Influencing!
I love what I do but it would also be cool if I could make a living as an influencer reviewing camera gear. JK, that probably wouldn't be fun and I would only review super niche (and bloody expensive) gear like what I'm reviewing today. I mentioned it in last week's newsletter - I got to spend a weekend playing with a Hasselblad 907x. It is a quirky digital medium format camera, 51 megapixels, crazy high resolution, classic Hasselblad design, also nearly impossible to focus, ergonomically weird, and totally unique. It's basically the sensor from the Hasselblad X1D but in a minimalist box form, similar to the classic analog Hasselblad cameras.
One of the appeals of this camera is that you can use the digital back with classic analog Hasselblad camera bodies and lenses. I didn't have a chance to try that, I haven't shot on a classic Hasselblad since college. The old film versions look cool, and were capable of taking great pictures, but I found them to be kind of brittle. My college had a number of 500 bodies and they were always broken. Vintage camera nerds go nuts for the weird "ka-chunk" noise they make when you hit the shutter, but the sound throws me into fits dredging up memories of washing precious studio rental time trying to get the cameras to work. "Ka-chunk! Nothing, Ka-chunk! nothing. Ka-chunk! I think maybe it worked this time. Ka-chunk! I give up."
Anyway, I found the 907x to provide a little bit of the aesthetic quality and appeal (and Hasselblad's wonderful color rendering. Look at those reds!) but with all the same amount of frustration as the old bodies.
The autofocus and focus peaking control are very unreliable, but if you really slow down and zoom in and manually focus you'll get usable shots. There's also no handle or eye-piece, so you are best off with a tripod and using the back lcd screen, which articulates to 90 degrees, so you can look straight down to see your image, similar to the top-down viewfinder of the old Hasselblads. This camera rewards slow and deliberate shooting. It was fun to change my process from run-and-gun wedding and portrait shooting.
Although this camera isn't designed for quick and easy shots, I thought I should test it (and my skills) at capturing snapshots of my wild kids. I was surprised that with a little practice I could get some decent shots of my fast moving kids and convey some of their energy and feeling.
These snapshots were fun but when I could get the kids to stand still and get more formal portraits I felt the real power of this camera.
The deliberate portraits were really working for me so I was eager to use the camera for a portrait session I had booked that weekend. A very gentle and kind person named Coral reached out to me about doing a session out where she lived. We made some pictures by The Saco River, at the Indian Cellar Preserve in Hollis, Maine.
Taking portraits of a stranger with this camera was fun from the start, you can break the ice by saying "Hey, wanna see the cutest camera ever made?" It worked. We got some good shots! The high resolution helped capture some really great detail of the landscape surrounding Coral.
As much as I loved shooting with the 907x I have to admit that my favorite shots from this session were shot with my usual camera, the Nikon Z6II, with an 85MM 1.8 lens. The Nikon shots have a shallower depth of field because the lens is longer and have a wider aperture than the lens I used on the 907x which was a 45mm 3.5 (about a 35mm equivalent on a full frame sensor). It's not just the depth of field that I like better. I think the Nikon shots came out better because I was working with my automatic brain. I was in the groove and I wasn't slowed down by the process of shooting with a clunky camera.
Am I going to buy a 907x? No, not unless I win the lottery. It was fun to play with for a little bit and it was fun to change up my methods a little and slow down. Ultimately, I felt like I could spend more energy connecting with my subject when I was working with easier equipment. It's important that I can stay present with my subject when I'm shooting and not fuss with technical things. Which ones do YOU like better??