This is not a camera review, but rather my just talking about this camera which is new to me. There are scores of reviews on line and I have read most of them while waiting for my copy to arrive.
It takes me quite a long time to become 'familiar’ with new photography equipment. I have been working each day on the Hasselblad X2D 100 m-pixel camera for a few weeks.
This is a special camera for a special kind of photography. I am getting to know it, warts and all, and I really like it. It does much of what I want a camera to do, and I have a whole set of Nikons to use for what the X2D can’t do.
However, the X2D does a lot of what, at heart, I most like these years, although with a 100 m-pixel sensor, and this is at the expense of storing all those quite large files. I have not finally decided, but mostly I am tending toward NOT keeping all the layers, but just being satisfied with the stacked results, the final result, and keeping those.
I have kept, over the many years, some million Nikon images, mostly used in focus stacking, but enough is enough. I always hoped that some emerging technology in the future would allow me to restack the layers and come up with better results.
However, in truth, even though that may happen, I doubt I would do that re-working all that much. This is because I seem to move on from whatever I have done.
Mostly I am a creature of this present moment and am quite happy working with whatever I’m working on, old or new. If I ask myself what do I care about, I’m afraid the answer is not so much just for the resulting photos, although they are important, but rather the process itself. That’s where I live, or so it seems. However, the X2D is catching my attention as to results as well.
If I give up storing all the X2D layers, life will be easier and also more sensible. It’s me that’s not been sensible.
I have tried, of course, all the various ways or modes of stacking with the X2D, and as I have discovered, the Symmetric mode makes no sense, the Infinity mode causes me fits, and the Near Limit mode works and makes the most sense. In other words, start from the rearmost point and work forward, ask for a lot of steps knowing it will stop when the camera reaches near focus for that lens.
I have had many cameras, it seems, inludinv the first mirrorless Hasselblad (not ready for prime time), the first FUJI GFX (same), about four different Sony DSLRs, Pentax, etc., several technical cameras, and many Nikon cameras, several of which I have.
If I don’t ‘like’, meaning actually become fond of a camera, I tend not to keep it.
The Hasselblad X2D is, for me, a keeper, and I am already knee-deep in it, and am happy about that too.
Of course, I have to get it to perform, but patience and steady practice for me does the job.
I wish I could afford more lenses, but for now I have to be happy with what I have, at least until I sell enough old F-mount lenses to afford them. I am selling about fifty lenses on Ebay to pay for the X2D and add a couple of lens. And I know something about lenses.
I have been interested in APO (apochomatic) lenses, which are highly-corrected lenses for a long time and the sharpness and lack of aberrations they offer. I still am interested, but one thing I am learning from the X2D is that technical perfection is not everything. What is satisfying is sharp images with very good color.
The resulting photos, even if technically imperfect, are also as important as the process through which they were made. And while the X2D ‘appears” to defy gravity a bit and to me looks pretty good even at impossible F-stops as to diffraction… I can live with that, contrary to my previous view. Trying to perfect the ‘perfected’ no longer interests me… so much.
And so, I seem to be saying that I really like the Hasselblad view, at least so far.
Yet, I believe I am saying something else as well. And that is while sharpness, lack of aberrations, and other corrections are important, they are not everything. Technical perfection is the starting place, but not the final result.
There are many admirable photos that lack all of these technical qualities. Yet, I am surrounded in my studio by some of the finest APO lenses that can fit on my cameras, so I don’t lack those.
Above all, it seems to me that I am trying for photo images that scratch a certain inner itch I have. They include sharpness, but also are enhanced by the out-of-focus areas we call bokeh or bouquet.
I am a kind of Impressionist, seeking to capture an inner impression that can’t be put into words. Heaven knows I have tried to write all this out.
I don’t do photography professionally and never had that desire. I do it because I like and often love to do it and for no other reason. I also do it because close-up photography was also for me a gateway to dharma, the means through which I had a major spiritual or dharma realization, which came not sitting on the meditation cushion as I assumed it would, but rather out in the wet grass crawling around on my belly in a summer meadow, watching the sun come up. That was where I got Insight Meditation, at least where for me, it was permitted. Through photography I celebrated that insight breakthrough. I am more familiar with Mother Nature.
I can also do this with words, at least I try. And although words are said to not be able to express the ineffable, I get as close as I can.
And since “a picture is worth a thousand words,” with photography I sometimes can say through a photo something closer to my deeper impressions than even words can come.
And so, while sharpness, clarity, and a photo that is well corrected are important, IMO these are not as important as communicating the impression I try to get across to myself.
Photos are not only techniques, but also about spirit and communicating spiritual insights.
The Hasselblad X2D with its100 m-pixel sensor and the amazing HCD lenses is like a gift, albeit an expensive one.
I have an adapter that allows me to use my collection of Nikon F-mount lenses, and also use the X2D on the back of my Actus Mini (G) technical camera.
Here is the image of my first shot with the Hasselblad X2D… catapulting me into a new photo realm.
EMAIL Michael@Erlewine.net
Hasselblad X2D, XCD 45P lens F/4
