Hasselblad intros 50 megapixel H3DII-50 MS with multishot
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted November 19th 2009 12:23PM
posted November 19th 2009 12:23PM
We know that some of you were holding off on last year's Hasselblad H3DII-50 camera. "Why spend upwards of thirty grand," you asked yourself as you patted your briefcase full of Euros, "if I'm going to be taking shots one at a time, like a sucker?" Then you lit another cigar with a $1,000 bill. But those days are behind you, dear reader, because the company has updated its medium format camera for multi-shot action. The new system can capture four consecutive shots by moving the sensor by one pixel between each shot, thereby recording full RGB values at each position. If you're not a current Hasselblad owner (and you're not) you can't take advantage of the trade-in / trade-up process, but you can shell out €23,000 (roughly $34,000) for the H3DII-50 MS. Hit up that read link for much more info.
50 megapixels is massive and so is that price tag. Hopefully they offer financing. It looks like it is amazing for the serious photographer.
Is this the replacement for the Hubble Telescope?
@VampireHunter Z
ROLF
@VampireHunter Z
ROLF... AGAIN!
Site changed the commenting system didn't huh Engadget?
@Andrey They kind of changed the whole site...
"The new system can capture four consecutive shots by moving the sensor by one pixel between each shot, thereby recording full RGB values at each position."
Hwha? My brain is having a slow day. Could somebody brake that down into tiny sense-making chunks?
@Captain Justice As if to emphasize that it could quite possibly be my fault at this particular moment: that should be "break", not "brake".
@Captain Justice The way the pixel shift works, is that each picture only uses 1/4 of the available pixels. So you get four 12.5 megapixel images. Image #1 uses sensor columns 1, 5, 9, 13, etc. #2 uses 2, 6, 10, 14,... #3 uses 3, 7, 11, 15,... and #4 uses 4, 8, 12, 16,...
@Captain Justice
Actually, the way it works is this: A CCD has what is called a bayer mask on it, it makes it sensitive to different wavelengths of light in a grid pattern.
The pattern is layed out something like this:
RGRGRGRGRG
GBGBGBGBGB
RGRGRGRGRG
When you take a picture in single shot, the camera uses the neighboring RGB values to create a single pixel worth of color data.
Multi-shot works by moving the sensor the distance of 1 pixel (on both the X and Y axis using piezo crystals) so that the same image gets exposed to all 3 values, thus giving you a full RGB value without interpolation. Multi-shot comes in 4 and 16 shot flavors, and only works on things that are perfectly still. 16 shot mode with this sensor would give you the equivalent of a 200 megapixel image.
@Theorof
Hasselblad did away with micro-step (16 shot) a few years ago. The older Imacon backs do it, but none of the newer ones do. Just to expand on what you said: This camera produces a 50MP files, a 16-bit/channel TIFF file from this camera is 300MB. The file size is the same in either Single-Shot or Multi-Shot mode, just using multi-shot when you zoom in to 100% the images are roughly 2 to 3 times sharper than in single shot (or nearly all other cameras for that matter) as the camera captured red, green, and blue information at every pixel location and didn't have to interpolate the data, which makes most digital cameras have slightly softer images as the image processing is making up data.
Finally like all Medium Format digitals, the sensor does not have an Anti-Aliasing filter. Pretty much every 35mm sized DSLR and P&S camera has an anti-aliasing filter that intentionally blurs the image before it hits the sensor, the reason for this is if you were to photograph a high-frequency texture such as a mesh or screen the lines could get jagged or worse they'd get a moiré pattern. With the higher MP sensor it's less of an issue, and by using multi-shot it eliminates most potential for moiré without blurring the image.
Got it.
good
I guess if you want to take pictures of the neighboring supernova, here's your camera.
DURR HURR NIKON IS BETTER
But SRSLY, isn't 50mpx. a little excessive?
@Bronzus Not if you're a product, food, fine art, or fashion photographer. You gotta get that much detail for your products. Most of the people at my university (a private art school) would live in a box for the rest of their lives if only they could own one of these...
@Bronzus: i once worked in a studio where the boss had a digital hasselblad (YEARS ago and the MP already was jaw-dropping).
that piece made total kickass pictures (he mostly photographed models with it) and also had a pricetag similar to a car...
@Bronzus It is, however for stuff like billboard it's nice to have the higher resolution. Now i just need a 50MP printer!
@Micah Robinson
While I see your point, if you were to put a ad in print, or the web, TV, etc., there is no monitor/page/screen/whatever to show these tiny details. And while I can understand what @Echuu was saying, even billboards look fine. But it might just be my untrained eye (and I'm pretty aware of this kinda stuff, unlike the average consumer... who is the main market, so wasted effort IMHO).
@Bronzus Not everything has to have a reason to be made. It could have been more of a concept like "look here, we can make a 50mp sensor!"
@Patriks7
But it's not a concept. It's a product.
@Bronzus I don't think you understand what I said. I know it's a product, but maybe the product was made to just show that they can do it.
I'm drooling. I've always wanted a digital Hasselblad. But I just don't have the computing power to handle files up to 50 mp, or the $35k to spend on one. I guess if I had that much money, I could afford the computing power.
Guess I'll just have to make due with my Canon DSLR.
@Micah Robinson
Test
Any idea where we would see an example pic or test shot taken by one of these? I'd like to see what a $35k picture looks like pixel by pixel.
@jdh assuming that at 3mp pic is roughly 512k...
the picture would be roughly 85-86 mb which would be massive and painful to wait till its ready to be seen.....
but it would be awesome to check it out nonetheless.
