i've had hasselblad's long rumored x2d 100c for two weeks now i've taken over a thousand photos with it and i can confidently say that it is a great camera but it has one major downside and quite honestly a niche group of people that might actually be able to own it i'm back versace welcome back to full frame bud the 8 100 x2d 100c is utterly hasselblad which means that it's incredibly well built and it takes stunning photos but it does it pretty damn slowly and in the mirrorless camera megapixel race the x2ds 100 of them is only beaten by fujifilm's gfx 100 and 100 s's 102 megapixels the x2ds digital medium format 43.8 by 32.9 millimeter backside illuminated cmos sensor physically makes a full frame sensor look baby and it provides very high quality 16-bit photos with 15 stops of dynamic range many photographers will argue that more megapixels doesn't usually mean that much greater image quality and i would mostly agree but what makes these photos stand out is hasselblad's true life color science met with a robust sensor and high quality lenses that certainly makes for an image that you feel like you could just reach out and touch for my testing i had access to two new hasselblad xcd lenses the 350 gram xcd 38v and the 376 gram xcd55b that both have an f 2.5 to f 32 aperture and both cost 3699 any xcd lens will be compatible with this camera it's just that these new lenses have a better design and faster focusing systems they are certainly not cheap but they are small and relatively lightweight for being all metal and made for a medium format camera i also think these are the nicest lenses hasselblad has ever released for a digital camera i love the h's around the ring and this hasselblad logo on the side is just i don't know super nice not to mention these metal lens caps i mean come on this is so cool hasblood will also be releasing a 4 299 xcd 90v lens that is a bit heavier at 551 grams i digress this is the type of camera that you take photos of like cracks in the sidewalk and you show them to your friends and you're like yo bud look at this crack in the sidewalk it's so crisp it's like crisper than what i see you know okay on average a 3fr raw file which is the raw files from hasselblad from the x2d are around 216 megabytes they are big boys and all those can be conveniently stored on a one terabyte internal drive that has write speeds up to 2070 megabytes per second and read speeds up to 2850 megabytes per second i have been perfectly happy shooting right onto the internal storage of this camera and then downloading it via the included braided usbc 3.1 gen 2 cable now these raw photos they have a great deal of latitude so uh so let's pixel peep when shooting with this system i found it was better to underexpose than over i had a much easier time pulling up the shadows than bringing down the highlights but in low light situations you have to nail the exposure because once you're shooting around iso 3200 or higher the photos will start to show grain in the shadows when pushing those low lights the good news is is that there's in-body image stabilization to help sensors of this size they notoriously show every bit of shake but i was able to comfortably shoot at around like 1 30th even one-tenth of a second sometimes without noticing my handshake all that being said i still found that this camera is far more fun to use when there is ample light and bright bold colors also this camera now goes down to iso 64.
Love that the issue with the x2d is that it's slow it feels like every camera manufacturer has turned focusing speeds frames per second focusing accuracy up to a hundred and when you use hasselblad's latest camera certainly does not feel that way this is even with an improved phase detection autofocus system as opposed to their previous contrast based system they also have upgraded focus modules in the updated lens series but the camera often hunts for focus and in low light it can be hard to get it to focus on anything at all in a later firmware release hasselblad is promising face detection autofocus but at the time of my review it's not available and it is 2022 and not having faith detect on auto focus is uh really a miss another time you'll find this system oddly slow is when using the electronic shutter shut up which is a problem in this city osmoladt told me that because the sensor is so big it takes longer for all of that information to read out when you use the electronic shutter which leads to a rolling shutter problem in still photography because of this i almost never use the electronic shutter while using this camera and another thing i didn't use was video that's because this camera is never going to be able to take a video hello this is edit becca the embargo is tomorrow and a few days ago i learned that the x2d is never gonna get video capabilities that is despite their likely being mics in this camera based on the holes for mics on this camera i did sense the video might be a problem here based on how the electronic shutter was performing but i didn't think that hasselblad was going to give up on it entirely and now i know for sure i've thought a lot about if this changes how i feel about this camera entirely and it doesn't because i've always viewed this camera as a photo first camera i've been using it for weeks only with photo and and i do love using it but that's a huge feature to be missing in 2022 regardless the next section of this video talks about his hardware and how great it is to hold so let's let's get to that the tops and the bottoms are milled from single pieces of aluminum alloy and the front just has this massive hasselblad logo that literally is screaming hasselblad i love it i'd have it no other way the side grip is curved to match the curve of your palm and it honestly makes holding the 790 gram body super easy up on top you have a 1 inch lcd screen that will show the battery percentage when you click the power button once and a hold will turn the camera on a mode dial for switching modes you have your iso you have your white balance and of course your shutter button which is much softer than most of its competitor's shutter buttons it's kind of mushy and i do wish that when it was fully pressed it had more of a clunk feeling rather than its click in the front of the camera under the lens you have a customizable button along with a dial along back you have a dial as well that clicks in this touchscreen is super responsive lcd screen and of course it can come out 40 or 70 degrees the evf really gets in the way of your screen when the screen is out at 70 degrees when looking through the evf there is definitely red and green splitting happening on the outer edges even when using the diopter i couldn't get that to go away much like its predecessor there are only two ports on the side that both open with these like really nice springy doors that just never gets old anyway one is a cf express type b slot and the other is just a single usbc port and of course on the bottom is the battery compartment pop that click down once and out she comes i have been pleasantly surprised with this camera's battery life sipa rates it at 420 photos from 100 charge which is on the low end for high resolution mirrorless cameras but easily got me through a full day of casual shooting you have to keep in mind that this camera will not shoot 420 photos quickly in a day of casual shooting i was shooting around i don't know 150 photos so of course one battery was perfectly fine a new feature to the x2d though is pd 3.0 fast charging up to 30 watts which can take a dead battery to full in two hours and when it's plugged in it has just a really nice pictorial element on top that shows you how charged it is [Music] the x2d 100c really has improved upon so many of its predecessors pitfalls and while there is still so much work to do in the focusing department like there is so much work to do there i really enjoyed this camera and that slow speed it didn't ruin my experience taking photos with fast cameras like the nikon z9 the sony a1 canon sr5 it truly is a rush and their technology is absolutely impressive but there will always be a place for a camera that makes you feel like you're on vacation rather than a race track sadly though that eight thousand one hundred dollar price tag will keep most of us from being able to enjoy it i mean okay the the empty nesting orthodontist the lifelong hasselblad shooters or maybe the commercial photographers they won't blink an eye at that price for most enthusiasts looking to shoot digital medium format the cheaper fujifilm gfx 100s will likely be the system that they choose but i soon think the medium format space is going to get more crowded camera companies are having to compete more so than ever with the cameras in our pockets case in point point shoots are dead iphones are everywhere so the next way to beat phones is to make a large high quality sensor that would never fit no phone and that offers a superior experience that will entice people to actually drag a whole entire device around with them i really hope i'm right because it's about to get so fun if that is true let's go 200 megapixel sony maybe i've heard about curved sensors i don't know it's going to get crazy all right buds i'm better versace thanks for joining me on another full frame