The Tools of the Trade

One of the drivers behind this project is that I have invested pretty heavily into some good camera gear. Specifically I jumped from basically shooting on an iPhone … to a 100 MP Hasselblad X2D.

It was a pretty big jump.

My friend Nick, who is a professional photographer and a good guy, saw my interest in camera gear and said, “you know, Hasselblad is the Singer of cameras.” He said that, of course, because he knew it would push my button and force my lizard brain to dwell on what that meant … so I bought a Hasselblad.

I had to, I already had the Singer.

It’s 100% true that “gear does not make you a better photographer” and no doubt amazing photos are taken every single day with cameras that don’t cost as much as a 2015 Honda Civic, but let me tell you, the quality of the Hasselblad is unreal. It really is, as Nick said, the Singer of cameras.

I’m shooting four lenses — a XCD 4/28P, an XCD 4/45P, and XCD 1.9/80, and the XCD 2.8/135 with the teleconverter. The glass is heavy and the detail is amazing, despite the overall weight of the platform. And while the hardware is fantastic, my favorite thing is the user interface — super intuitive, not complicated and saturated with options like, say, the Sony A7R V or something like that.

And yes, it’s not a fast camera, and no the autofocus is not AI-powered and mindbogglingly good, and yes, the raw files are massive and require an entirely new workflow to maintain …

But it’s a great experience to shoot with the system and, despite knowing better, my lizard brain is convinced that the quality of photos I get from the X2D are better than I would get from my iPhone.

Stupid lizard brain.