Hasselblad introduces the 50 megapixel H3DII-50
By Nilay Patel 
posted Jul 7th 2008 11:17PM
posted Jul 7th 2008 11:17PM
[Thanks, Douglas]
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meh
I agree...meh!
We should get David Pogue to re-do that infamous test where he goes on the street and ask people if they can tell the difference between a high end DSLR and a good point -and-shoot.
your posting rights should be revoked.
meh is right.
Hasselblad has moved to a closed system since the H3D. Meaning you can't use digital backs from other makers like PhaseOne, Leaf, etc. The H1 and H2 were open systems.
Kinda stupid to lock people into a system when you're talking about components that cost tens of thousands of dollars. The new Mamiya/Phase One system are completely open (the new 645DIII); as well as the Leaf/Synar. Meaning you can use any back (including their rivals) and can even use old Hasselblad V, Contax, Pentax and Zeiss lenses on the newest Mamiya body.
Also, max ISO is limited to ISO400 on the new CCD sensor (800 boost);. These Kodak CCD sensors are also very dated in terms of technology compared to the newer CMOS in the DSLRs. Would have actually like to have seen some improvements on the numerous flaws of the system instead of just another mega-pixel boost. Being that they are using the Kodak CCD the 50-megapixel sensor will find its way to Leaf, PhaseOne, etc that also get their sensors supplied by Kodak.
You can buy this or stich two images taken with the forthcoming Sony Alpha 900 (or the rumored Nikon d3x based on the same image chip) - with the announced 24.6 megapixel full frame sensor it would be about the same. (since this h3dii-50 was twice the size of a fullframe sensor)
Sweet, now I can finally make that ridiculously high res porn site to piss off anyone not using a dedicated fiber optic internet connection. Mwuahahah....
I'm in for some of that lol.
"If you can't see the enter button... you can't afford it."
Sounds good, just be sure to include thumbnails please! ( i would hate to wait 25 minutes to load a ultra high res of a pimply blond twig)
I'd rather buy a car
C'mon what do you think will attract more chicks some car or this monster... oh wait...
I'd rather buy gas
Have we hit film resolution yet? Can we finally get rid of film?
...Let the battle begin! :)
Depends on the ASA (ISO) and grain size, but yes, some types of film have been surpassed.
Ah, but I use to use a bromide paper from Ilford that had a contrast range from the deepest blacks and the purest whites.... I haven't seen paper like that in 20 years....
@The Steven
You haven't seen it in years because the highly toxic bromide rendered you blind?
This is a studio camera. The only people who use film in a studio application use large format.
And as for art applications...Resolution doesn't matter that much, and people use film for its look...
@Chuckels
Toxic? Ha!
I'm still waiting for my arms to fall off. I've been up to my my elbows in Acufine, Diafine, D-76, Microdol-X, Technidol, various developers, stops, fixers, C-41, K-14, you name it, if it existed between 1979 and 1989, I've used it.
If you cut me, I'll probably bleed Dectol.
Tech-Pan Rules!
damn this makes me feel bad about the xti i just bought.
This is very impressive, however you will pretty much need to have a hard drive teathered to this thing to store any amount of photos. still cool though
actually, I've seen ads in magazines for cameras like this and they come bundled with a new Mac Pro.
lol getting mac pro with this thing is like getting a 2 gig sd card with an xsi
Many times the body and lenses are free when you buy the digital back. The digital back is 90% of the cost of these medium-format systems. For instance, Phase One will give you Mamiya 645D body and lens if you buy their digital back (which ranges from $14-40k).
The reality is that technology in the bodies of the Hasselblad, Mamiya aren't that sophisticated (they are approaching ancient). Also, the lenses aren't technically advanced like the dSLR lenses with nano-crystal coating, image-stabilization, USM AF, etc. All the technology is only in the CCD sensor that Kodak makes.
