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March 31, 2017 at 05:24AM

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10-Step Instagram Tutorial Shows You How to Fake a Double Exposure in Photoshop

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Adobe is getting creative on Instagram. Taking advantage of Instagram’s new ability to publish multiple images and video in a single post, they’ve created this simple, step-by-step tutorial that will show you how to create a ‘double exposure’ in Photoshop.

The tutorial was created with help from photographer and retoucher Ted Chin, whose talent is indisputable… just take a look at his Instagram account.

The tutorial is live on the Photoshop Instagram account, where you can swipe through for a step-by-step demonstration and read the full instructions in the caption. Check out the tutorial below, and then keep scrolling to read the caption/instructions:

A post shared by Adobe Photoshop (@photoshop) on Mar 31, 2017 at 9:00am PDT

Slide 1: Hey guys! It’s Ted (@eye.c) here. Today I’m going to show you how to create a double exposure portrait in just few simple steps. Swipe through to see a mini-tutorial!

Slides 2 and 3: Using photos with simple backgrounds will help with the masking process. First, open the portrait (base) photo in #Photoshop. We are going to mask the background out and create the double exposure effect with the shape of the model.

Slide 4: Use the magic wand tool (W), click and select the background. Go to Select -> hold the “shift” key and click “Select and Mask”.Smooth the edge with the “Refine Edge Tool”, then click ok.

Slide 5: Click on “Add a mask” then, “Create a new layer.”Move the new layer to the bottom of the portrait.Select the “Paint Bucket Tool”, or press “G”, and fill in the white background.

Slide 6: Paste the second image, and adjust the image with “Levels” (Ctrl + L). Make sure the adjustment layer is clipped to the second image only. We want to make sure the sky is bright/clean enough so it’s easier for selection.Hold (Ctrl + left click) on the portrait’s mask we created earlier, then create a new layer mask for the landscape photo.

Slide 7: Un-link the mask by clicking the symbol in between, and re-adjust the landscape photo to the way you prefer.

Slide 8: Duplicate the Portrait layer and move the copy to the top of the landscape layer. Then change the blending mode to “Lighten”.

Slide 9: I decided to add other elements (flowers) by using the same blending mode (Lighten) from the last step.

Slide 10: If you think the white background is too boring, you can try to add a different background, too.

And this is how you can create a simple double exposure portrait!

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Credit where credit is due: this is a creative, novel way to present a tutorial. We wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes commonplace, creating 10-step tutorials and posting them as videos on Instagram. What Photoshop technique would you like to see demonstrated next?

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March 31, 2017 at 05:09AM

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March 31, 2017 at 04:57AM

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Canon Working on ‘New Lens Tech,’ Will Let You Shoot ‘New Type of Photo’

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Here’s a juicy research & development tidbit straight from the executives at Canon. In an interview with Focus Numerique at the Utsunomiya L lens factory in Japan, Canon said they’re working on a “new lens technology.”

We don’t get much more than that, but here’s the full sentence, translated from French:

Without being permitted to tell you more, we are developing a new technology that will bring real added value and will allow to take a new type of photo.

We could speculate all day about what this “new lens technology” might be. Maybe it has to do with this patent for a lens with a mount on both ends, or maybe a radical redesign of the optical image stabilization system. Whatever it is, Canon’s officially piqued our interest… now it’s their job not to mess it up and disappoint us with something less-than-innovative.

(via Canon Rumors)

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March 31, 2017 at 04:48AM

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March 31, 2017 at 04:27AM

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Why the Technical Stuff Matters

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Along with normal how-to articles and essays, I’ve always liked reading and writing very technical, nitty-gritty articles about photography—sometimes, articles on topics that rarely come up while actually taking pictures.

In fact, I usually don’t even use my own sharpest aperture charts in the field, as useful as they are, since I don’t like carrying around charts. So, then, does all that technical stuff matter? Is it even worth talking about in the first place?

These questions are very important to ask, since most people don’t want waste their time on topics that are unnecessary for their photography—do these articles actually help? There are no easy answers, but a recent trip I took to Death Valley makes a compelling argument for why some of this highly-technical information really does matter.

