Performance & art

The X1D does a great job of capturing a broad range of colour information, and a slight boost in saturation can produce very pleasing results 30mm f/3.5, 1/500sec at f/3.5, ISO 100

Hasselblad's XCD lenses deliver excellent quality 30mm f/3.5, 1/180sec at f/4, ISO 100

Here, the shadows were raised on the left to reveal details that most cameras would lose 30mm f/3.5, 1/2000sec at f/3.5, ISO 100

At a glance

• £8,388body only

• 50MP medium-format CMOS sensor

• Uses XCD lenses

• ISO 100 to 25,600

• 3in 920k-dot touchscreen

• 2.36MP XGA electronic viewfinder

Sitting in the press conference, I was immediately enamoured with it, I have to admit. I swallowed the PR spiel, I lost my typical journalistic cynicism. Why? Because it was something truly different, it was beautiful and it was exciting. During the press conference in Gothenburg, I received a call from the BBC technology team asking me