Photography News Issue 32

Photography News | Issue 32 | absolutephoto.com

News

Hasselblad launches H6D

changed the price and the results were beyond our expectations; in December we did 25% of our annual volume. And the lens to camera ratio was three times higher. Now we’re offering cashback if you buy into the H6D – it’s showing loyalty. We have had some criticism about discounting and offering promotions and I’d like to get away from that, but we need to look at ways to attract younger and new people into the system. PN: What impact have cameras like Canon’s EOS 5DS had? PO: You can get the same number of pixels on that as a Hasselblad, but I always compare it to eating at a three Michelin star restaurant. Give the chefs there the same ingredients as a non-starred restaurant and you’ll get a better meal. PN: In terms of the H6D, you said that customer feedback was crucial. What did they tell you? PO: Not to change it physically. I’m not a pro photographer, but I sometimes think that great photography comes from the way you hold the camera – and we have certainly achieved what we wanted to in terms of the handling. I pushed the team hard on the touchscreen functionality. The logic of the menu was perfect. Being a Swedish brand, I felt we should excel in terms of form and functionality and making things intuitive. PN: Tell me about the video capability. PO: Our aim was to include video because a lot of customers said theywanted the capability to shoot behind the scenes footage in their studio, but don’t want to have to use another camera. PN: You’ve intimated that the H6D is ‘just the start’ of the announcements in your 75th anniversary year, what else can we expect? PO: It’s a Photokina year, we will talk when we are ready. I think it’s important for Hasselblad to under promise and over-deliver. We need to deliver high-quality products and the consumers should judge us on that. But certainly the wider audience is the target.

Interviewby Roger Payne

Hasselblad CEO Perry Oosting is no stranger to luxury brands. He’s been MD of Bulgari, Gucci and Prada and was a Hasselblad supervisory board member before being asked to take the big job in late 2014. This may have initially caused concerns among Hasselblad’s hardcore followers – a man with experience in fashion brands taking over at a time when the company was producing extravagant CSCs as part of a collaboration with Sony – but they needn’t have worried. After a year of consolidation, the company launched the H6D, which underlines all Hasselblad’s core values as a camera manufacturer. At the worldwide camera launch in London, I grabbed 20 minutes with Perry to chat about his time in the hot seat so far: Photography News: Why Hasselblad? Perry Oosting: I’d already worked with some really great brands, but Hasselblad is such an icon. I had a different vision on how to move forward and that’s what we’ve been trying to implement. PN: What did you inherit? PO: Organisationally there was a lot of disruption in the company. I was the third CEO in three years, so that’s never good. Building trust was important. I had the vision, but I needed the team to help me build and execute a strategy. I think the strategy at the time was correct: segmentation, tiering, a wider audience, but probably the execution – the how – was different. The [Hasselblad Lunar] CSC was a very good camera, but our values are authenticity, optical quality, iconic design, and when you define that as part of your strategy you have to stick to it. That’s what we’ve done with the H6D. PN: You’ve also adopted a more aggressive pricing strategy, has this helped win customers? PO: We want to attract new people to the brand and for some price is still a hurdle. I wanted the H5D-50 to be the entry-level price point so we

Hasselblad’s medium- format camera the H6D is available in twomodels, the H6D-100c, which boasts a 100-megapixel CMOS sensor, and the H6D-50c, which has a 50-megapixel CMOS sensor. Each model features dual card slots, allowing you to load up on memory with a CFast card and SD card. In addition to this, a USB 3.0 Type-C interface offers super-fast file transfer, while HDMI allows you to connect an external monitor. Improving on the existing medium- format H cameras, the H6D duo offers a wider range of shutter speeds from 60mins to 1/2000sec and an improved ISO range. The all-new

H6D-50c offers an ISO range of 100-6400 and HD video, while the H6D-100c offers ISO 64-12,800, a dynamic range of 15 stops and 4K video. Both models have a high- definition, three-inch touch LCD, Wi-Fi connectivity and 16-bit capture. Phocus 3.0, Hasselblad’s free image-processing software, available for Mac or Windows, has been updated to work with the H6D. The Hasselblad H6D-50c is priced at £17,900 and the H6D-100c at £22,600. Both prices are body only and exclusive of VAT.

hasselblad.com

Samyang Optics unveils autofocus lenses

LeicaM-D (Typ 262) Leica has released its fifth product in the Leica M range – the M-D (Typ 262). Available in black, the M-D is the first digital M to exclude an LCD monitor; instead the M-D has an ISO dial on the back. It features a CMOS full-frame sensor with 24 megapixels and an ISO range of 200-6400. Additional features include a quiet shutter and three frames-per-second continuous shooting. The M-D (Typ 262) body only is priced at £4650.

For the first time in over 40 years the Samyang Optics photo lens line-up has strayed from manual focus only lenses, introducing two new autofocus lenses. The 14mm f/2.8 and 50mm f/1.4 lenses, both with a 67mm filter diameter, fit Sony E mount, full- frame mirrorless cameras. The two optics feature aspherical lenses

to minimise aberration and light dispersion in images, and are also compatible with both phase-detect and contrast-detect sensors. The lenses will be available from June and will be exhibited at the Photo & Imaging Show 2016 in Seoul, South Korea. Pricing TBC.

uk.leica-camera.com

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