The camera is only useful is a very narrow studio setting, and the lenses use bulky/ancient leaf shutters on them so that they can have high flash-sync speeds which is crucial for studio pros; outside a very limited range (ISO50-100) the camera is almost useless. But that's not the point of the camera, its designed to but the best in the studio environment accompanied by tens of thousands of dollars worth of studio lighting to pair it.
I'd much rather buy a new computer, a car, and a high end DSLR from Canon or Nikon.
Nikon and Canon DSLR's are (mainly) for on the road commercial applications, and amateurs. This is for the studio.
If you would rather get all that stuff, you obviously don't need this.
50 megapixels sounds as ridiculous to me as a 5 petabyte hard drive. But I guess you'll need a 5 petabyte hd if you have one of these cameras.
I guess explains why we sold one of our H3DII-39's at work.
One.
How many did you stock?
I doubt there will be too many midnight openings for this camera.
H3D is what it better give me for that kind of price tag.
That, sir, was awesome.
Well played.
Head. I get it now.
This thing isn't meant for the hobbyists among us or even for the professional wedding photographers with $8,000 Canon bodies.
Hasselblad's are basically designed for extreme studio photography, and for situations where images by necessity need to be insanely large - you don't honestly think the latest billboard advertisement was taken with a Nikon D3 do you? Obviously, it's easy to mock the 40K pricetag and point out all the wonderful things you could purchase instead, but remember this is designed for corporations and photography businesses - not for one-man operations or to capture your son's latest soccer game.
Also keep in mind that 40K is simply the body only. A standard 50mm lens, which can be purchased for around 80 bucks in a Canon mount, might run 3K in Hasselblad territory; and you pay for a real difference.
Coupled with the fact that you can easily make a camera's worth of profit from shooting for a big spread or billboard, the payback time is pretty quick.
Most of the time these medium-format digital are rented (they go for around $500-700 for a rental). Few independent photographers purchase them outright (though some do). Hasselblad has a lease program for their cameras, and if you think about it $50k really isn't a very high business expense in reality.
For most photographers there really isn't too much of a point to really own one outright since new backs come out yearly and spending $30-50k for a product that's going to be outdated in a year is kinda pointless compared to renting (and charging the client for the rental costs) and always having the best possible equipment.
Its very rare to need anything over 20-megapixels in even the most extreme situations, and you can just rent the high-megapixel digital back when you do. For work that requires huge resolution you'll be compensated anyways. But I feel as these newer pro-dSLRs get better and better the market for medium-format digitals is rapidly shrinking (the flash-sync speed is the biggest current flaw of dSLRs for studio photographers, not image quality).
"you don't honestly think the latest billboard advertisement was taken with a Nikon D3 do you"
Nope. Probably with a Canon 1Ds Mark III. Billboard are printed at such a low-rez that an extreme Mega-pixel camera isn't really necessary. I bet there aren't more than 50 studios in the whole of NA that could possibly need a back like that. Most will probably rent one if they need it.
When we bought our H2 we had to decide between the Hasselbald 39MP back and the Phase One 22MP. When we told clients each 39MP file would be around 100MB, they all said they wanted the smaller file from the Phase One.
And the bad part about this is you're still suck using a Hasselblad system.
I'm a Phase One/Contax user and wouldn't switch from the Contax platform for the world...
Of course, Contax gear is only going to be "easy" to get for so long since it's now out of production, and who knows what Phase One will do with regards to making backs for Contax cameras since they're out of production and Phase now has its own Mamiya-based medium format digital system. I might just end up eating my words and shooting with a Hasselblad digital system in 10 years :).
It's an interesting business we're in, these days.
so, who would use this? Someone taking photos for extremely big graphics, like billboards as pete suggests?
And do they have any job vacancies?
fashion photographers, fine art photographers, celebrity portrait photographers, serious stock photographers, magazine lifestyle photographers, landscape and architectural photographers...
pretty much any kind of *serious* shooter whose subject is predominantly still life, or at least stationary - as 1FPS doesn't make it too easy to use for any kind of high-speed action work.
