The Joys of the 65:24 Aspect Ratio Hasselblad XPan and FujiFilm GFX

I have been an employee at Beau Photo for 15 years, going on 16 years now, and during my tenure, I have never used any of the film cameras in our rental department.  Ever. Even with cool cameras like the Fuji GA645Zi, Linhof 617S, Hassellblad 503CX and Hasselblad Xpan – shamefully – not once have I spooled up a roll of film in any of them.  I used to shoot a lot of film back in the day, and spent thousands of dollars on film & developing. I have spent hundreds of hours in the B&W darkroom, sometimes 12 hours at a time working on that perfect print!  I switched to mostly digital in 2005, after I was hit by a taxi that ran a red light and bought my first DSLR (Minolta 7D), a Leica M6 Titanium and a couple of Rolleiflexes with the partial settlement money from ICBC (thanks, ICBC!).  I used to do a lot of street photography on B&W, but as time passed, more and more of my photography was shot on digital. I then got hooked on wildlife photography circa 2008, and stopped shooting film all together. In the past year, my interest in wildlife photography has waned and I have found myself interested in street photography again, and my attention turned to the film cameras under my care in the Beau Photo Rental Department.  I recently took out our Hasselblad Xpan while out & about with coworkers and I found it a very enjoyable camera to use.  Its 65mm x 24mm image area on 35mm film gives a unique view of the world.  I’m sure the Xpan is a great landscape camera also, but I think street photography is where this camera shines.

For those not familiar with the Hasselblad Xpan, it, along with its sister camera the Fuji TX-1 is/are a 35mm rangefinder camera with one unique feature: the ability to capture a panoramic image using two side by side 35mm frames for a 65:24 aspect ratio.  The Xpan can, of course capture a regular 35mm frame too. There were three lenses available for the Xpan, and the most common two are the 45mm f4 and a 90mm f4.  There was also a 30mm f5.6 lens, which due to its cost is a much rarer optic.  All Xpan frames have a distinctive cutout on the frame border in the upper right corner, which proves the image was taken on an Xpan, which I have included in my scans.

As I mentioned above, I have taken a liking to this unique camera, and have shot several rolls of B&W film in the past few weeks exclusively in the panorama mode. I shot mostly on Kodak Tri-X overexposed by 1 stop with a red 25A filter, developed for 400 ISO, and souped in Rodinal/Blazinal at a 25:1 ratio for higher contrast.  I also shot on one 12 years expired roll of Agfa APX 400, but this resulted in a very thin negative afflicted with reticulation, which gave a kind of cool aesthetic, as you can see.  I think I will be shooting with the Hasselblad Xpan much more often.

Below are some shots with the Xpan during a photowalk with my esteemed colleague, Nicole in New Westminster, where we made a pitstop at a cute coffee shop called Handworks Coffee Studio run by a very nice Japanese family.

 

“That’s fine and dandy, but is there a digital equivalent to the Hasselblad Xpan,” you ask?  Unfortunately, no, but you can of course crop to a 65:24 ratio in post with your files, but I feel the results are different if one has to do the mental gymnastics of shooting with the intention of cropping later.  It’s much easier to compose and shoot with a visible frame of reference.  So what can be done?  What if you use a camera that has a built in 65:24 aspect ratio feature?  What camera has this?  Well, as it turns out, all of the FujiFilm GFX cameras have this feature built in!  Yes, you can shoot in Hasselblad Xpan mode all day and not use any film!  The Fuji GFX cameras also have B&W film modes with simulated filter settings for yellow, red & green filters!  Huzzah!  AND you can bracket up to three different looks, where the camera (depending on your settings) will output three different JPEG files and a RAW file. With a 102MP Fuji GFX, you get a very workable 50MP cropped image!  The following few images were taken with a FujiFilm GFX100II body with a GF 32-64mm f4 lens.  This lens, when used at the widest setting closely approximates the field of view of the Hasselblad Xpan 45mm f4, and when zoomed in to 64mm, approximates the view of the Xpan 90mm f4 lens.  I used the ACROS film w/red filter simulation, and added a simulated Hasselblad Xpan frame.

 

We do have a Hasselblad Xpan with the 45mm f4 & 90mm f4 lenses in the Beau Photo Rental Department for $90/day or weekend.

We also rent the Fuji GFX 100II & 100S bodies as well as a great selection of lenses.  To simulate the Xpan trio of lenses on the GFX bodies, you can use the GF 64mm, GF 32mm & GF 23mm focal lengths.