@jdh Luminous Landscape usually does tests, they have a 60 megapixel image you can check out.
The real kicker is their post on the Canon g10 vs a Phase One p45+ back. In which "no one could reliably tell the difference between 13X19" prints"
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/kidding.shtml
@jdh Just open any fashion magazine and look at the advertisements-- a good percentage of the shots you'll see were taken with medium-format digital cameras such as this.
I'll post one off my retouch machine tomorrow, I shot a close up of someone's bearded face, the detail off the 60mp Phase One is extraordinary.
I shot the Imacon 22mp 4-shot ~5 years ago and it was nothing short of amazing, comparing only to 4x5 film. When my rental choices went away for that and I could only shoot the 39 single shot, I was less impressed, the nearly double pixel count really did nothing for me... more pixels but it was back to looking more like the CMOS Canon cameras.
When I first shot the 60mp P65+ PhaseOne this year, I was amazed all over again. It's not just the wealth of pixels on that camera, the per-pixel quality is simply awesome. They won me over then and I'm unlikely to try the Hasselblad again now.
Don't know which model these are taken with, but they're accessible from Hasselblad's website:
http://hasselblad.se/media/1617422/sample%20images.zip
(250 MB zip with three RAW files)
Ah, thanks. That's what I was looking for. Now I can say, without a shred of doubt or ignorance, that I officially "Don't get it." I didn't see anything there that would convince me to spend $34K on a Hasselblad instead of a Nikon + $10K in optics. Even if I had it so spend. Which I don't. Not even close.
Thats a LOT of pixels
Megapixel Myth anyone?
Megapixels don't mean jack shit if everything else on the camera is terrible. Needs good exposure, a proper ISO range, a very high quality lens, etc. before the 50 megapixels start to matter.
@thebolster
Are you therefore implying that a Hasselblad is deficient in any of those areas?
@Malcolm Not at all, I'm sure that a Hasselblad will actually be able to make use of it's 50 MegaPixels, but if a completely unknown company announced a 50 Megapixel camera then it sure as hell wouldn't.
Just remember people, megapixels really aren't everything in a camera.
@thebolster Hasselblads are medium-format cameras, so their sensors are much larger than what you'd find in your garden-variety dSLR. Megapixel myth doesn't apply since the sensor is physically bigger.
@thebolster The most important factor is pixel size rather than the pure number. The H3DII-50 has a pixel size of 6µm. For comparison, on the Canon 1D MkIV its 5.7µm
@thebolster
Actually, in this camera, yes, mexapixels are pretty much the only thing that does matter.
Being a medium-format camera that's aimed towards photographers who get massive prints made (think billboards) and studio photographers (i.e. for magazines), they NEED the extra megapixels. Dynamic range matters, but sensitivity really doesn't--since they're designed for studio shooting, they can control their own lighting. ISO 50/100 are fine when you have a lighting setup that resembles a portable sun.
"Good exposure"--Wat? You mean a metering system? Pros will be using their own light meter, and it's not like they can't manually bracket shots.
"Proper" ISO range--50/100/200 is enough for most pro studio photographers.
"High quality lens"--matters for all cameras, but you're a fool if you don't get a good lens for this body
The megapixels are important for cropping, enlarging, and editing, so yes, in this case, megapixels matter.
It's one of the reasons why medium and large format film/digital formats still exist. Medium format is slightly more than twice the physical size of 35mm and is more suitable for large prints.
@thebolster, et al Thanks, everybody, for regurgitating the same old bullshit you read on name-that-photography-blog. Like we didn't already read that crap 100 times. There is no megapixel myth. Pixels are great. the more the merrier. The myth is really that you can buy a crappy point and shoot (or crappy dslr) at any resolution and expect to get sharp, noise free images with a kit lens. As a proud 5D mk2 owner, I'll wager my 21MP against anything lesser you've got, any day.
@Breex243 Those are actually really good points you made, I was going to ask about things other than megapixels myself, but that makes perfect sense for something like this. (Besides, I'm sure it's probably good at the rest as well.)
Now we just need bigger printers
Needs moar megapixels!
Verify yourself already! =D
@N900 I just did but, of course "Mark" was already taken. Stupid engadget, I'd be highly surprised if whoever took it has been around longer than I have but because they launched this new system today, I lost it.
Somehow, I would hate to be the guy who just bought last year's model.
This is obviously a pro camera. Remember that pic of Buzz Aldrin on the moon? Taken with a Hasselblad (although obviously an old-school film one). These are the types of cameras that have film backs, etc. Most people, myself included, probably could not figure out how to work one properly. And I'm a novice DSLR user at least.
A 50 megapixel photo could be blown up HUGE though provided image quality is good. I am pretty sure while 35k for a camera is ridiculous, that these cameras have the potential to produce spectacular photos if the user is talented. And I think they at least used to take Zeiss lenses, not shabby.
Hmm... A 35,000 blunt object :)
Though totally awesome, probably is as heavy as a cinder block.
I bet this thing could take INSANE orthophotos. I wonder if the hotplate over the sensor can be removed so it can take IR imagery? This could be an amazing way to take RGB+IR orthoimagery for GIS use.
Holy Fkin Sht.....Its a goddamn MONSTER.
I don't know why everybody's complaining about the price, if you want to use one, rent it... All you need is the right equipment insurance and a credit card. These cameras/lens combos have defined what the perfect digital image should look like. Hasselblads absolutely suck @$$ to buy though, and have proven themselves to be a horrible investment... They have changed their technology so much and so fast that at such a high price point, it would be very difficult for all but the world's top photographers to get their ROI
@seefx Maybe because most people here would like to have one, not just the privilege to use it.