Woody Campbell
Workshop Member
My Horseman SW-DII arrived last week together with a 35mm Rodenstock APO Sironar. I thought I would share a few notes on it.
The Horseman is beautifully made -it's precision machined out of solid blocks of metal. It weighs a little over four pounds with the lens. The back shifts all four directions up to a maximum of 17 cm. Shifts are not geared, but they are very smooth. There are detents at the center and at 10 mm shift. I thought that I would be using sifts primarily to stitch but was surprised to find the Hasselblad has implemented a live view feature in Phocus 1.0 and the new version of FlexColor so it's possible to compose view-camera style when working tethered. (This works in interiors but not in daylight because the sensor maxes out in daylight in live view mode, even at f22).
The Hasselblad back (in my case an H 39) attaches to the camera via an adapter plate. The adapter in turn attaches to the camera with two knurled cams - very elegant - the adapter is square so the back can be rotated in 90 degree increments. The viewfinder mask can also be rotated 90 degrees.
The Hasselblad back is not powered, so you need to work tethered or attach a Hasselblad Imagebank, a 100 gig external hard drive + battery that Hasselbad sells at the bargain price of $2K, via a firewire 800 cable. I found that it was quite possible to use the camera as a walk around point and shoot with the Imagebank in my pocket.
Here's what it looks like:
View attachment 5052
View attachment 5051
The Horseman is beautifully made -it's precision machined out of solid blocks of metal. It weighs a little over four pounds with the lens. The back shifts all four directions up to a maximum of 17 cm. Shifts are not geared, but they are very smooth. There are detents at the center and at 10 mm shift. I thought that I would be using sifts primarily to stitch but was surprised to find the Hasselblad has implemented a live view feature in Phocus 1.0 and the new version of FlexColor so it's possible to compose view-camera style when working tethered. (This works in interiors but not in daylight because the sensor maxes out in daylight in live view mode, even at f22).
The Hasselblad back (in my case an H 39) attaches to the camera via an adapter plate. The adapter in turn attaches to the camera with two knurled cams - very elegant - the adapter is square so the back can be rotated in 90 degree increments. The viewfinder mask can also be rotated 90 degrees.
The Hasselblad back is not powered, so you need to work tethered or attach a Hasselblad Imagebank, a 100 gig external hard drive + battery that Hasselbad sells at the bargain price of $2K, via a firewire 800 cable. I found that it was quite possible to use the camera as a walk around point and shoot with the Imagebank in my pocket.
Here's what it looks like:
View attachment 5052
View attachment 5051