1. Driving a Car/Using a Camera

If you’ve just passed your driver’s test, and you’ve barely been behind the wheel for a few hours, the scariest thing in the world would be to see someone swerving in front of your car on the highway.

At that point, you have enough driving experience to nail down the basics: using turn signals, staying in your own lane, watching your speed, and so on. From the outside, you certainly look like a competent driver—and, in many ways, you are, since you just passed your test.

Yet, when you just start to drive, it naturally takes a lot of conscious thought to do everything correctly. You’re always glancing at your speedometer, for example, or you’re constantly thinking about staying within your lane. Nothing is habitual or automatic; your brain is hard at work the entire time.

So, when another car does something unexpected, you may not know how to solve the problem instantly. Your automatic reaction system isn’t developed yet, and your brain is still focused on the basics. It’s not that you’re a bad driver—in fact, even when you’re starting out, you probably knew enough to drive flawlessly under typical conditions—but you haven’t internalized everything yet.

That’s how I see the technical side of photography.

Many of us have a solid understanding of camera technique: aperture, shutter speed, focusing, and other technical skills that are part of your basic, creative toolkit. It’s not that you simply know them at a surface level, either; you actually understand them. You could even teach other photographers how many of these concepts work, and you’ve taken plenty of good photos that put your knowledge into practice.

But that isn’t always enough. Sometimes, you’ll be taking pictures under rapidly-changing conditions, and you don’t have time to think about exposure or depth of field—you don’t have time to think about anything. Every step of the process needs to be perfectly ingrained in your head, or you’ll miss the shot.

Simply learning a lot of technical information is not the same as knowing everything backwards and forwards in your sleep. When conditions are changing rapidly, a few seconds can be crucial. How do you maximize your time and truly understand the basics, so that you spend as little time as possible perfecting the basic technical stuff—aperture, exposure, focusing, and so on?

One way is practice. When you start out in photography, the best method to master the basics is to keep taking pictures and reading about the topics you’re trying to master. That’s how most people do it, and it obviously works well.

However, the problem with practice is that some concepts pop up so rarely that it may take months or years before they’re fully ingrained in your head. In other cases—say, setting an aperture that balances diffraction with depth of field—you may have plenty of time to do trial-and-error in the field (assuming typical conditions) without really understanding the topic. It’s only when you’re rushed that you realize your reactions aren’t as quick as they could be.

That brings us to the other method: Learning the really technical stuff.

When you read about high-level, complex photographic topics, or you start to work with them in the field, you’ll force yourself to learn the basics solidly. If you can understand highly-technical information—even at a surface level—it means that you have a rock-solid foundation. For example, by reading about a topic like Airy disks, even if you don’t think about it while you’re out in the field, you’re forcing your brain to understand basic concepts like aperture and diffraction with far more thoroughness.

And that’s the goal.

When you read about crazy topics, the benefit isn’t just to teach something new. Often, it’s to reinforce the old, basic skills in such a way that they become automatic parts of your thought process. Say the words “large aperture” to a professional photographer, and they’ll instantly think of countless things—bokeh, focus mode, depth of field, the necessary shutter speed and ISO values, and countless more—while a beginner is still working to remember that a large aperture is a small number.

It’s one thing to understand how a basic, important topic works if you have a few moments to sit back and think about it, but it’s totally different to recall it automatically while you’re being pelted by sand and 35mph winds, trying to take a photo before the light changes.

2. A Case Study

That brings us back to what I mentioned at the start of this article: Death Valley.

This was only my second trip to the area, so I’m not yet at the point of knowing exactly what to photograph in Death Valley, but I was familiar with the Mesquite Sand Dunes. I also knew that, on a day with 35mph gusts of wind, the sand dunes would be a vicious place to take pictures.

But you know the saying—“Bad weather makes good photos!”—and I know it, too. So, with sunglasses and a scarf to block the sand, I treaded into the desert for sunset photography.

