Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/08/19
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]I got a call the other day from a market research company asking if I'd be interested to look at a new camera and give my comments on it! We made an appointment for today, and it turns out the new camera was the Hasselblad XPan (although it was labelled EX-1 which I believe is the Fuji name). My first impressions of it were that it was slightly bigger and heavier than I'd expected, but it's beautifully made and handles very nicely. It's bigger than an M6, but not by much. The extra width is necessary to accommodate the panoramic format, but the camera is also deeper and heavier than an M6. They only had the 45mm lens with it, but one of the questions indicated that other lenses were in the pipeline, and the Zeiss name might be on some of them... It's very smooth in operation, and the shutter is quiet although not as quiet as our beloved Leica :-) On the subject of Leica, there's a small article in the current issue of the UK magazine Professional Photographer which states that the new M6 with TTL metering taken from the R8, plus a few other tweaks, is a fact and is due at Photokina. Also confirmed is the 90 Apo Summicron and the 135/3.4 which replaces both "current" 135mm M lenses. Another rumour they mentioned was the new Contax medium format rangefinder, which is still rumour, but when the author of the article contacted Contax to ask about it, their initial reaction was "how did you know about that!"... There's going to be some interesting things coming up at Photokina this year - I wish I could go! Simon.