Let me start with a confession. I am pretty annoyed with myself because I went through another gear change this year. I am tired of myself chasing after attributes of gear I do not own, instead of producing good photographs with the gear I do own. In 2024, I fell in love with digital medium format, only to realize that it really isn't the system for me. Sigh.
By now, I need to accept that playing with gear is as much part of the enjoyment of the hobby of photography for me as taking photos. And to some extent, that is ok. But not when my appetite for gear is overshadowing everything else. I feel I have reached that point and I need to find a way to dial this back. Because it annoys the $^#% out of me. But anyway, here we are, and the least I can do is share my learnings in case any of you is going down the same route that I went.
Shooting medium formal film made me curious what a difference in output I would get from a digital medium format sensor compared to a full-frame or APSC sensor. In the film world, medium format is a massive jump in quality. As always, it comes with a cost. Size, weight, and speed are challenging when shooting medium format film. I don't know why I thought these would not apply in digital medium format. At some point, I am sure I will look back and smile at my naivety. But not quite yet.
I shot with a Pentax K-1 in 2023 which is quite a chunky and hefty camera so I thought that a digital medium format body would not be so much of an increase in weight and handling. I found a reasonably cheap Fujifilm GFX 50S ii. Before I realized it, I owned it. I bought a few lenses as well. I went for the 30mm F3.5 for wider landscape and the 110mm F2 for a more tele perspective. This was a bit stretched on both sides of my usual focal range, but it would work. If I only wanted to take one lens, I would take either the smallish 50mm F3.5 or the amazing but humongous 55mm F1.7.
Filled with excitement and enthusiasm, I started to take photos with my new gear. Immediately, I was blown away. I won't go over my early ravings as I captured them in a separate blog post. I stand by those words. The image quality cannot be beat. The depth of details, the soft sharpness, it is all gorgeous, and truly different from full-frame or APSC. Even if the sensor size difference is much smaller when compared to 35mm film vs medium format film. Even 645 film is much bigger than 35mm in comparison to digital full frame and the size difference to the 'standard' digital medium format sensors in Fujifilm's GFX and Hasselblad's X system. I loved looking at the images.
So if it is all so wonderful, why this post? While I was lugging my Fujifilm GFX system through Slovenia and Croatia this summer, the downsides started to appear. The post-honeymoon phase was kicking in, and that is when I am at my most vulnerable. Digital medium format bodies are too big and too expensive to carry two of them around. I don't like zooms and I don't like changing lenses which means I usually work with two bodies. Given the size and weight, that was not an option with digital medium format. I am not someone who takes a lot of time to shoot, I move pretty quick. That is where the lens changing becomes cumbersome, especially if they are as big as the Fujifilm GF lenses. They are very hard to change simply because of the size and it introduces serious risk of dropping some expensive glass.
The overall weight was also becoming a factor. I wrote about weight before on this blog and somehow I stepped into the same pitfall. Other than the weight, the Fujifilm GFX system is pretty impressive. The user experience didn't gel with me as much but that wasn't a deal breaker. The size and weight were. Instead of looking for smarter options, I somehow managed to maneuver myself into an even deeper investment into digital medium format when I saw an opportunity to trade into the Hasseblad system. The Hasselblad X2D would be a serious upgrade compared to my Fujifilm GFX 50S ii and the weight would remain the same. The newer 'V' prime lenses are significantly smaller and lighter. Pre-honeymoon me did not take long to convince myself that this really was the best system for me. Portable, with lighter lenses, and even better image quality.
I emptied my pockets and traded in my Fujifilm GFX set and there I was, the owner of a Hasselblad X2D with a 38mm F2,5 V and a 90mm F2,5 V lens to match. And then the usual cycle kicked in. I loved the camera. Of course I did. Who wouldn't. It's so much nicer to shoot with than the Fujifilm. The simplicity of the user experience is even better than Leica. And the output was glorious. The 38mm and 90mm lenses are phenomenal and it is incredibly impressive how they kept them so small. The leaf shutter means benefits for people who need high flash sync, but for me this was more of a downside because the maximum shutter speed on the 38mm is 1/2000. However, this was much less of an issue than I expected, also because the aperture, exposure, ISO triangle feels slightly different because of the depth of field changes with similar aperture. The in-body stabilization of the Hasselblad sensor is insane. I could handheld ridiculous shutter speeds. I always thought that sensor size was a big reason for why full frame camera manufacturers couldn't match the Micro Four Thirds stabilization but I was clearly wrong. So far so good.
And then, it was time to pack my bags and come home from the honeymoon. AF is very slow. Even with all updates, I felt the much older GFX 50S ii had better AF. And then there was the issue of the missing joystick. The Hasselblad designers went one step too far in my opinion here, choosing form over function. Having neither a joystick nor a wheel or pad for moving your focus point is wildly impractical. You can use your finger on the touch screen but I did not enjoy this one bit.
The changing of lenses also still annoyed me. And even though the Hasselblad lenses are smaller, the thought of dropping them freaked me out because they are so much more expensive. I also did not have an alternative for an everyday camera as all my funds were now in the X2D and two lenses. That bothered me more than I realized. I did not take the X2D with me as much. Maybe it was the size. Maybe it was the feeling that digital medium format isn't made for snapshots, although this is nonsense. Yes, the files are that big. But storage is cheap so this wasn't really a problem. I did have another issues with the files though.
Due to some historic spat, Hasselblad files are not natively supported by Capture One Pro. The software is owned by Phase One and they have a dispute with Hasselblad. Neither company is willing to place customers first and therefor there is no native support. There are workarounds but I found them all super cumbersome and much more of a dealbreaker than I expected. I even briefly went back to Lightroom but there is clearly no going back to this as I am very happy with Capture One Pro. This turned out to the the final straw that made my camel say "enough already". So I switched. Again. Goodbye Hasselblad, it was great to get to know shooting with the system but sometimes what you love isn't what you need.
I am not yet ready to talk about what I am shooting with now. I need to be sure that what I have now is a keeper. I learned that at least.
I wish you a wise 2025 and may your photography gear related needs and desires be fulfilled, albeit with a healthy dose of restraint.
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