The Curse of the Hasselblad XPan

I had both the X-Pan II and the Fuji G617, sold them 3 years ago when I disposed of almost all my film cameras. Amazing cameras, the X-Pan notably makes a Leica feel insubstantial.

It's surprising there isn't a digital equivalent yet other than the incredibly expensive (and discontinued) Seitz Digital 6x17.

I suppose you could rig something like a trio of Ricoh GRIII or GRIIIx mounted on a rail with three overlapping fields of view, with a single electronic control so they are triggered at the same time, and then stitched later.

Agreed. Another cool feature is that the film is shot backwards - it unwinds the film, then shoots the film in reverse, winding it into the canister. This way, worst case, you loose one exposed frame if the back opens. It's this sort of clever thinking that sets this up as a great camera.

And I also picked one up years ago when they were relatively cheap!

Aside from the pano to traditional adjustment of course, everything else, the winding and the detecting ISO is pretty par for the course for late era film cameras. My olympus point and shoot does all that and more, it also has autofocus and autoexposure (spot and area) and multiple flash settings. Canon also had some very interesting film cameras, they had the eye control AF in them and it didn't come back to the digital lines until recently afaik.

People like film because its a different process. You don't have to futz about lightroom to get the tones you want. You can get great shots with a camera you got at a thrift store. The battery lasts for what, months? The high cost per shot makes you shoot more for quality vs quantity. When I bring my digital camera someplace, there is a tendency for me to take 400 shots and then have a chore later going through that in lightroom. When I bring a film camera I take only a few dozen if that, and don't fret or do any post processing because I just accept how it develops and scans at my local lab. Post processing takes time, even if you have an automatic import workflow that takes time to establish and set up and chances are you are tweaking it all the time anyhow depending on lighting conditions.

Anecdotally the film lab in my city has been very busy with mostly younger people. Every time I go to drop off film I am waiting in line. People still shoot film and still buy polaroids even, despite this age of everyone having a phone that looks like a spider with the amount of lenses on the back.

I shoot a Leica Q2 and a Contax G2, amongst other cameras, and the Q2 is fantastic, but there are things that the G2 lenses can do that nothing else can. I don’t care if it’s film or a sensor inside.

I also shoot with an old Rollei SL66. There are things that camera can do that no mirrorless can do. Reversible lenses? Scheimpflug adjustment? If you understand the tools technically and visually, then your mind’s eye is just more capable. Either I’m sat at a computer or stood in a darkroom - except other people do the darkroom bit for me, I have to do the computer bit myself.

Photography’s boundaries are no more about resolution, noise, dynamic range or workflow, any more than rock music is.

Sight isn’t in the eyes, hearing isn’t in the ears, defining senses by the sensors gathering the data is simplistic.

I like it because it’s fun. There’s a great deal of intentionality required when you only have 36 (or fewer) exposures, and each one costs you money.

I also have a mirrorless that I use, but my film cameras are much more fun.

First, the attitudes around film v digital in still photography don’t have significant overlap with that of motion photography. Trying to clump the two together with a smug superiority is a misfire. The separation increases when talking about hobby/art still photography and comparing it to commercial cinema.

In fact, decommissioning of cinema film has been a boon for the quirky hobby photography market.

The superior process is the process that works for the person doing it. A photograph is ‘technically superior’ than a painted portrait but it is not a replacement.

> “Note that a Canon 40D, an APS-C camera that came out in 2007, had the image quality of medium format film, with greater dynamic range.”

Yeah, no it absolutely did not. It was 10 noisy megapixels and I have had one since it came out. The 5Dmk2 was close enough to be equivalent if you didn’t like grain. Also, a great deal of 40Ds just broke for no reason while sitting quietly in the shelf, quite literally dead. I have unmaintained cameras from the 60s that work fine.

Long before digital was a high fidelity choice, plenty of people intentionally chose ‘inferior’ video formats because they wanted the look it gave. People sometimes cut and paste with scissors and magazine pages, even if Photoshop is ‘superior.’

My typical travel camera is a Leica with a DR summicron 50mm from the early 60s, but the film shortage messed up my plans. I get nailed by the super shallow depth of field on the hasselblad all the time, if you’re at 2.8 or 4 it’s so much more shallow than 2 on the 35mm. So I just take any low light photos with my iPhone and don’t waste the film, I’ve missed too many times. The downside to travelling with 120 is now I have 18 rolls of film to dev and scan, instead of 6 rolls.

Gave my Mamiya RB to my daughter. We travelled with it — in a van one summer (driving up the California and Oregon coast). Fun times.

I prefer the smaller TLR's like the Yashica these days.

Yeah, got a Yaschica Mat 124G. It's a great film camera.