The X1D is a new and radical step into a very different market.
The larger sensor also delivers a very different ‘look’, with a much shallower depth of field at any given effective focal length.
The X1D has a crop factor of 0.82x, so the 45mm f/3.5 XCD lens supplied to us for review is actually equivalent to a 37mm lens on a full-frame DSLR, while the 90mm f/3.2 XCD lens is actually equivalent to 74mm.
And it’s not just the sensor that’s different.
The design, look and layout of the X1D is also quite unique.
This is a very modern camera, built from milled aluminium to produce a strong and durable body, and round the back is a thoroughly modern touchscreen display which is just as clean and minimal.
If you don’t like composing shots on the rear screen, you can use the electronic viewfinder.
There’s no pretend pentaprism here, just a slightly raised section on the otherwise perfectly rectangular body.
Other interesting features include built-in Wi-Fi and a clip-on GPS adaptor supplied with the camera and dual SD card slots for backups (saving to both cards simultaneously), overflow (using the second card when the first is full), or for separating JPEGs from raw files.
The X1D is very much a ‘raw’ camera.
The JPEGs it saves are just one-quarter size, and designed for quick reference or sharing, not for final use. Instead, you use Hasselblad’s own Phocus raw conversion/editing software to process your images, or a third-party program like Adobe Camera Raw.
The Hasselblad X1D may be comparatively small, but it’s still a solid and hefty camera, and although the body is impressively light at well under a kilogram, the lenses are pretty substantial and do push the weight up.
This is one of the few cameras, though, with enough height in the grip to let you get all four fingers of your right hand around it, instead of leaving one dangling at the bottom.
The mode dial has an interesting action – to lock it, you press downward against spring pressure until it locks flush with the camera top plate.
To change the mode, you press it again to release it and it springs up.
It’s a neat idea, although perhaps the dial could do with being a little larger.
The touchscreen interface is responsive, and very clear, and there's an excellent digital spirit level, which displays a solid circular ‘bubble’ along a horizontal and vertical axis on the screen.
It’s both more intuitive and much more responsive than we’re used to seeing.
Hasselblad has just introduced a v1.15 firmware update, which adds focus peaking, GPS support, maximum/minimum values for the Auto ISO option and the ability to specify a different exposure simulation on/off setting for manual mode, typically for use in studio flash photography.
The exposure system seems geared towards highlight preservation, which is ideal in a camera of this class.
You can bring out shadow detail easily enough in post-processing, but you don’t want to take any chances with highlight detail.
The auto white balance system did a good job in our tests, and while the X1D didn’t do especially well in our color rendition lab tests, the real-world results looked good, if a little undersaturated.
It’s not just the megapixels, but the extraordinary clarity and precision of each one of them.
Hasselblad says its XCD lenses are optimised to get the best results from its sensor, and on the basis of the 90mm and 45mm lenses we tested, it’s certainly done that.
The X1D’s non-anti-aliased sensor gave our resolution test chart some issues with moiré, but our real-world images look razor-sharp, even right to the edges of the frame.