Yesterday, The Camera Store in Calgary did a launch event for the X1D and H6D, with a rep from Hasselblad Bron in attendance with a bunch of gear. This included an X1D pre-production unit with the 45mm and 90mm lenses. I got a chance to play around with the camera, but couldn't really do much. The pre-prod unit still was running early firmware that wasn't feature complete, and not fully stable yet. Plus we were not permitted to shoot any take-away photos, as described by others. So it was just a matter of making a few snapshots around the store environment and looking at them on the back LCD.
I do have some provisional feelings on the camera. Some of them come from the fact that I printed the promotional photo prints for the TCS event. With permission, I made a pair of 30x40 inch prints (I work at the Resolve Photo print shop), from example X1D files provided by Hasselblad. They were JPEG's only, and not optimal for large printing as received. But I did a quick bit of tweaking to them and in the end they looked very good on paper at this size. I have a baseline of expectations based on my Pentax 645D and 645Z, so this early print result is very promising.
Handling the camera itself, my initial reaction is that I like it. The body is solid, and still carries a bit of weight from its size and construction, but it has an excellent grip. The grip on my Pentax 645's also is nice but they clearly have more mass and bulk. The X1D grip is nicely inset front & back for secure clasping in reasonably sized hands, with a slightly giving rubberized coating that's easy to hang onto. The lenses are moderately sized for their focal length and aperture, compared to most of my Pentax 645 glass.
The camera's hardware controls are minimal and cleanly designed, as can be seen in the promo photos of the body. It's all very well finished, the buttons & knobs are solid with good feedback. The bare minimum of physical buttons are present, I imagine / hope at least a few will be reprogrammable in the final iterations of the control system. The rest of the functions in the menu system (which in turn are relatively minimalist, at least at this stage of pre-production unit we were playing with) are cleanly laid out. The LCD looks great and feels great in use as a touch control mechanism. Standard smartphone conventions have been effectively employed for the most part -- tap, swipe, pinch, etc. gestures seem to be working as one would likely expect based on familiarity with modern iPhones or Androids. Nothing seems overly gimmicky, it all seems functional and responsive, with some good attention paid to both styling and ergonomics.
The viewfinder is an EVF and I don't have much of an opinion on it yet. We couldn't take the camera outside of TCS, so really all I was doing was aiming around different areas of the store environment. The EVF seemed clear and reasonably responsive. It has a diopter, hopefully it will adjust sufficiently for my aging eyes with their annoying progressive focal glasses. I'm not fond of most EVF's I've ever tried out, so hopefully this will be usable.
The lenses are compact, with a giant rubberized focus ring and no other controls. Everything is electronic, fly-by-wire under control of the body. Test shooting with aim-focus-shutter seemed responsive enough, the weight seemed okay, and it felt good and well-balanced in my hands. I've done some extensive periods of handheld shooting with my digital Pentax 645's, and I can easily see that doing the same with the X1D will be less fatiguing.
The X-to-H adapter should ship concurrent with the body, allowing adaptation of the current generation of larger H system lenses. Indications are that this may well include support for the HTS, an adapter the provides full tilt & shift movements with most H system lenses. The X1D plus the HTS adapter plus the H 24mm or 28mm would be a compelling combo all on its own for me, addressing an important and gaping void in the Pentax 645 system -- no lens movements.
Gripes or issues? A few were obvious, and have been mentioned elsewhere. There's no support for any sort of cable release currently. Remote control is initially going to be achieved with a smartphone app over WiFi (which is built in, along with GPS). I don't really care about that, I just want a wired cable release. Hopefully something will be produced for this purpose, perhaps by jacking into the USB 3 Type C port. Probably it will be a bit of a space issue to support an L bracket, due to the location and size of the port & SD card hatches on the left side of the body. An L bracket is an essential tripod accessory for me; presumably RRS will figure something out that leaves the option open for a future cable release.
I'm still going to try to get my hands on some real shooting time with a production X1D as soon as possible. The Camera Store may have their dealer demo unit around the end of this month. But for now, my early look at files and camera reveals mostly positive factors to my way of thinking. I suspect this is a genuine hot prospect for Hasselblad, and they will sell a ton of them. It might even become something almost "mainstream", for a medium format (ish) camera system, at least equaling and perhaps surpassing what Pentax has been able to achieve.
Certainly I can see one of these coming into my kit. As much as I dislike the idea of going back to shooting two systems, this appears to be a well thought through camera, one of the most interesting launches to me since the Pentax digital 645 system came out. I won't be getting rid of my Pentax kit any time soon because it has too many strengths, and I still love almost everything about what it does. But the Hasselblad X1D system will offer some compelling differences, likely strong enough to go back to shooting two systems again.