Press photographer tries the Hasselblad H3D mark II

No I haven't gone loopy, I had the opportunity use a Hasselblad H3D Mark II – 50Mp with a 120mm macro for the first time the other week.

The Hasselblad representative turned up at the studio and loaded the surprisingly good Hasselblad Phocus software onto my laptop. I was to be shooting headshots as part of a beauty feature and had set up a modeling dish as my main light source with a lit white Colorama background. A silver reflector at waist height would help to fill the eye sockets.

The Hasselblad was shooting tethered via a firewire to the laptop and allowed us to see each image as it was taken. With the very high file size and the MacBook Pro laptop it was important not to fire away regardless as you would with a 35mm because the images were being shot to the computer hard drive and it took a moment to save.

It's a different way of shooting but the results were quite amazing. People spend a lot of time raving on about low light chips and frames per second and sometimes the real elements of photography can be forgotten. The purism and simplicity of the Hasselblad and the emphasis on lens quality speaks for itself. Forgive me if you use a 'Hassie' on a regular basis but this was a first also for my two press photographer colleagues who had joined me for the shoot. We decided after the shoot that the camera was a lot more usable than we had expected and talked about how the camera could be used in a press environment perhaps for feature work. The camera was light and could be comfortably handheld on a field assignment.

In the studio with the Hasselblad H3D Mark II.

After selecting the images in Phocus, I exported them as TIFFs and pulled them up for a little airbrushing. Every eyelash of the model was a clean sharp image and precise retouching was easy.

I wouldn't want to shoot a riot with it and at £16k you'd be crazy to but I'd love to try it on some general news features despite the inevitable sarcastic remarks from my colleagues.

It seems a Hasselblad is still a viable option for high end press photography in this 35mm dominated market and with the image syndication business at a highly competitive peak, it could just be the camera you need to attract the big picture libraries, perhaps giving you the business edge.