Hi there, Welcome to my little tribute page to what I consider the best camera in the world, the Hasselblad Xpan. The original version of this page got a lot of hits until it disappeared about a year ago, so this is version two. I'm not a writer or a reviewer, I just want to tell everyone about this great camera.

The Xpan was introduced by Hasselblad at Photokina in 1998 and I found out about it sometime in 1999 and I wanted one from that very moment. In early 2004 I finally got the funds and the balls to buy one so I did it and I have never regretted it. It came with the standard 45mm lens and belonged to a camera collector who only put a couple of films through it, a little while later I bought the 90mm lens and in early 2006 I bought the 30mm lens.

Here you can see that the aperture of the lens is set to F11 and the infinity mark on the focusing ring is set to F11 (on the right) as well, now look at the F11 on the left, this shows that everything from about 1.3m to infinity will be in focus.

A lot of people ask me about the camera and how it functions so I'll do so briefly here. It's a rangefinder camera which means it doesn't use a mirror and a prism to focus like a SLR, it uses a dual viewfinder which is coupled to the lens and when the two images are lined up it is focused. Most of the time though I use hyperfocal focusing which means after determining a suitable aperture and shutter speed I set the infinity point on the lens to that aperture, make sure the subject is within the range of focus and shoot.

The negative size created by the Xpan is 24x65mm which, of course, is panoramic and this is created on regular 35mm film. It also has a regular 24x36 mode and it is switchable between these two modes as many times as you like on a roll of film, except when there is only space for one 24x36mm frame left on the roll. It used to be quite difficult to get Xpan films printed and scanned, here in New Zealand anyway, but now most major photo labs can handle them easily. Some care needs to be taken when sleeving the film.

The camera itself is extremely sturdy, it is very well built and has a good weight to it, it also feels well balanced to hold and is a pleasure to use. It is a rangefinder so it's a little different to use, you eventually learn what the lens captures compared to what you see in the viewfinder. The camera is used mostly in aperture priority mode, you set the aperture on the lens and it sets the shutter speed to suit. The shutter speed is displayed on the back on the camera on the LCD, some people consider this a flaw but you quickly get used to it (Hasselblad fixed this in 2003 by displaying the shutter speed in the viewfinder of the Xpan 2, plus a couple of other minor adjustments).

The infamous back LCD, this is where you see what shutter speed you are set to in aperture priority mode (Tv) and how much battery life you have left. You can also set the camera for bracketing and rewind the film mid-roll if needed. It also has a light.

So there you have it, my little spiel about the Hasselblad Xpan. I hoped you enjoyed reading it, actually my only hope is that someone reads it! I'm sure someone will. If you were thinking about getting one of these great cameras, I hope it has convinced you just that little bit more to get one, you won't regret it. If you need anymore convincing, please check out my Xpan images on Flickr.