Hasselblad X2D 100C Review

Set an X2D file beside anything from a full frame camera and the argument stops. The sensor measures 43.8 by 32.9 millimetres, the raws are 16 bit, and the fifteen stops of dynamic range Hasselblad quotes behave like fifteen stops when you lift a shadow four stops in post. Colour out of the box needs no work, which is the actual reason working photographers buy into the system rather than renting one.

The body is the best built object in cameras: milled aluminium, a cleaner interface than any Japanese menu system, a terabyte of storage inside so there is no card to lose, and five axis stabilisation, which no medium format camera had before this one. Phase detection autofocus arrived with this generation and is quick, quiet and accurate on a still subject, though it is not tracking anything.

The leaf shutters in the XCD lenses sync flash at a four thousandth of a second, a genuine superpower in a studio. Then the ledger. There is no video mode. Not a limited one, none, on a camera that launched at 8,199 dollars while a Fujifilm GFX100 II offered the same resolution and a full video stack for similar money. Files are enormous and the camera is slow between frames. Buy it for one job, portraits and landscape at the highest quality on sale, and nothing touches it.