Hasselblad’s first mirrorless camera makes medium-format look absurdly small

Hasselblad's first mirrorless camera makes medium-format look absurdly small

Hasselblad has been making waves in the photography world. Last April it introduced a medium format camera with an 100MP sensor and now it’s introducing the world’s first mirrorless system.

Compared to a traditional boxy digital medium format camera, the mirrorless Hasselblad X1D is about the size of a ruggedized tablet and comparatively tiny. Though it features a new panel-shaped design, the new camera body and its ergonomic grip takes inspiration from the company’s iconic V-series.

Hasselblad X1D

It’s also not lacking on the resolution front and features a 50MP (8,272 x 6,200 pixels) CMOS sensor, which produces images with 14-stops of dynamic range and 14-bit color. While the camera can shoot video with autofocus, it’s disappointingly limited to 30 fps and Full HD H.264 compressed footage – but no one is really buying a medium format system to shoot video.

The Hasselblad X1D is also designed to take frames between 60 minutes to 1/2000 of a second long, and it features an ISO range of 100-25,600.

Hasselblad X1D

The X1D is thoroughly modern with touchscreen-based interface users can tap around on the 3-inch, 920K dot rear LCD. It’s also equipped with dual SD cards for storage plus built in Wi-Fi and GPU. There’s even a USB-Type C port, though, it only supports USB 3.0 data transfer speeds. Other ports include mini HDMI and audio in/out.

At launch, the X1D will work with two specially developed XCD-mount lenses including a 45mm f3.5 and 90mm f4.0. Hasselblad also plans to release more XCD lenses and an H-Mount adapter, giving it access to 12 additional lenses.

Hasselblad X1D

The Hasselblad X1D comes priced at $ 8,995 or £5,990 GBP (about AU$ 12,054) for the camera body by itself. Meanwhile, the XCD 3.5/45mm and XCD 4.5/90mm lenses ring up for $ 2,295 (about £1,564, AU$ 3,075) and $ 2,695 (about £1,837, AU$ 3,612), respectively.

Lastly, Hasselblad will bundle with X1D with the XCD 45mm lens for $ 11,290 (about £7,695, AU$ 15,129) or both pieces of glass for $ 13,985 (about £9,533, AU$ 18,742).


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