Two steps forward, one step back.

Posted by thom August 12, 2024

Two steps forward, one step back.

I’ve long since waxed nostalgic about the OG Canon 5D. Released in 2004, it will always hold a special place in my heart. Not only for its simplicity and robustness, but for the magic it exudes. That’s a thing, it turns out, magic. But why? A big part of it has to do with pixel pitch. In other words, the physical size of each photo site on the camera’s sensor. In lay terms, the individual pixels. The number of those sites on a given sensor is what we all then know as the camera’s megapixel count. In the case of the 5D, a seemingly-modest thirteen million-ish. Plenty it turns out for even twenty-by-thirty inch prints. To get the pixel pitch, it’s just simple math. Divide the sensor width by the number of pixels lengthwise. For the classic 5D, that looks like this:

35.8mm / 4368 pixels = 0.00819 (8.2µ)

The not-so-technical term for a pixel pitch of 8-9 microns is “Fat pixel magic.” There’s that word again, “magic.” So the story goes, since the original 5D was Canon’s first full-frame camera and they were trying to lure still-35mm film photographers to the digital world, they worked closely with Kodak to develop a sensor that rendered color-like film. Fat pixels, a weak anti-aliasing filter and a strong color filter array. Bigger photo sites gather more light than smaller ones. The more pixels engineers cram onto a given sensor size means each pixel is smaller. That’s simple physics. Bigger pixels create signals that need less noise reduction, and digital imaging can be distilled down to those two dueling forces: light (signal) vs. noise. Twenty-plus years later and the batch of fat pixel sensors Kodak designed in the early aughts still hold a certain mystique among some of us photographers.

But this isn’t about the 5D.

Every so often, I look at ways to invest in camera gear that will allow me to expand my capabilities. A couple years ago, I bought a drone. A couple months ago, the thought occurred to me how I had a beautiful Hasselblad 500c/m and a handful of Zeiss lenses gathering dust. World-class equipment. It's fair to call the 500c/m the most iconic camera in history. Bill Anders used a Hasselblad to photograph Earthrise on the Apollo 11 mission. Ansel Adams used a Hasselblad to photograph the Moon Over Half Dome. Annie Leibovitz is synonymous with Hasselblad. So is a photographer I greatly admire, Platon. But the last time I used mine was on my second trip into the Enchantments. A long time ago.

I wasn’t thinking though of going back to shooting, developing and scanning medium-format film. Instead, I started down the rabbit hole researching medium-format digital backs for the old Hasselblad. It was a fascinating journey. Although I didn’t get the back I ultimately want, I got the next best: a Phase One P21. (The one I’ll be keeping my eye out for is the larger P25+). Not coincidentally, it was also designed by Kodak. Its pixel pitch? Nine microns. The magic number, just like the 5D. Fat pixels. It was a decent investment, but the most affordable entry into the big, beautiful world of medium-format digital cameras.

To my joy, what a world it is.

According to the serial number, my 500c/m was manufactured in 1979. The P21, again not coincidentally like the Canon 5D, was released in 2004. It’s a CCD sensor rather than a CMOS like the 5D. There are differences but they get esoteric pretty quickly. Possibly as esoteric, I feel that time period was the golden era of camera sensors. Maybe because, again just a theory, engineers were attempting to mimic the look of film. In the case of Kodak and Phase One, medium-format film. Big stuff. Almost twice as big as full-frame.

When my P21 arrived, I slapped it on the back of the old Hasselblad and took some test images. I was worried the back may not be in focus, or that it’d be hard to focus the beast in general, or any myriad of other issues I’d read about when pairing a nearly-fifty year old camera with a nearly-twenty year old digital back.

When I opened the files I had made, I was astounded.

Test shot, H in our living room
Hasselblad 500c/m + Carl Zeiss CF 80/2.8 Planar + Phase One P21

There’s no denying it. The combo of antiquated tech makes for a cumbersome experience. It’s a monster, weighing some five pounds or so depending on the lens. All metal. Since the Carl Zeiss lenses use leaf shutters, the back has to be attached to them with a sync cable. The P21’s display is abhorrent. Everything on the Hasselblad of course is completely manual. Focus, shutter speed, aperture, all of it. It’s essentially a metal cube to which everything gets attached. The P21 is achingly slow, firing off maybe one frame a second on a good day. In order to take another image, the shutter needs to be wound and advanced. Like shooting film. Seriously. Hold still, subject, don’t move! I have to advance the shutter and recheck focus.

It’d be absolutely abysmal if it wasn’t absolutely amazing, and it’s absolutely amazing.

Portraits, K, H and S in the studio
Hasselblad 500c/m + Carl Zeiss CFE 40/4 Distagon + Phase One P21

100% crop (the Zeiss optics are so sharp I can count the hairs on his cheeks… )

The process of making images with a Hasselblad is an otherworldly experience, those faults and nuisances and all. It’s just… magical. The monstrous medium-format sensor creates bokeh so smooth it’s unbelievable. The forty-year old Zeiss optics are so sharp and detailed they’re like nothing else on the planet.

Then there’s the color. Whereas after shooting with a classic 5D for over ten years and now knowing how that camera renders highlight and shadow details as well as color, I’m still learning the Phase One. Unlike with my much-newer Canon R6, where I have to work hard to get the colors the way I’m used to easily achieving with the 5D (and can never quite get there), I could immediately tell the colors off the giant CCD sensor in the P21 render beautifully. Smooth. As importantly, I’m figuring out how it handles highlights. Due to the sensor’s physical size and pixel pitch, the amount of highlight recovery is far greater than full-frame images.

All that said, there’s also no denying that modern DSLR cameras blow away twenty-year old kit in nearly every regard. Shooting with a Hasselblad and digital back, then, is in fact a little bit intentionally the old tech along with the experience of slowing down. Of having to know the camera and the craft. When those two come together, the images are unlike what is possible on smaller full-frame cameras. That’s a fact.

But that fact aside, I’m getting a bit into the esoteric weeds. Digging myself out of that and back into the realm of fat pixels and enormous sensors, of heavy and clunky gear, of new ways to create images, I’m thrilled to have brought my old Hasselblad back to life. To be again in a world of making photographs that take time and care. It’s magical.