Fine art, where this is the cheap option...
One day, Cruse will rock my world.
I would say fine art is still dominated by film...And I doubt there are that many studio fine art shooters.
In fact, if you watch the photography shows on Gallery HD, most of the photogs they profile use film. Although, they usually use large format.
I've never used a Contax camera but there's certainly nothing wrong with Hasselblad's products. Sure, the lenses are damn expensive, but you pay a premium for a good reason; and the build quality of all their gear speaks for itself.
so when I walk around with this camera, I have to connect it to a laptop strapped on back or does it use CF cards?
At 300MB per frame, I don't see how CF cards would be useful at all. Maybe to store 10MP JPEGs as thumbnails or somesuch?
@Za, the RAW file size is actually around 65MB. It processes to a native 300MB file.
my 32 MP Phase One P30 back gives me just over 100 frames on a 4GB CF card, if I remember correctly (I usually shoot tethered).
at 1 fps, would that be a regular exposure, or is this a scanning camera?
Does anyone thinks that a higher megapixel camera takes better lower resolution photos or are all the same for same resolution??
for example: is taking a 5mp photo in the same quality, when it is taken by a 8mp cam or 10mp or 50mp cam ???
???? (sorry for poor eng of me :)
Well, it depends. For example, a 6MP digital SLR will pretty much always have better images than a 10MP or 12MP point and shoot because of the size of the sensor. Furthermore, this thing right here has a sensor significantly larger than that of any common SLR, including high end [we are talking US$8000] Canon or [US$5000] Nikon. As a result, it will give better absolute image quality. Whether you will see the difference or need the difference in what you print is a different question entirely.
Never, ever, apologize for your not-too-perfect English. Em, unless you are writing this as a native English speaker.
No. A collection of 50 MP shots are big, but not 5 PB big.
this could have amazing implications for space exploration, imagine a rover with this thing on it.
Props to you for thinking outside the box. Good show.
Or you could use a full-frame 6x6 film camera, which has more resolution, then scan it.
Oh wait, Nasa astronauts already do that. Or have they switched fully to digital? I doubt it.
They can't have high res cameras on a rover that transmit the data back in real time...the uplink is simply too slow.
So, nice fail.
With 50 megapixels, you don't need a rover for space exploration... Just point this beast of a camera upwards and Martians will be complaining their privacy has been invaded.
Yeah, because it's easy to take physical film out of a satellite/rover and process it.
I can totally see that working
haha KipHT, you do realise that DSLR means Digital SLR, i can only assume that you dont, oh and since when are film cameras rated by megapixels, maybe in some alternate universe or something, but not this one as far as i know.
want.
It all comes down to the reality that you can buy the expensive Nike sneakers, but it will not make you Micheal Jordan.
I wonder if there are any insane gearheads that buy digital backs like this. I always assumed that they dare not venture out from their full-auto Canons and Nikons.
id just like to point out that 50k for a body and lens is cheap compared to say motion picture cameras.
Red camera 20k body which is cheap
how about, the theoretical price of the panavision 35 mil cameras being around 350k for a body...and thats the old ones
the panavision genisis is quoted at more like 5-6 hundred K
oh and 70mil or imax cameras cost close to a mil a peice.
and thats body only.
with tripods that cost more than your high end dslr...a matte box that costs the same price as the kia your drive,
what about glass. I laugh at your dslr glass, and point you to say Zeiss god like lenses with the Etek sensors that monitor your focal length/zoom length and aperture at around 100 times a second.
each lens costs close to the price of this large format camera...
now talk about say...imax glass, or a custom stereo parascope to shoot proper 3d optics...and that damned tube with glass in it costs more than the hasselblad camera and it doesn't even work by it self..you still need a lense anda camera..