Everything was fine for an hour or so, and the light was starting to get good. The clouds were dark and dramatic, and the sand in the air was creating amazing lighting conditions. After hiking an hour into the dunes, not long before sunset, I noticed a low-hanging cloud in the distance.

As I took more and more photos, it became clear that this cloud was quickly approaching the dunes—and it wasn’t a normal cloud. Out in the middle of the desert, while I took pictures of a spectacular sunset, a massive cloud of sand was rolling in my direction.

As you can imagine, I was rushing to capture the best possible photos before the sand cloud arrived, and I didn’t have much time. To be as efficient as possible, I ended up taking just a couple photos per tripod position, then walking a bit farther and finding something else to capture. This isn’t my normal method, but these were unusual circumstances.

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Side note: I strongly caution people against going into the desert, or any other landscape like this, unprepared. Mother Nature is harsh. It’s best if you can bring someone else along, as I did, but that’s not enough. I also had a walkie talkie, a GPS, a separate GPS on my phone, a full battery pack to charge my phone, and even some spotty cell coverage. I also had a bright flashlight and plenty of water, and it wasn’t a hot night in the first place.

Even then—knowing that I was well-prepared, and knowing exactly where my car was—parts of that sandstorm were otherworldly. I very likely could have maneuvered back to my car or the road without a GPS… but I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to try.

That said, if you stay safe, crazy weather almost always pays off.

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I came back with a handful of photos that I really liked, including the one below:

I only took a single photo from this tripod position. In fact, it was the last shot I captured before the cloud of sand was overhead, and visibility dropped to about ten meters in each direction. (If you look at the left-hand side of the photo, you can actually see the very front edge of the dust cloud approaching.)

To make this single photo a success, several things needed to go right. First, since my focal length was 35mm, and the foreground was quite close to the lens, a small aperture was crucial (and I chose f/16). My focusing distance had to be roughly at the hyperfocal distance, or I risked a blurry background or foreground. Also, dealing with a high-contrast sky, I needed to watch the exposure and make sure not to lose any highlight detail. An error in any one of these steps—or a few extra seconds spent, since the dust cloud was approaching rapidly—would harm the photo significantly, and perhaps beyond repair.

In a situation like this, 100% of your mental energy should be focused on finding the best possible subject and composition. All the technical settings should fly through the back of your mind without wasting time, yet they also need to be as accurate as possible.

In this case, it went well. I credit part of that success to luck (since shots like this certainly don’t always work out), part to practice, and part to reading and writing articles that are vastly more complex than what I actually needed to know in order to capture this photo. That’s why the technical stuff matters.

3. Conclusion

Learning advanced technical information is one of the best ways to be as efficient as possible in the field, internalizing the basic concepts that you’ll use all the time and making them into long-lasting habits.

Then again, I’m not saying that you should take pictures on autopilot; I actually believe that can take a lot of the fun out of photography. If you’re not thinking while you’re in the field, you’re not challenging yourself—but if you’re spending too much time thinking about technical information and camera settings when you’re in a rush, you probably need to practice and read more.

It’s that goal—internalizing and automating the basics as much as possible—that makes it worthwhile to keep learning the super-technical stuff, even if you don’t see yourself using that specific information very often. When you learn high-level techniques, whether or not you actually use them, you’re still reinforcing the knowledge that you need every day.

I know that not everyone will agree, but I firmly believe that technical information will never harm your photography. It doesn’t bog you down to learn about hyperfocal distance or ISO invariance, even if you never use them in the field, and even if (though I think this is rarely the case) they don’t help reinforce the basics.

At the absolute worst, learning about those topics still expands what you know about the world. If your goal is to stay interested and excited about photography, that sounds good enough to me.

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About the author: Spencer Cox is a landscape and travel photographer from Franklin, Tennessee. To contact Spencer directly or view more of his work, visit his website at Spencer Cox Photography or follow him on Facebook. This article was also published here.

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March 31, 2017 at 04:13AM

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8 Beautiful Alternative Processes for Photographers

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Given that most photos are captured digitally and shared online, it’s easy to forget the beauty of a print.

