making good money this is not the camera for you. Buy a $1000 Sony, and use the other $7,000 to backpack the world for a few months. Chance are you'll end up with a far more interesting portfolio than you get with the Hasselblad.
If you are Chase Jarvis, or roughly the equivalent, then the new X1D II is at least a much better deal than its predecessor. The main competition is from the likes of Fuji's new medium format system, the Phase One system (also leaf shutter), and the pioneering, though somewhat out of date, Pentax system.
There is no best in this case, there is simple best for you. None of these are bad cameras, the decision comes down to which system to you want to invest in for the future? It's worth bearing in mind that the leaf shutter means Hasselblad's lens are considerably more expensive, sometimes more the double the price of the Fuji equivalent.
*(The Hasselblad X1D II is available for [$5,750 at Hasselblad's Store](https://store.hasselblad.com/products/x1d-ii-50c){: rel=nofollow}, [B&H Photo](https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1487057-REG/hasselblad_x1d_ii_50c_medium.html/DFF/d10-v2-t1-xHAX1D50C2){: rel=nofollow}, and [Adorama](https://www.adorama.com/hsx1dii50c.html){: rel=nofollow}.)*
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