The XCD 30mm F3.5 is a wide angle prime lens for Hasselblad medium format cameras, and with a price tag close to $4000 you expect it to be good. As Chris and Jordan discover, it's an outstanding optic – with interesting bokeh.
Very good comment at the end of the video about the price ! I own a Hasselblad analog camera (and have owned more) , but I do think that the prices of the small (and larger) sensor digital Hasselblad cameras are much too high ! Come again Hasselblad when you can make a sensor in 55x55mm at a much more lower price setting !
This is a nice daytime prime lens. But in low light, well it will struggle against the breed of 1.33 inch sensor phones. It is a 24/2.8 equivalent lens, and if rumours are true, we will soon start seeing cellphones with 26/5.6 equivalent prime lenses, with the S11 being the first one. Now 2 stops of light is still a lot, but it is tiny given that the cellphone gets in your pocket and does so much more!
Being born in Sweden I have a soft spot for Hasselblad. But as a D850 shooter, I'm still wondering looking at these test images, what is so unique with these images that I couldn't reproduce with my camera (or a Sony)?
Good job Chris except for what comes across as a shameless Sony plug. If I could afford to have more camera systems then my work horse Nikon d850 I’d buy an SL2 and a XCD 2, would prefer 100mp though, as secondary systems. Sometimes I simply enjoy doing personal projects and fun slow photography. Heck I’d go to 4x5 or 8x10 film for fun. Different strokes for different folks and one persons work horse is another persons toy. Just wish I could afford and justify the toys....
So, the bottom line would be to get the Sony 7RIV with the Tamron 24 f2.8 and save yourself a lot of money. Hell, you could even add a Tamron 28-75 F2.8 Di III RXD and Sony FE 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 OSS 'G Master' lens and save a lot of money AND have a much more versatile, three lens system for less money.
A more valid comparison would be the older GFX50 or pentax 645z with a mitakon 65mm f1.4 or a vintage lens
Looks like DPR is getting infected by Sony.
The tamron fails badly in flaring and lens breathing, coupled with a body that only has AF as its advantage against the other mirrorless 35mm cams, and you would be wasting your precious +$3000. No medium format shooter is that obsessed with AF.
Yes you can get the Sony a7r4 etc but some people get more joy out of shooting with the Hasselblad and some people loves shooting with the Sony more. And the feeling you get is something that for many trumps specs on paper. To be honest all cameras today are so good so pick the one that both fits your needs and Wallet and you have most fun with
But the Sony does not take a better photo, even in that limited test scene.
If you compare the portions of the images of people, the Hasselblad skin tones are far superior. The Sony skin tones are pretty bad. This is one of Sony's weaknesses: skin tones. In fact as a general rule the Sony colors do not match up well with the Hassy.
The Hassy is also sharper and shows more details.
So I would give the win easily to the Hasselblad in this case. That doesn't make the Sony a bad camera, and it's definitely a more versatile one. But in pure IQ, the Hasselblad wins out.
People buying Hasselblad or Leica are just NOT interested in what Sony does. You are just not going to drive a Honda if you can afford a Bentley and love driving it.
Even if that Honda is overpowered these people will just NOT care!
These are the same people that buy themselves a Rolex anytime over an Apple watch for that matter.
one of the most expensive milc cam is equal to civic? interesting. don't like the car analogy, but i'd rather say that sony is fully loaded bmw 8...
Thoughts R Us, that is an old comparison, the print has faded. add any new camera and the results will be highly similar. there is no „superior“ colour output, only personal preference...
I don't know by which mental gymnastics one would arrive at a conclusion that the 50 MP Hasselblad has more detail than the Sony 60MP sample, but it most definitely does not, and it is no kind of close call:
Reilly, I don't know how the operator is expected to turn pixels into more pleasing color. DR can help, not px.
NemanRa, preference, sure, but Sony fans are so unwilling to let that test speak for itself they're claiming moving sliders in Lightroom, or weird calibration procedures, will fix Sony colors. I would like to see the helpful, actionable version of this claim, "read this guide which will explain how to do it," instead of attempts to shut down the thread by shaming people as incompetent operators.
what the studio test shows to me: - Hasselblad needs manual moire reduction. From what I've read the algorithm has a detail cost so they leave it off; it's possible to apply to the whole image but preferable to mask affected areas. - Hasseblad colors, even without Xrite / Expodisc features in phocus, are unusually good. - pixel shift can be a big deal. With all the competition $0.8k - $6k offering pixel shift I'm not pleased Hasselblad's holding it back until you pay $40k.
btw, all seasons of GoT were shot with lenses with octagonal bokeh balls.
another comparison for you: for 3000 less i can get a phone that takes wide angle pictures as well! which makes the hassy and the sony redundant, don´t you agree?
That's not quite true; they tend to review a range of products in terms of price.
But what's wrong with them reviewing high end stuff? It's like car magazines when they test drive a Ferrari or Lamborghini. It's still interesting even if one cannot afford.
