I’ve always been in awe of street photographers who could use medium-format cameras to get their shots. Mostly, they would do it shooting with film. But when Jonathan Higbee did it for us in 2017, I became ever so hopeful.”I don’t use autofocus when I’m shooting the streets,” he said. “Over the years, I’ve found that my hit-to-miss ratio is greatly improved when I zone focus manually.” With the Hasselblad 907X CFV 100C, you can zone focusing using the Hasselblad X mount lenses. I truly never thought that I’d be typing something like this, but it’s also incredible for street photography.
Why Medium Format?
If you’re zone-focusing, any camera format can work well. For example, the Laowa 25mm f0.95 is fantastic on the X Pro 3. But why medium format? Well, there’s a completely different look to it. When I looked at my images, I really noticed it. The way that the light is rendered is something that is inexplicably better than the way that full-frame 35mm renders.
But let’s also move away from the technical side of things and instead focus more on the mental side. You have to move slower because the medium format is slower. So that means you’re prepping more to get the shot, or you’re sitting still in one place for a while to get a photo you like. Your wide-angle scenes look incredible when you go to edit, and there’s less of a need for trying to get the lines perfect or correcting distortion — which really does make all the difference when you’re shooting for the aesthetics of an artistic medium like street photography. Because there’s more resolution, you’ve got more room to crop, too.
More importantly, medium format gets you back to basics. Micro Four Thirds, APS-C, and full-frame 35mm cameras get too much in the way when you’re just trying to document a moment. There’s a ton of tech inside them, whereas the Hasselblad 907X CFV 100C is really simple. I liken this to the difference between reading a book with tons of notifications going across the screen vs reading a book with no notifications. Medium format is truly the gift of silencing your brain so that your technical and artistic sides can have a conversation where they’re both speaking their second language to the best of their ability.
I don’t want to say that this is a meditative process — especially as I’ve been meditating for years and know much better than this. But instead, it’s a process that lets you embrace the moment as much as possible while behind the camera. When you work with a camera like the Hasselblad 907X CFV 100C, you really want to sit down and make an image. You don’t want to capture a ton of them to pick the right one later. You either get it, or you don’t. And in the end, you typically either get a photograph worthy of being in your portfolio or you miss the shot. It’s much better than having 50 or so mediocre photographs.
Photographers these days have been relying on cameras to do all the work for them. But a camera like this makes you a more active part of the picture-taking process. You have to think — and therefore your creative vision comes through with ease.
How to Shoot Great Street Photography
Over the years, we’ve done a lot of tutorials on zone focusing. In 2021, Leica sponsored a tutorial we did on zone focusing, so we recommend that you check it out.
Is The Hasselblad 907X CFV 100C Worth It?
With an $8,100 price tag attached to it, I’m not totally sure that the Hasselblad 907X CFV 100C is worth it unless you’re very well off or know how you can use it to make your money back with some print sales. But I can surely tell you that it’s a very enjoyable experience that puts photographers and photography first rather than trying to put content creation first.
This isn’t about content creation; it’s about making photos.