Not aimed @you in particular Carsten
That's very nice, but a white lie
At least wrt. this thread. I learned a lesson here.
It seems that Hasselblad is the prime beneficiary more often than not of a negative slant on pretty much everything they do - and yet if one looks at the facts - they have produced by far and away the most intergrated working right now without requiring rubber bands and gaffer tape system
Okay, I will be a sitting duck for the following summary of "What Hasselblad Has Done Wrong (TM)", tongue-in-cheek:
- Designed a mickey-plastic-mouse looking body. We do have a sense of aesthetics around here, and two-tone is so out-of-fashion. Worse: they could fix it with each new generation, but don't! Grey, black, dark blue, just not beige, like a cheap PC, or the ceiling in the bedroom.
- Closed their system after two open generations. This is far, far, FAR worse than just designing a closed system in the first place, and got people really angry. Some are still angry about that one. Some still have H1s and H2s with no intention of upgrading. And they get angrier by the day, as Hasselblad releases lenses they cannot take full advantage of, unless they ditch their Phase One and go H3D.
- Related: bought a not-the-best digital back company for the purpose of going closed. They are in the same ballpark as the others, surely, but as soon as you *take away* the possibility of a slight improvement, people are unhappy. I think there would have been a lot less bitching if they had merged with Phase One. How do you do hour-long exposures with an H3? Answer: you don't.
- Designed lenses which require software corrections for ultimate performance, and market it as better. (Leica are my hairy-chest, all optical, ultimate performance, perfect solution heroes, and I would plan for an S2 if I could change its back and use a waist-level viewfinder, for which I have a weakness). Some of these lenses don't even have the image circle for real 645, so the coming sensors will have people swapping lenses like underwear, but at a much higher loss.
- Switch from a traditional German lens company (Zeiss) to a less-well-known, and less-well-respected Japanese lens company (Fuji, which is less well known as lens maker, but not in general). I am not saying that the lenses are worse, but you don't muck with people's religion. Okay, perhaps Zeiss turned them down but it is still Hasselblad's fault. Somehow.
- Drop prices massively with no warning. Anyone who has bought a Hasselblad H3D-39 or 33 recently must feel just shafted, but rudely.
- And the latest: add optics to a bellows! Why not just release a new lens with sufficient image circle to achieve the same as the 28mm, or even better, release the bellows with a mount to use existing LF lenses, like the Rodenstock or Schneider. Oh, I know, maximize profits. While it is a very clever design, every extra optical element reduces performance, especially when the original optics were not designed with it in mind, which I presume is the case for at least some of the supported lenses. It is like a tele-converter, but in reverse. It may be really good, but it is still worse.
So, there you have it: innocent as a lamb. I understand Hasselblad's decision, but they are rather selfish, and I understand the dissatisfied users too.
