jeudi 20 janvier 2005

Cameras I've Clicked With Hasselblad XPan When my first magazine venture "Darkroom User" was re-titled "Camera & Darkroom" with its avowed leanings towards producing quality - and almost by implication introducing readers to the advantages, or otherwise, of medium-format and larger-formats, a good percentage of readers thought I was severing all ties with the universally popular 35mm format. Although my own enthusiasm for processing and printing film which comes in sheet form has not diminished the very process and it's manipulative nature has in fact strengthened my perverse urge to extract the utmost possible quality from 35mm which, one has to admit, is a format better suited to everyday situations than any of its larger brethren. I realised that only too well when using a Hasselblad XPan... the panoramic viewpoint did far more in a "creative" sense than I had expected of it and the extraordinarily high quality of the images was unexpectedly good too. I can imagine that a number of photographers after trying the camera for a day or so were equally hooked and purchased one for much of their photographic work... or pleasure. In fact one might only need the basic body and standard (or wide depending on the way you look at it) 45mm lens for most situations. However, the expensive but popular 30mm XPan lens, urging even greater creative freedom in the panoramic 35mm format, has been snapped up by travel and advertising photographers en masse so perhaps I haven't yet truly seen the light with this system (but with my lack of purchasing power nowadays I'm unlikely to). Maybe the public was ready for the XPan when it was launched just over five years ago. It happened at the same time as a bunch of new lenses from independent manufacturers in Japan and from the Leica factory in Germany were announced for the venerable Leica screw-mount camera... and at the same time as there was so much talk of digital taking over photography. As it happened not only were there several fast-aperture optics from Voigtländer released at the time but companies had decide to join the fray with their own niche marketed specialities including, from Konica, the big, expensive and super-fast 60mm f/1.2 Hexanon... all of which partly goes to show that when a movement such as auto-focus or digital advances rapidly in one direction there is a natural tendency and then a reaction to not simply step back in the opposite direction but to return to the more traditional ways of doing things in the darkroom, or with cameras, manually. However, dyed-in-the-wool traditionalists had never expected a 35mm camera from Hasselblad... and when it arrived not only was it 35mm but "panoramic" too. And it didn't stop there... the normal 24x36mm 35mm frame size and 24x65mm panoramic capture could not only be done on the same roll of film but rapidly changed on the fly! Some no doubt thought such a feature was a gimmick which would not catch on... but, my oh my... how they were wrong. The interchangeable normal to panoramic and back is such a success that I still think now what I thought those five years ago... that if I had to make a decision on which camera to own (and only one allowed) it would be the XPan. In fact I would go as far as to say that I would not change my mind even if there would only be one lens allowed as well... because I would, even given the choice of the three available 30mm, 45mm and 90mm, choose the standard 45mm lens to go with it. This has been strengthened in my mind because for the past five years or so I've been primarily a standard 50mm lens-toting photographer. Whether it be on my Leica M3 (Dual-range f/2 Summicron), either of two Nikon F2 plain-prism bodies (50mm f/2 and f/1.4 Nikkor), Lotus Rapid View 5x7 inch (OK it uses a much longer focal length but the 210mm Nikkor for 5x7 inch film is the equivalent of a 50mm standard for the 35mm format) and even on my (now sold... merde) Leica IIIf Red Dial (I only ever used the Red Scale 50mm Elmar). Side note... I have to ask myself every day... what am I doing with all the other lenses of varying focal lengths if I don't use them? But when I ditch the lot you'll be the first I tell whether it be in happiness or woe! The 45mm Fuji lens for the Hasselblad XPan (Fuji make the body too... and the Japanese home market version called "Fujifilm TX-1" in titanium silver finish with a wood-grained (teak?) hand grip and tan-coloured leather / nylon neck strap looks simply stunning!) is designed to cover the full width of the extended 65mm long format and as such is the equivalent of a 25mm lens when in panorama mode. This is best shown in photographs... the first being a panoramic candid shot taken at a street market in Machynlleth, west Wales. In use the XPan is very similar to a Leica rangefinder camera... quick and quiet. Quicker in fact because of the built-in motor wind... but because of that feature not as quiet. However, that hardly matters in a noisy street environment. The second shot is a true panorama and one which marked the favourite view in all of Wales of Wynford-Vaughan Thomas... and in the hills above where we used to live, his finger more or less pointing to the location of our previous abode. The third shot is a panoramic close-up... taken one-handed of my own lap as I was reading in the sun. The shadows and shapes attracted me but were impossible to frame exactly because of the inaccuracies of all direct vision range / viewfinders. In circumstances such as this it would have been wiser to have taken a few extra frames (strips?) to have made one composition in better balance with the chair's arms... but I was getting through so much film with the camera even without bracketing exposures... and I guess film cost considerations were lurking in the back of my mind. 8:43:03 PM    comment []