HASSELBLAD 907X 50C

A giant step forward for the design of medium-format digital cameras

- Rod Lawton

The Hasselblad 907X 50C achieves two remarkable things. It’s an affordable entry point to Hasselblad’s modular medium-format system, and it also resurrects the classic Hasselblad 500 film camera range, at a price that makes bringing these cameras out of retirement a feasible proposition – especially as many are still working today.

Hasselblad’s modular medium format cameras now come in two types. You have the big, bulky and expensive H6, the latest in the Hasselblad H series of digital SLRs. This is sold with a 100MP digital back, with a sensor roughly the size of old medium-format 645 (6 x 4.5cm) film, once you allow for a few millimeters of rebate around the film area. This is the so-called ‘full-frame’ digital medium format, and the H6D-100C costs around $33,000, body-only.

Now we have the 907X, a smaller camera with a smaller 50MP sensor. It’s still medium format, 67% larger in area than full frame. Think of it as having the same relationship to ‘true’ full-frame medium-format as APS-C sensors have to full-frame.

This is still a big sensor, and more to the point, the fact it’s not ‘full-frame’ medium format makes it massively more affordable. It’s still a little more than the best full-frame cameras, but it’s one-fifth the price of the H6D.

We presume the 907X 50C uses the same sensor as the Hasselblad X1D II 50C, and it certainly uses the same XCD lenses – it can also use all HC/HCD, V System and XPan lenses via adapters.