If motion picture gear has a focusing mechanism that's so good, why was it that when they were filming the final Lord of the Rings scene the entire shot was out of focus? The actors gave it their all when Froto was leaving for the death ship and it turned out to be out of focus. They had to reshoot the entire scene over again and the actors had to do it all over again. That's just one example. There are other examples of out of focus shots even ones made today. One of the blockbuster movies out today has an out of focus shot.
I guess all of them use the ol' tried and true tape measure instead of the expensive autofocus mechanism.
AFAIK, all Cine cameras/lenses are manual focus.
For all the people saying "id rather buy a car" and etc... you are clearly not anywhere near the target market.
These cameras are for big name studios to use (aka users dont buy them) in shoots that will likely end up on billboards, high dpi glossy mags, and etc... more pixel data also allows for more precise and sophisticated editing.
I'm 100% aware of the target market... I'd (emphasis on ME, not the target market) still rather buy a car with my money than this.
How many cars do you actually need? There comes a time when you might want to buy something other than a car.
Did you guys who don't 'get' 50 MP have a problem with Kodachrome 25? Fact is, screen technology will be good enough at an acceptable price point that you'll want still more in a decade or two... and how long do you want your shots to last anyway?
When you get 10' or 12' OLED screens running at somewhere from 96-300 ppi, just figure out how many pixels you'll want, rather than extrapolating. Back in 2002, BusinessWeek ran a story on OLED, suggesting wall-sized screens within 20 years for not much more than paint. I'd say their prediction seems not that far off, given how far we've come from the 1200-1500 dpi micro-displays the story was based on.
50 MP is a no-brainer.
Could you buy insurance on this? what if you dropped it/accidentally crushed it. do you think that you could get it insured just in case something happens?
if not i would be so fucking scared to even touch it, even if i did work for a multi million photography studio that does big billboards, i would be petrified.
I'd be so excited to use one.
Yes, there is a problem with Kodachrome 25 -- namely that only one lab in the US develops it now and that lab sucks huge. Now, Velvia 50 on the other hand...
And really, 50mp isn't that huge a file for photos. If you scan 4x5 sheet film at even 300dpi you're getting files that big. And 4x5 is small in art -- 8x10 is where the big boys play.
Jason, as to insurance, yeah. If you were to buy one, it'd be like any other $35,000 business tool/machine/whatever. You'd have to insure it or you'd be completely insane.
One thing people haven't mentioned is that Hasselblads require a pretty steady stream of maintenance and care and that's not cheap at all. And that no studio that buys one of these and relies on it is only going to buy one. Failure rates may be low, but on a shoot any failure is a catastrophic failure if you don't have a backup body.
Maybe now someone will finally get a clear picture of a UFO, Yeti, Sasquatch, ghosts, etc.
In related news, I'm still happy shooting sexy shots with my Sony Mavica... I just wish I could find more 3.5" floppy disks for it.
@ Temple
Really $500-$700 for rental? We rent the 39 kit for $250 everyday.
The program from the big H says we get a new one every six month from them for dirt, rent it out at that price, and sell it for 20k and the end of that six months.
We just sold one of the rentals last week. I guess it was to make room for the new model. I can't wait to play with it!
@ Temple
Really $500-$700 for rental? We rent the 39 kit for $250 everyday.
The program from the big H says we get a new one every six month from them for dirt, rent it out at that price, and sell it for 20k and the end of that six months.
We just sold one of the rentals last week. I guess it was to make room for the new model. I can't wait to play with it!
I rather get this rather than see people saying they should rather buy something instead of this.
Oh wait..
Price in Europe: 30 kilo-euro
OMG 50 MEG! !@#$%
omg 50 meg!
50megapixel isn't very much compared to large format cameras. I would say that when the digital backs reach 400 megapixel then we might have the same resolution and maybe tonality as a 8x10 large format camera can give us. We are far from there today and we will need full 16 bits or maybe more.