The history of photographic printing is a fascinating intersection between art and chemistry, and you might be surprised to find a cadre of incredible, contemporary practitioners of techniques well over 100 years old. Here’s a round-up of some of our favorites.

Carbon Transfer

A labor-intensive process that uses carbon pigment rather than inks or silver salts to produce a gorgeous black and white image. The carbon transfer method creates prints with deep, rich blacks that do not fade. Calvin Grier of The Wet Print offers bespoke printing services starting at $135 for an 8×10.

Curious? Watch this fantastic video about the process:

Caffenol Processing

In the search for an eco-friendly printing solution, the team from Cahute bypassed photographing onto film, and instead created a solution of vitamin C, washing soda, and coffee that is coated to directly onto Harman direct positive paper. The paper is loaded directly into an 8×10 view camera, and subsequently processed with a biodegradable developer.

If only coffee stains could look so good! Traveling to Helsinki? Book your portrait session for 59€.

Ambrotype

Tired of printing onto an opaque surface? Ambrotypes use the wet plate collodion process to print onto glass. Giles Clement not only has mastered the process, but he also has a very cool series of images with people holding their ambrotype portraits. Book your ambrotype portrait when Clement tours a city near you for $900.

Tintype

Tintypes gained popularity in the 1860s and 1870s in part because they were the “instant” photo of the day. Unlike processes that required a drying process, the thin sheets of metal coated with lacquer and a photographic emulsion could be handed to customers after only a few minutes of processing in a developer and fixer.

A resurgence in the 21st century has made tintypes the alternative process du jour and the Penumbra Foundation offers portrait sittings from $49.

But for real fun with tintype, Ian Ruhter turned his van into a camera giving him the ability to expose metal sheets up to 5 feet wide.

Chlorophyll

According to the New York Times, Vietnamese-American artist Binh Danh was fascinated by the strange discolorations left by objects on his lawn in the wake of the powerful rays of the sun. This led to an artistic series created by sandwiching a transparency onto a fresh leaf and letting the sun bleach some parts and alter pigment color in others.

Danh’s inquisitiveness and obsessiveness has made him a master of the alternative process.

Daguerreotype

Not to be limited to just one process, Danh mastered the daguerreotype, the first commercially successful printing technique that utilizes a light sensitive, silvered plate.

Astonishing in its detail, the process is sensitive to blue and ultraviolet spectrum which gives bright areas the distinctive blue coloring. Photos of daguerreotypes simply cannot replicate the sheer luster and incredible detail of the originals, so search one out in person, or make your own!

Platinum/Palladium

Your typical silver gelatin print uses silver salts suspended in a gelatin substrate. Although silver prints are fairly durable, silver oxidizes over time and the ions migrate through the gelatin causing image degradation. By contrast, the platino/palladiotype process uses metals that adhere directly to the paper, and some experts suggest these prints could last for thousands of years.

Platinum ain’t cheap, so palladium was introduced as a lower cost alternative during World War I when platinum supplies were limited. But even the price of palladium has skyrocketed, so you’re probably not going to want to start your foray into alternative processing with this.

Ready for your platinum portrait? Koren Reyes has you covered starting at $3500 for an 8×10.

Cyanotype

From blue jeans to the Indigo Girls, there’s no denying that humans love the color blue. Although the cyanotype process is more associated with the blueprint, a low-cost duplication technique used frequently for architectural plans, it has seen a resurgence as photographers have come to embrace its cool tones. Although the cyanotype print is not the most stable and durable process, it does have the strange regenerative ability to darken areas faded by exposure to light by simply storing them in the dark.

Blind artist John Dugdale has frequently used the process for his highly collected portraits.

The alternative processing is niche, but if you have the patience to try it yourself, the community is pretty open about sharing techniques. Want to learn more? Check out The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes by Christopher James, or visit http://ift.tt/1BmKIqm

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About the author: Allen Murabayashi is the Chairman and co-founder of PhotoShelter, which regularly publishes resources for photographers. Allen is a graduate of Yale University, and flosses daily. This article was also published here.