Huh? The DPRTV videos hardly represent the scope of their total coverage, and if anything Chris & Jordan are usually quicker to post a video of mid-range cameras than the rest of the staff is to publish the full review...
In short, you're way off. On brand for the average DPR comment tho, wouldn't be DPR without curmudgeons and incessant belly aching.
It's mostly a matter of extremely small volumes. A lot of FF lenses are more complex, and some even have similar sized image circles, but they have a vastly larger addressable market to amortize costs over.
...so, yes? Because the marginal returns of MF are so small that it's hard to see it gaining a huge market share as time goes on. The history of photography has ever and ever been towards smaller formats, not the opposite...
The larger sensor will cost more, and the larger glass elements in the lenses will cost more. Production runs will not be as large and so that keeps costs higher as well.
But Fuji is trying to change the cost equation a bit; their MF cameras and lenses are less expensive to equivalent offerings from Hasselblad. And they are great cameras and lenses.
Pentax did a lot to change the cost equation a decade ago with the 645D and 645Z, but it didn't have much impact on the market overall.
The trouble, of course, with the Pentax system is that the bigger your sensor, the more problematic the mirror box is because it grows in size cubically. Which is why 44x33 mirrorless seems so impressively small in comparison.
Ironically, MF is probably the first system that should have gone mirrorless, considering the minimal user market requirements for good autofocus, burst rate, and read-out speed.
Adroole writes: "The history of photography has ever and ever been towards smaller formats, not the opposite..."
How true! And of course we see that with the advent of smartphones and their popularity. In one sense it's smaller sensors to the extreme!
But interestingly enough, what we also witness is that as the dedicated camera market shrinks, what tends to remain are the higher end users either interested in specific high end functions, or those who want a clear differentiator with smartphones in their IQ, or those who value as much the experience of using a dedicated camera. So the market niche that remains tends to go in the opposite direction.
That's one reason why I think in the longer term, if Fuji keeps up the product line, that their MF cameras may become the next FF in terms of being the must-have larger format alternative to the smartphones. They keep driving the costs down, they keep improving the AF, they even added IBIS to one of their cameras, etc.
Google search BOKEH = 85M hits Google search PHOTOGRAPHY = 21.75B hits % of photography world concerned with bokeh = 0.4% or 1 in 250...? They can all be found on DPR...
@biggercountry - I'm not sure that Canon's choice to address the concept on a special variant of a $3,000 short telephoto lens made only for a system that represents about 1% of the total ILC market reinforces your argument that more than 1 in 250 photographers are super concerned with bokeh...
This thread should qualify for statistical malpractice. Neither the stat about Google searches or the size of the market for that Canon lens is in any way a meaningful indicator of the interest in bokeh.
The bottom line is that we don't know; no one polls or takes data on this. But bokeh has been a tool of photographers for a very long time and does have its uses.
But...and again, it's not statistical proof, but it is interesting to note: Apple and Google and Samsung and other smartphone companies, which make the cameras that the vast majority of people use, definitely see bokeh as a feature that many are interested in. Hence they invest a lot of money in developing ways to replicate bokeh in their cameras and market it.
Also, when it comes to stand alone cameras and lenses, one doesn't need a large market to justify the product. Hasselblad only needs a very tiny percent of the market to succeed.
@ Androole - as noted above, that ratio is conjectured and otherwise irrelevant. The fact that a major manufacturer would consider "quality of bokeh" a design priority for any of their products IS relevant.
Sure, only a minority of photographers care about quality of bokeh. But that is changing. I believe that simulated/computational bokeh in smart phones is what has been driving the conversation, and I very much doubt that feature would even exist if there wasn't significant interest in the "effect" of shallow depth-of-field. And that is in the vast consumer market.
And when consumers convert to amateur and prosumer photographers, they probably bring that interest with them. I have little doubt that is the reason why DPR addresses it in their reviews.
I appreciate that Chris pointed out the Sony + Tamron comparison. I'd probably prefer an a7RIII + 24 mm GM. I'm sure there is some benefit from these small medium format sensor cameras but I've never seen it with the advent of the most modern FF sensors.
Anyway, good point 3pgrey, well corrected is nice, but that's another case where I don't see much compelling evidence that poorly corrected = sadness. The Nikon S 14-30 was subject to much discussion when it was released but I still find it very appealing.
@fuhteng Imperfection can be beautiful, but it's also not the easiest to work with; it might suit one photo but not another. And it's also a rarity to see very well corrected lenses and the photos stand out. There's 2 things that make an otus 28mm stand out; the way it handles highlights, and a flat field curvature you won't find on other 28mms. Other f1.4 28mm don't have as shallow dof because of that curvature and it stands out
Same body and pixel-count, but the Hasselblad X1D II 50C moves quicker and offers the biggest rear screen in the medium format market – and it costs a lot less than the original.
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