I’m still getting used to working with the Hasseblad SWC and I won’t deny I’m enjoying the challenge. In some ways the camera is like operating a big medium format point and shoot. You guess the distance between yourself and your subject, you aim, and then you click. It’s kind of refreshing and fun in that way.
In other ways it is much more of a challenge. Working with such a wide angle and such a large field of view can be tough when it comes to composing an image that ultimately doesn’t look too cluttered. I’m used to isolating a person in the frame and more or less throwing my backgrounds out of focus. With the Hasselblad SWC, more or less everything in the frame is in focus at any given time due to the incredibly long depth of field. Right now I would say on any given roll of film, out of twelve shots, there is only one that I don’t find to be too cluttered and messy with just too much going on in the frame.
While the camera may be easy to operate, I have to be a lot more conscience of my surroundings and what I choose to make an image of. This seems to be especially true when working outdoors in a forest kind of setting, where the frame tends to get cluttered up really quickly.
All in all though, new challenges aren’t a bad thing.