Hasselblad H3D 31 First Impressions Review

The Hasselblad H3D 31 is a medium-format DSLR, with a 44.2 x 33.1 mm, 31-megapixel sensor. At $24,995, it's a general-purpose camera for high-end professional work. Hasselblad also sells a 39-megapixel H3D and a 22-megapixel iteration. The H3D 31 operates a little faster than the other models, and its sensor is physically a little smaller. Its ISO range runs from 100 to 800, a stop faster at both ends than the other H3Ds, so it may be more appropriate for work with moving subjects than the others.

 

Starting early in the development of their film cameras, Hasselblad has designed modular products. The cameras separate into 4 major components: lens, body, viewfinder and film or sensor back. Connectivity between the components has gotten more sophisticated over the years, but the basic function of the parts has remained the same.

 

The H3D 31 is a 31-megapixel  with a back on it. The back comes off, mainly for cleaning the sensor, but when it's off, the camera body barely differs from the current 39-megapixel or 22-megapixel versions. The focusing screen for the 31-megapixel H3D has a black frame painted on it, to show the smaller sensor size.

 

Film Hasselblads stressed the interchangeability of components. Lenses, backs, and viewfinders could swap around from body to body. That's still true of lenses, viewfinders and film backs but not digital backs. Bodies and digital backs are aligned as a set and aren't meant to be interchanged. Hasselblad accounts for users who may want to mount their backs on view cameras or other devices and provides the means to integrate the backs with other equipment, though they won't achieve the parallel alignment of the body and back set.

 

Backward compatibility has been a hallmark of Hasselblad design, and the company sells and promotes an adapter for using old lenses made for its film cameras on the latest bodies. The lenses that went to the Moon could operate on the H3D 31.

 

Digital Hasselblads record RAW files, in the company's proprietary 3FR format. The cameras are bundled with Flexcolor software, a RAW converter, and workflow solution for Hasselblad cameras and scanners. Flexcolor software is licensed so that photographers can provide it to clients or others who will use the images. Earlier digital Hasselblads recorded DMG files, Adobe's standard RAW format, but Hasselblad now maintains that DMG can't accommodate all the RAW data from its cameras. It's also much easier computationally for the Hasselblad backs to write 3FR files, which improves writing and shooting speed.

 

Because 3FR is proprietary, users must convert the files with FlexColor. FlexColor saves down to DMG, TIFF or JPEG. Part of the commercial H3D 31 user's thinking must include decisions about how to deliver images – as 3FRs, which not all customers may be used to, or as DMGs or TIFFs, which discard some of the camera's raw data.

We haven't tested the H3D 31 in controlled circumstances and didn't examine any of our own shots on a computer screen. Looking at sample images provided by Hasselblad, it's not risky to say that the H3D 31's image quality is in a different category from standard DSLRs, in terms of resolution, color accuracy, highlight rendering and so on. Furthermore, the difference is big enough to show up in the typical uses for professional digital photography – the images don't have to be enlarged to mural-size to show it.