Enter the Dragon
I’m holding off from indulging in any business expenditure until further notice, so this might be a moot point, but not being able to incorporate my medium format equipment into my premium-property workflow is pretty frustrating. I’ve noticed that some of the guys that shoot high-end homes for high-end estate agencies have started to replicate my “look” by utilising a wide angle shift lens, and they’re creating shafts of light coming from out of sight areas like doorways and hallway L-bends to attract the eye - just like I’ve done exclusively for years. This obviously means that I no longer have an individual style, and I need to up my game once more.
The medium format look is a result of a larger digital sensor than you see in a full-frame camera that captures a greater range of tones and colours, and renders scenes with a more shallow depth of field at any given focal length of lens. It’s subtle, but focus seems to melt away to the foreground and background differently. In real-estate work it’s important to get the whole frame sharp, but it still feels slightly different - like the eye would naturally perceive things.
Using ten grand’s worth of kit to capture a bog-standard 3 bedroom semi might be a bit of overkill, but in the world of multi-million pound property marketing, I still think there are some operators that would appreciate the upgrade in capture style.
“Hello - I’m here!”
At the moment there aren’t any native tilt/shift lenses that can be used on the Hasselblad X series cameras. There are adapters (which I possess) that can be employed to affix old Hasselblad H and V lenses, and the tilt/shift adapter (which I also possess), and there are also solutions to adapt Leica, Mamiya, and large format Rodenstock and Sinar lenses - all with the burden of additional weight and bulk. The basic Hasselblad lenses are damned expensive - only those weird influencer types seem to be able to afford them, and I certainly can’t.
Enter The Dragon:
Laowa - otherwise known as Venus Optics are a Chinese lens manufacturer who have produced some of the most perfectly engineered lenses at incredibly low cost for years. As you may recall. the glass which is permanently attached to my Nikon D850 workhorse is the Laowa 15mm “Dreamer” distortion-free shift lens. It is a solid metal work of art that allows me to capture interiors at a wide angle without the barrel distortion suffered when using expensive Nikon wide angle lenses. It’s totally manual, so I can pre-focus from 1m to infinity at f8 using the zone sytem - utilising the depth of field scale shown on the lens.
The only manufacturer to create lenses with the Hasselblad X mount is Laowa. There are 2 focal lengths available via special order - the 20mm and 15mm Dreamer, zero-D shift lenses - just like the one I use on my Nikon. Because of the larger sensor, the focal lengths are more like 15mm and 12mm respectively as captured by a full frame camera, so I’m not sure which would be more beneficial. The 20mm would create a more natural perspective, but the 15mm would produce a huge field of view of an interior which could of course then be cropped down in post production. My preference is the 20mm which would roughly replicate my current full-frame setup. There aren’t any used models on the market, and I suspect that Laowa will pull the option of the Hasselblad mount at some point if sales don’t come in.
So - I have to decide to either pull the trigger on a purchase shortly, or hang fire until I definitely need one to advance things in order to develop a new style. There are only bog-standard 3 bedroom semis on the horizon at the moment so it’s probably hang-fire for the time being.
