On a recent trip to the Maniototo I was shooting the Hasselblad 501cm film camera. One evening up the Manuherikia River the skies clouded over. There wasn’t enough light to shoot without a tripod so I put away the film camera and experimented with shooting the Hasselblad lenses adapted to my digital Sony a7rii.
Shooting down the valley towards the Home Hills. 50mm, stopped down, 1/400s.
Why adapt Hasselblad lenses to a digital camera? If you already have Hasselblad lenses (or more generally any lens from the film-era), modern mirrorless cameras are a way to continue shooting the lenses. Hasselblad make ‘CFV’ digital backs for the V series cameras, however they’re priced similar to a lens filter for a Leica. I’ve never shot with one, they’re probably great, but the CFV bodies lack IBIS (inbuilt image stabilisation). Modern mirrorless cameras have IBIS, so you can shoot in a lot less light for a fifth of the price.
Briar Rose.
Lens focal length is the same in medium format film as it is in 35mm full frame. In other words, the 50mm Zeiss Hasselblad lens is a 50mm on the Sony. 50mm is my go-to on full frame so I mainly shot with the Zeiss 50mm FLE f/4 lens, the widest lens for the Hasselblad I own. Also pictured are a couple of shots on the Zeiss 250mm shot at f/5.6.
Hawkdun Range. Taken on the 250mm shot wide open at 1/60s -- acceptable.
Shooting is straight forward and inline with any other adapted lenses. A few things to call out:
- Manually set the focal length of the lens you are shooting on in the camera settings to get IBIS. This gives you another few stops of light, reduces image shake in your pictures, and allows you to shoot the 250mm lens handheld. If it’s bright enough out you don’t need IBIS (ala shooting film). You must remember to either disable IBIS or set it to the correct focal length. IBIS on with the incorrect focal length set will result in blurry pictures!
- Hasselblad V lenses have the shutter in the lens. When shooting on a digital camera body it doesn’t use the in-lens shutter, but rather the focal plane shutter in the camera. By default the lens is wide open and the lens will only stop down to the set aperture when the image is being taken. Every lens has a ‘stop down’ lever (acts as a depth of field preview). You must enable this, otherwise the lens will always shoot wide open regardless of the aperture you have selected.
- Turn on manual focus assist in the camera body. It highlights in-focus areas in red and makes focusing really easy. The large focusing rings on Hasselblad lenses make focusing easy.
Musterer hut at the foot of the Hawkduns. Taken on the 250mm shot wide open at 1/100s -- too soft for my liking. Likely camera shake.
Apart from the standard 80mm, the Hasselblad lenses are heavy and chunky. I found myself holding the camera and lens like a Hasselblad 500cm. Left hand on the bottom of the lens, right hand on the camera body, and both held low using the Sony’s LCD back popped back at an angle for me to view vertically down. I usually shoot cameras through the viewfinder, though this seemed apt. Old habits die hard – I was too used to the Hasselblad’s reversed and inverse image, so found it entertainingly difficult to frame images.
Background goes blurrrrr. 50mm f/4 handheld 1/60s. The IBIS worked -- no visible camera shake.
A square crop to honour the Hasselblad gods. 50mm focused as close as possible.
FotodioX manufactures many different film-era lens to modern mirrorless camera adapters. Within the Hasselblad V to Sony range there are three options:
- Standard adapter
- Shift adapter (what I purchased)
- Tilt and shift adapter
Aside from normal shift effects of correcting verticals or horizontals in a frame, the shift functionality appealed because of the relative sizes of the image circles. Hasselblad lenses are built to project the image onto a 60mm x 60mm film plane. My Sony camera has the typical 36mm x 24mm full frame sensor. With a standard adapter (or the default position of the shift adapter) the camera sensor lines up to the middle of the projected image giving you the best performing area of the lens.
Due to these relative sizes you can create a panoramic image by placing the camera on a tripod and taking three images: lens shifted left, lens in default position, and lens shifted right. Stitch the three images together and you have a panoramic that shows off the full angle of view of the lens.
Sounds good in theory, and I bought the shift adapter to do above. In practice though the 42 mega pixels of my camera are more than enough to give me an image that I can crop. And modern photo editing software is good enough to stitch a handheld panoramic. It wasn’t worth the hassle of setting up my tripod.
Last light. 50mm, f/4, 1/200s. Exposed for the light, shadows brought up in post.
Quality, contrast, and detail of the photographs is great. It’s comparable to the Sony 24-105mm f/4 lens that I bring on most walks. More than good enough for my needs. Due to the size and weight of the lenses I don’t see myself going out to shoot specifically with Hasselblad lenses on the Sony, I’d pick the Sony E-mount native lenses every time.
For a given project, if my primary rig is the Hasselblad V system on film then I’ll continue to bring the Sony camera and lens adapter as a backup and alternative.
