Gadgetory

after putting it off in favor of reviews of more practical products my gift to myself for 2017 was finally getting to the Hasselblad x1d medium format marrows a gift I really didn't want to return thanks to its portability and great image quality and good light it's pretty small for a camera with such a large sensor though the lenses keep it from being really compact or lightweight with the 90 millimeter lens it weighs about 3.2 pounds but it's got a comfortable grip an excellent touchscreen and a touchscreen interface large but kind of low resolution electronic viewfinder and a well-designed dust and weather sealed aluminum body the control layout is pretty nice as well mode dials cleverly designed to be rotatable when up and lock when pushed down when most of the manual controls operate via the touch screen there are a few direct access buttons for sensitivity white balance and focus plus front and back adjustment dials the battery pops right out without a compartment cover which is really nice since the battery life is awful especially in the cold and you'll be swapping frequently since it's slow to start you can't really conserve battery by turning it off in some ways you can tell the camera has its roots in studio photography the contrast autofocus is slow and frequently unreliable especially using the wide-angle 45 millimeter lens it doesn't help that the shutter can be a bit twitchy and shoot while trying to pre focus thankfully the manual focus works well and there is that dedicated focus button I was also kind of disappointed in the image noise at high ISO sensitivity nighttime images the high ISO is great in good light but in the dark you do get a lot of banding noise