I hope this comment shows up like the two I made last night didn't!
TEST!
About time my comments started showing up!
I shot a vegetable/fruit spread that covers 3/4 sides of major brand foods national tractor trailer truck distribution fleet with 4x5 sheet film, 100 ISO and legendary Schneider optics. The cherries were basketball sized and spectacular color fidelity and sharpness viewed inches away. Twenty feet away to take in full image filling tractor trailer spanning such dimensions grabs the eye in way only finest reproduction printer specializing with state-of-art ultra-fidelity can.
The tech who actually achieved that output assured me that 10-20MP DSLR RAW files equally well-shot can process upscaled nearly as well as my gigantic 4x5 reproduced.
Most billboards are shockingly blurry viewed closer than intended fixed viewing distance of hundreds feet away. But tractor trailer huge images have to resolve sharply also three feet viewing distance from surface passing drivers see. The minimum acceptable fidelity standards are achieved today expertly post-processing for over-sized reproduction. Originals far below 50MP become billboards. 10MP images routinely make 4x8 foot trade show panels that sparkle, done right. The 4 foot wide specialists get gradations unpixelated with RAW originals.
50MP captures are vastly more common reproduced magazine sizes. Just like 4x5 film, often printed even smaller. Reproductions really large are tiny percentage of commercial photography. 1/10th of 1% numbers.
50MP is about ultra-high quality images with bandwidth tolerant enough of manipulation smoothly and sizes secondary benefit.
8x10 film sounds impressive, but the reality is it virtually went extinct. I have 3 8x10 cameras, full lens array from 160mm Super-Angulon to 16" tele and haven't shot one sheet in a decade. Finding film and getting processed still today an odyssey. I'm hoping someday breakthrough digital back makes them relevant again.
Even 4x5 film processed is no longer scheduled in my city. All four major labs shuttered with a single one-man lab left that closes early most days with none to run. Ten years ago there were +50 commercial photographers, today a fraction.
Is this typical trend elsewhere in medium cities or just bad location? I wonder because here film isn't even practical option.
I'd give right arm for simple Sony 35mm chip digital back for old 2 1/4 SLR's ripe market. Nothing fancy, just 100 ISO, thethered USB2 capture to laptop, limited to normal 90mm lens pixel well match for 1.5X tele. RAW process ten seconds, AC power. Basic. That would cover 95% studio shots, with DSLR for the rest. 25MP for $1,500 basic module and adaptor plates for all the old 2 1/4's. Who needs $50,000 fashion systems for bread-and-butter still-life jobs? How many hundreds-thousands unused 2 1/4's sales market? 35mm chips will become commodities once Sony's Alpha mass produces.
Tons of people shoot 8x10 on APUG. Look into glazer's camera, they do ULF orders. http://www.glazerscamera.com/kodak-ulf-film.html
thanks BC - I've been panicking about all this and it was good to read someone experienced and with common sense. I trained in photography at college with 35mm and 120film, studio lighting and stuff. It was ten years ago and the college were still telling us that digital would never be as good. I've got got 2 Bronica bodies, lenses, 3 nikons with 5 lenses and a D200 and it is all obsolete now. I just compared some studio tests - one on my D200 (10.5mp) with shots on 160asa 120film scanned in. The digital shots won hands down. Now, the 10.5 seems too small to be considered a professional camera - do I buy a Canon 21mp and ditch all my Nikon stuff? Or do I grit my teeth, take out a loan and get the 50mp Hasselblad? In my town it seems that it's the boys who have the biggest equipment that get the work. The pictures suck but the cllient starts panting when he hears 28mp then 39mp then wow, 50mp! Everything else goes out the window. How can anyone keep up? It's not like in the old days of film when you investing in some great gear and that was it for years. How long will it be before 50mp seems tiny?
But..... will it blend?
Why even bother?
"Meh" nothing, this is a damn impressive piece of equipment.