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March 31, 2017 at 04:13AM

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From Fishing to Fashion Photography: Peter Coulson on Learning, Teaching, and Doing What You Love

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Photo: Amy by Peter Coulson

Peter Coulson talks to 500px about his workshops and his personal journey as a photographer.

500px: How long have you been a full-time photographer and at what point in your career did you make the switch to full time?

Peter Coulson: Roughly 20 years now—that is a combination of being a lifestyle photographer (fishing industry) and fashion photographer.

I had a business in fishing. When I started shooting for magazines, I didn’t have enough time to run my business and keep photographing—so it turned into full-time photography for magazines. During one of my assignments, I did my first shoot in a studio. A studio assistant was employed to help on the day because I knew nothing.

I fell in love with the studio. That night I went home and told my wife, “Love, we are going to go broke, but I am making a transition from fishing to models.” She supported me, and it started from then onwards. That was the point I was truly full-time, as I had no other income.

500px: You’re not just a photographer—you’re also in the industry of photography education. How are the workshops you host different than other photography courses and tutorials?

Peter Coulson: The biggest difference is that I am self-taught and I don’t learn well in normally school environments. I did a few workshops when I was trying to make the transition from shooting fishermen to fashion, and I always walked away feeling like I spent a lot of money to only learn one new trick. It frustrated me that there was nobody out there teaching the things I actually needed to learn. Everybody would fluff around the edges and get participants to take a lot of photos so they would leave happy. What the participants forgot was that they were only shooting, not learning.

I never had the intentions of getting into the educational side of photography. But I had a small importer in Australia ask me if I could demonstrate their lighting at a trade show. This resulted in a massive crowd around me, asking, where can we pay to see more of this? The importing company heard the feedback and ran workshops from their store for me to teach.

I think another major difference is that I try dumb everything down; I don’t try to make myself look better than anybody else. I try show everybody how it is simple if you make it simple; dumbing it right down without making it too technical, otherwise it starts to become really hard.

I have no secrets. Anybody can hire a pretty model, awesome location, fancy gowns, stunning makeup and hair, set up one octabox and bang—you create an incredible image. But by doing that, it doesn’t mean you have learned a single thing except that you cannot afford the model, location, gown or hair and makeup—you cannot reproduce this tomorrow.

Even though I use beautiful models for the workshops, I use very basic clothing and get the models to do their own hair and makeup, and I shoot in ordinary locations, to show you can create beautiful images without any of the other stuff. This way the participants can go out the next day and do the exact same thing, in their own backyard. What I teach is for people to really learn how to create and recreate anything they like in a very simple way.

500px: You’re hosting workshops all around the world this year—how do you find the time to shoot for yourself and still manage to stay inspired?

Peter Coulson: I try and keep my business in a rule of thirds: 1/3 workshops, 1/3 commercial work, and 1/3 shooting what I love. For the last few years, shooting 1/3 what I love has been really tough to manage. My commercial work and workshops started to overtake this, resulting in me only shooting 5% of what inspired me. In the last year, I have tried my best to make changes so that I can be selective with my commercial jobs, picking the jobs I do enjoy. This creates more time to shoot what I love, which keeps me inspired and passionate about my art.

With the educational side, especially our new website, I am shooting what I love to shoot for the tutorials. This has also helped me get closer to 1/3. The more I can show the world what I love doing, the more people will want to learn how I do it, and the more I will get booked commercially to do what I love. It feels good to go back to my beliefs that I preach, shoot what I love, and build my business on what I really love to do.

500px: We have a pretty large community of photographers in Dubai, so let’s talk about your upcoming Dubai workshop in mid-April. What can participants expect to learn in the 5-day course?

Peter Coulson: The main things—they will walk away with gaining the knowledge about the technicals that you actually need to know, such as exposure, colour, etc. These give you a firm starting point to be able to work commercially, especially in relation to printing and what happens after the photograph has been taken.

After that, I teach people how to see light and how to manipulate light to do what they want it to do, whether it be flash light, studio light, or natural light.

