Hasselblad H4D50, field report

[[email protected]]

I never liked the look and feel of the modern Hasselblad cameras. But that was before I tested and then used the new H4D 50 on a job I tried to shoot last year on a P45+ with a Mamiya body.

The problem with last year's setup was that half of the frames I shot produced black frames, half of the frames I got a picture from were slightly out of focus as I had to shoot at max. f 5.6 (back-/foreground blur) and the focus recompose technic didn't work (naturally). Lucky me I had my 5DII....

As the same job came around again this summer I decided to give the new Hasselblad a fresh look and found the true focus feature to work as advertised and thus beeing exactly what I needed!

As I wasn't really keen on learning yet another software I gave the P45+ on the newest Phase One body another chance  (putting the black frames down to bad luck) but was surprised to find the shutter lag to still be annoying and the personal ease of use inferior to the Hassi.

(To avoid Phocus I even tried to use CR on the Hassi files but even with a custom made dng profile they were inferior to the native software which was easy enough to deal with in the end)

Day one were full length studio shots of people wearing tight sport suits producing enormous moirés (no AA). Thanks to the Phocus moiré filter that was easily dealt with: Using this filter gives you a .psd file with two layers. No filter applied to the background layer, layer one with filter, allowing to paint in the corrections in the places needed.

Day two was outdoors, more reportage with no time to loose. The Hasselblad was simply a joy to use!

But of course there's not just praise for this tool:

- battery life is very poor, after about 230 shots (interior, without chimping) you need to change

- battery charger takes forever: 75% reached in about 90 minutes, taking another 10 hours or so to go to 100%

- ISO 100 superb, 200 o.k. , 400 if you have to, 800 in available light no go !

- I still find the viewfinder to bend....


All in all this for me is the first convincing MFD camera if there is enough light!

[gazwas]

I thought Phase One/Mamiya had eradicated the shutter lag with the new DF camera?

I only have experience with the Mamiya 645 AFDIII and that thing was terrible to use for anything fast moving. Are you saying the new DF is slightly better of about the same. Also how does the H4D50 compare to the Canon 5D in regards to shutter lag?

Cheers, Gareth.

[jduncan]

Hello. Can you share some images (h4d) ?. I am wondering  about the black frames. I guess your subjects are quite dynamic.  Sorry: what do you mean by bend? (change form??)
Thanks in advance.

[[email protected]]

Gareth, yes better but not on par with the Hasselblad.

Shutter lag was no issue at all. Of course you can work faster with a 5DII (frame rate and autofocus), the H4D slows you a bit down without getting in your way. You might end up with less pictures but probably with better ones....

[[email protected]]

To jduncan:

Sorry but I don't think that it would be very useful to post any images as it it is not about image quality differences but about handling.

The black frames remain a mystery. They tried to reproduce the effect in Denmark but couldn't.

By bend I ment deformation: you look through the viewfinder at a rectangular thing and instead of seeing straight lines you look at (very slighty) bend ones.

[jduncan]

Thanks a lot. Maybe some of the hasselblad guys can comment on that. It could be annoying for the architecture photography set.

[Quentin]

I now own a H4D-50 and it is a very well thought out system.  The 28mm wide angle is exceptional (found a used one at a decent price), the 50mm decent and the 120mm macro essential if you do any kind of product or macro work.  If I want to go longer I'll use the Sony A900.

You mentioned that 100 ISO is superb.  50 ISO is even better.  I was against integration when Hassy first went down that path but the system works together so well (and I should  mention the HTS 1.5 in that context) that it seems like the only way for MF manufacturers to go.  As for Phocus, its quirky but it works.  Nothing bent after processing in Phocus.

[Nick-T]

- battery life is very poor, after about 230 shots (interior, without chimping) you need to change

Just a note on battery life. The Hasselblad batteries take a few cycles before coming up to full capacity, so if yours were brand new that would be why you had short battery life. They also have a built in PMU which can be reset if performance degrades over time.
Nick-T