The Hasselblad X1D-50c delivers when image is everything
Photography
After putting it off in favor of review of more practical products.
My gift to myself for 2017 was finally getting to the Hasselblad X1D medium format mirrorless.
A gift I really didn't want to return thanks to its portability, quality and good light.
It's pretty small for a camera with such a large sensor.
Though the lenses keep it from being really compact or lightweight.
With the 90mm lens it weighs about 3.2 pounds, but its got a comfortable grip, and excellent touch screen and a touch screen interface.
Large but kind of low resolution electronic view finder.
And a well designed dust and weather sealed aluminum body.
The control layout is pretty nice as well.
Mode dials cleverly designed to be rotateable when up and locked when pushed down.
When most of the manual controls operate via the touchscreen.
There are a few direct access buttons for sensitivity, white balance and focus, plus front and back adjustment dials.
The battery pops right out without a compartment cover, which is really nice since the battery life is awful especially in the cold and you'll be swapping frequently.
Since it's slow to start, you can't really conserve battery by turning it off.
In some ways it can tell the camera has its roots in studio photography.
The contrast auto focus is slow and frequently unreliable.
Especially using the wide angle 45 millimeter lens.
It doesn't help that the shutter can be a bit twitchy and shoot while trying to prefocus.
Thankfully, the manual focus works well, and there is that dedicated focus button.
I was also kind of disappointed in the image noise at high ISO sensitivity night time images.
The high ISOs are great in good light, but in the dark, you do get a lot of banding noise.
