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The digital age has proven quite challenging for a lot of photographic companies, especially for those from a medium format background. Big sensors and a market a fraction of the size of the mainstream made it a very expensive business, and while many went to the wall Hasselblad has hung on. After a long and pretty dark winter for the Swedish firm, spring sprung in 2016 when it launched the Hasselblad X1D 50C. This small, highly portable and relatively lightweight camera marked quite a diversion from the company’s H series of studio models and, with a price that was attractive at the time, the fortunes of this historic brand were miraculously transformed. Demand exceeded capacity for supply, order books were once again full and a wealthy investor was delivered by drone to inject funds that allowed the necessary expansion. The X1D 50C wasn’t the fastest gun in town and offered a great deal of room for improvement, but with time the updated X1D ll 50C increased reactions and went some way towards making it a modern performer.
This latest model though, the X2D 100C, promises to bring the series right up to date with faster processing, faster AF and a whole new user experience. It also has double the pixel count, and some other surprising new features – including the beginning of a new series of lenses called XCD V.
Features
The headlines around the X2D will focus on its new 100-million-pixel sensor – higher resolution than any full-frame camera, and matching its closest competitor, the Fujifilm GFX100S. It is indeed impressive by any standards, but in a world where 50MP is more than enough for most things, I’m not sure it’s the most important detail of the new model’s specification. What matters more is that the new sensor has phase detection AF, that it is back-illuminated to keep image noise at bay, and that it sits on a
