The Hasselblad 907x Is A Joy
The more I use the 907x, the more I love it.
Inspired by this pile of leaves I scooped up out of the driveway, I made this autumn still-life with my really slow camera — the Hasselblad 503CXi and my 120mm Zeiss. The aesthetics of the leaves in various states of decay seemed beautiful in soft north facing light. I set up a tripod, set the ISO on my CFV 50c II digital back to 100, then slapped it on the ancient 503. Of course I wanted a bit of depth of focus so I shot at f/22 and 4 seconds of exposure. The way that back starts to count out the seconds when it hits 2 is great.
The shot you see is strait out of camera as rendered by Hasselblad’s Phocus software (free, what a bonus given how brilliant the iPad and iPhone versions work). Hasselblad does have a talent for digital color, just gorgeous. The old-school rendering of that Zeiss 120mm Planar is charming without being decidedly retro, there’s just something pleasing about it; Sharp and detailed without being harsh.
After wrapping up with the 120mm and 503CXi, I slapped the back onto the 907x. I only have one XCD lens right now, the tiny but brilliant 45P f/4. I do want a 90mm or a 135, or a 120… I really want one of those new versions… see why I don’t have another lens yet? I’d be broke about a week starting down that path.
I’ll stick with my one and only tiny all purpose 45mm for now. For the heck of it I made a hand-held shot of that same scene after ratcheting the ISO up to 1600 and spot metering the exposure while monitoring the live view. Of course I set the WB to “shade”. Getting as close as the 45P would allow me resulted in the following photo, again strait from camera to Phocus and a JPEG conversion.
Sure, it’s not quite as crisp but most of that is due to the extremely shallow DOF. Proof I don’t need another XCD lens at the moment. It looks great, it’s super easy to handle, and it matches up with the 907x body in terms of it’s size and convenience. I love that little 907x so much I went all in. I have the grip (which I use mostly when shooting verticals). I even grabbed the absurdly expensive, completely inaccurate optical viewfinder. Honestly I bought the viewfinder mostly for the cold shoe for a flash trigger. Having messed with the actual optical viewfinder a bit, I did find it super fun to use in some circumstances. It certainly reminds me of using the 907SWC, maybe I’ll get a super-wide XCD instead?
I guess the reason I shared this little story of my slow camera kit is to encourage you to find a camera and an lens you just love to use and embrace it. Make what you can make with a small kit and ignore the rest. My pared down medium format kit is really small already but this episode has inspired me to just get out of the house with the 907x alone, no bag, no other lenses and enjoy the outdoors while the color and the weather lasts.