We might by no means earlier than seen a lot silicon wrapped up in such a small bundle
Photograph: Samuel Spencer
The Hasselblad X1D beat Fujifilm to the market by three months in 2016 to turn out to be the primary mirrorless medium format digital camera. It wasn’t the primary “inexpensive” (or, no less than, sub-$10,000) medium format possibility: that credit score goes to the Mamiya DM22, nevertheless it was the primary larger-than-full-frame digital digital camera to be designed as a self-contained ILC with no mirror.
It was constructed across the similar 50MP CMOS sensor because the Pentax 645Z, which additionally underpinned the Fujifilm GFX 50 fashions, producing some wonderful picture high quality. Hasselblad’s fashionable minimalist design was eye-catching, and the operability improved considerably by a sequence of firmware updates (although it by no means provided the mass-market slickness of the GFX fashions).
One of many components that allowed the Hasselblad to be so small was the choice to construct leaf shutters into all of the XCD lenses, moderately than having a bodily shutter within the digital camera physique. This resulted in a digital camera that would sync with flashes all the best way as much as every lens’s most shutter velocity. Although this got here on the value each of upper lens costs and of polygonal bokeh, because the shutter/aperture mechanisms had comparatively few blades. This second difficulty was considerably resolved by an replace that allowed the aperture to be opened a fraction past the widest listed worth, in order that the blades do not intrude on the picture.
Click on right here to see the almost 200 photographs we have revealed from the X1D
Alongside the X1D got here the primary sequence of medium format lenses designed particularly for 44x33mm digital, giving some wonderful outcomes (to the purpose that moiré is a big threat even when stopped-down to F5.6, given the dearth of low-pass filter on the X1D’s sensor). It additionally led to the one occasion we have seen of a producer referring to equal f-numbers. It is most likely no shock that it might be one of many solely corporations to solely produce bigger than full-frame methods.
We have been within the lucky place to borrow a Hasselblad, Pentax 645Z and Fujifilm GFX 50S on the similar time and use them alongside each other, and checked out their comparative strengths and weaknesses. We hope to do one thing comparable with the extra refined 100MP cameras from Hasselblad and Fujifilm within the coming months.
