I’ve been a Canon shooter for many years but when given the chance to try a Hasselblad I jumped on it. I must admit that they weren’t on my radar for gear I was looking at buying but now I’m drooling. I’m so honored that I was given this opportunity.
Here’s some pros and cons that I’ve found in my time with the Hasselblad X1D:
Pros
- The resolution is amazing (I could read the vitamin bottle from taking a photo across the room). 50 MP with 100 MB file size.
- Large touch screen with pinch and zoom capabilities. Loved this feature. You can also touch to add the histogram or hide it.
- Mirrorless so it’s more compact yet really sturdy and well made. Smaller and lighter than my Canon 6D.
- Many focus points, just touch the square you want on the digital screen (can be hard to focus on smaller objects in the distance and easy to change from MF to AF with the same button)
- Two card slots because the files are very large (the file size requires larger card sizes or you’ll constantly be needing to clear your card)
- Goes up to 25k ISO. It’s noisy but it makes a night scene look like daylight hours.
- Long exposure goes just over an hour without bulb mode
- When taking a long exposure it shows a countdown on the screen
- The timer has more options than just 2 and 10 seconds. It also has a self limiting option
- You can play an image and see it in the viewfinder
- Your friends will be fawn over it
Cons
- Learning a new system
- Digital viewfinder can be slow and easy to trigger when looking at live view on the screen if anything (strap or hand) goes over the viewfinder, live view gets switched off
- No Android app for my red dress “selfies”. I had to get help which is hard for me to do
- My ND filters didn’t all fit the lenses so I was sometimes pushing the limits to get that silky smooth water that I love. This was not the fault of the camera, merely the shooting conditions.
- The files are so large (a great thing!) that my computer can’t even load a preview
- The burst mode is a bit slow, so it’s not great for catching fast action
- Battery life is not great with the big sensor and screen. I would suggest for all day shooting that you have at least two batteries or make sure that you turn it off or put it to sleep when you aren’t shooting.
- The price is high but can be totally worth it for selling high quality images at larger sizes
I only had a limited time with the Hasselblad camera so I’ve been trying to visit all my favorite places to take photos and see how it looks with a really high resolution. It’s been fun and really great to see these places blown up on the screen. I can’t wait to print one and see how it looks.
The biggest downside of the camera for me was that I couldn’t take the selfies that I’m used to without having an app. I either had to get help from my husband to push the shutter or to try and timer it. I’m much better with my live preview on my Canon Connect App.
Here’s some of what I created with the Hasselblad. You can see more on Instagram, and as always, buy a print if you fancy one 🙂