The rest of the workshop is teaching people how to put in emotion and feelings, how to make it real and how to put their own style into their photography, and how to communicate with the models to create the look they are trying to create. Once you have learned how to see the light, everything else is easy. And I teach people how to do this.

500px: Generally speaking, for photographers who have never participated in a workshop before, what kind of advice can you provide before they choose a Peter Coulson workshop experience, and what should they ask themselves before signing up for one of your workshops?

Peter Coulson: It is no good coming to my workshop if you are close-minded, following rule of thirds and wanting to stay in a “camera club headspace” where you want to pixel-peep and analyse every little pixel in minute detail. The type of person that will benefit from my workshop is the type of person that sees that technically their work is fine, but visually it is boring. So, being able to be open to new ways of photography… opening their minds to create. I can help them see their own photography style and really push it to a whole new level, creating images they really love looking at themselves and forgetting rules and pixel peeping critics. I go back to art, creating art, and creating images that are timeless. As I said, I have no secrets, and I get a week to support and guide participants in whatever direction of photography they would like to take, from beginners to advanced full-time photographers.

500px: We understand that the Peter Coulson workshop experience is quite intensive—what kind of feedback have you received about the high energy and pace of the experience?

Peter Coulson: I see a massive change over a 5-day workshop. I see people coming in not sure about themselves as a photographer, not sure of their style, not sure why they are even here. But about halfway through the week, I see each person hit that light-bulb moment where things become really easy for them, and they truly believe in themselves as a photographer, in their skills, and what they are capable of creating. They walk in with a big question mark on their head and walk out inspired with so many ideas to shoot as soon as they get home.

The most exciting and rewarding part for me is that I help people really learn to love photography and inspire them to create their own artwork. Watching that transition is amazing; listening to the conversations changing from “How do you do this?” to knowing how to do it, and asking more in-depth questions in regards to taking their photography to a whole new level. For people that run their own studios and work as photographers, they come to my workshop and realise they have been stuck in a box, shooting the same things—and I teach them and hopefully inspire them enough to get out of the box and do what they love.

For more information or to register for a workshop,
visit Peter Coulson’s website.

Don’t miss out on these exclusive discount codes for 500px readers:

Dubai 5 Day Workshop discount code (15% off): 500pxdubai
London 2 Day Workshop discount code: 500pxlondon
Paris 5 Day Workshop discount code (15% off): 500pxparis

The post From Fishing to Fashion Photography: Peter Coulson on Learning, Teaching, and Doing What You Love appeared first on 500px ISO.

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March 31, 2017 at 03:31AM

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An Interview with with Ming Thein, the New Chief of Strategy for Hasselblad

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The biggest photography announcement of the week came from Hasselblad. In a move that is being praised by most of the photo community, the storied camera company appointed photographer Ming Thein as its new Chief of Strategy, leaving us all to wonder “what happens now?” PetaPixel sat down with Ming to find out.

PetaPixel: First of all, congratulations on the new position! This is a big deal. Can you tell us how this came about? 

Ming Thein: Thank you. A case of right place, right time—I visited HQ in January this year as a quick stop on one of my work trips, had some very positive discussions, and they realized my experience could be useful beyond just brand representation as an ambassador. One thing lead to the next, and next thing I know I’m being given a set of keys and an email address…

You’re a very talented photographer and blogger, but how has your professional background and education prepared you for this position?

I wasn’t always a photographer. In a previous life, I served as senior management for multinational companies in various sectors, headed M&A and private equity teams and had a stint at The Boston Consulting Group; nearly ten years in all. So, beyond the photography—I also have some experience at making the numbers work.

Actually, the label of blogger is the one I have the most trouble with—writing is something I did both with the aim of education and also better understanding why we shoot and how we see. It has never been my primary objective (or even profession; that implies making a living out of it)—it was always photography and image-making first, and still is. But there’s no question that interacting with the audience—something like 100,000 comments in the last five years—has allowed me to build a relationship with the photographic community that reaches quite far.

Do you think other photo companies will follow suit and also appoint photographers in their corporate ranks?

I’m sure the other companies must already have some employees with some level of photographic experience; surely it would be strange if you made a product but didn’t really have anybody who used it in its intended function before releasing it?

Hasselblad went through a few rough years, followed by something of a renaissance. What will be your first order of business as the Chief of Strategy?

To thoroughly investigate and understand the answer to your next question: you can’t make positive changes in direction without knowing exactly where you are now.

What are Hasselblad’s greatest strengths? Weaknesses?

Pending further investigation for the reasons explained in my previous answer—it’s a company with a rich history and focus on making the best—this is important because it defines corporate culture, and that’s the hardest thing to change. It’s a very warm, personal company—in a way that you can put a face to who does what and you can’t with a larger organization. I felt as a customer the team were my friends—this experience is something I would love to extend to even more people.

The core product is solid, and I believe still overall the best quality-focused solution—this is why I personally switched systems last year—which means there’s a good platform to build on. The greatest weakness is probably also the greatest strength: there’s so much more we can still do. And this is true across everything—product-wise, service-wise, pricing-wise.

What kind of impact do you think you can have on those weaknesses (and the company’s direction in general) in your new position?

My role is to provide an alternative point of view biased from the standpoint of the customer and their experience; it’s also to balances wishes and desires with commercial/engineering reality. And, to ask what else can we do? What would a photographer want to have on the wish list?

Moreover: what if we stretched the imagination a bit? Photographic capabilities have evolved, but cameras fundamentally haven’t, meaning it isn’t as easy to deploy all of that potential as it could be.

Former company CEO Perry Oosting said, “we want to attract new customers.” What does Hasselblad have to do in order to become accessible to a broader audience? 

One main thing, I think: dispel the myth that medium format equals difficult and inaccessible. Part of it is education, part of it is engineering and design, part of it is product positioning and concept. The X1D was a great start, and has made a clear impact on the industry: it’s the perfect time to take it further.

Are you still going to try out and comment on other camera brands? Are you worried at all about conflicts of interest here?

No, and I said as much on my site announcement: as you rightly point out, it would be a huge conflict of interest. In any case, I’ve reviewed very little equipment over the last year and focused more on the philosophy of how we see and how we shoot. I don’t think it makes sense to review something you don’t use, and buying gear to review is a very poor business proposition.

A clear example of this: I made a huge commitment at the start of last year—before any affiliation with the company—to switch primary system to Hasselblad on the basis of that system fitting my requirements best. If you understand what your creative objectives are, it’s easy to make choices even if they are unconventional, be it me with the H6D-100c for documentary work or Gian Paul Lozza with the X1D for winter action. Sometimes such choices are required to enable something creatively different.

One has to be careful with reviews: every photographer has very different objectives, and bench tests aren’t really representative of actual conditions. The best benchmark for whether a review is applicable to you or not is whether the reviewer is making the kind of images you want to make—otherwise the application is simply too different.

To that end, any thoughts on Fuji’s new mirrorless medium format offering, the GFX 50s?

Competition is good! It keeps us challenged, and opens up the market because more people are now looking at medium format. Each camera has its strengths and weaknesses—there is never a one-size-fits-all. I’ve always encouraged physically handling and shooting with a camera where possible before committing—spec sheets don’t say everything, and the haptics are just as important as the feature sets, if not more so.

Something that’s technically great, but not so comfortable or logical in operation, might not inspire any deep feelings, but a camera that feels great will be something you want to handle and shoot with, and more images will eventually mean better images.

Okay, you know we have to ask. Can you give us any hints at what’s coming up from Hasselblad? No specifics necessarily, just… a hint or two at the direction of the company?

Continued development of the X and H systems, of course, products beyond that… well, you’ll have to wait and see. But I can safely say they’ll be 100% in-house and unique to us. MT

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A huge thanks to Ming for taking the time to answer a few questions for us (and for allaying any fears that Hasselblad might start making re-brands again). To follow along with his personal and professional work, be sure to visit and bookmark his website, and give him a follow on Facebook.

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March 31, 2017 at 03:09AM

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