Hasselblad X2D II 100C Review: A Dream Only Few Will Experience

The resolution, colors, and dynamic range are incredible. This is why you buy a camera like the Hasselblad X2D II 100C, and — no surprise — it absolutely delivers. The detail that this camera’s 102-megapixel sensor can capture is remarkable, even when you’re using a kit zoom like the XCD 35–100mm f/2.8–4 E that I tested. (To be fair, though, calling this magnificent $4,600 collection of glass a “kit lens” is a disservice.)

Whenever I zoomed in on a photo I’d taken, I was astonished to see every single pore on a subject’s face, the fine cracks in a plastic store facade, or tiny flakes of paint peeling off a wooden railing. I had experienced similar results when testing the $5,700 Fujifilm GFX100S II, but to my eye the X2D II’s output looked just a touch more naturalistic, not over-sharpened. It’s a difference that’s tough to quantify, and likely due in large part to lens quality.

The color you get from the X2D II’s 16-bit output is almost perfectly neutral (some might call it flat), a trait that makes it a great base to work from in post-processing software. However, it also means that unlike the $5,600 Fujifilm GFX100RF, this is not a 102-megapixel medium-format camera that you can just treat like a point-and-shoot.

The X2D II’s straight-out-of-the-camera JPEGs may seem underwhelming, but poking around in your raw developer of choice shows the files to be especially flexible and open to whatever creative interpretation you might like.

Its high-ISO noise really looks film-like. This is something that reviewers like to say, but it has never been more true. Due to the relatively slow aperture of the 35–100mm lens, I shot quite a bit at the camera’s maximum ISO setting of 25,600.

While plenty of noise is visible at that sensitivity, it has two things going for it. One, the massive resolution effectively hides noise when you’re viewing the images at web size. It really becomes apparent only upon your zooming in, and especially when you’re viewing at 100% magnification. And two, the noise is exceedingly uniform and almost entirely monochromatic — what experts call luminance noise — so you won’t see colorful confetti strewn about your nighttime shots.

In comparison, the GFX100S II and GFX 100RF (which use a similar sensor) also produce almost no chroma (color) noise, but I found their grain to be coarser and less attractive than what I got from the X2D II.

You can easily remove or tame what noise there is using Lightroom’s AI denoise feature or, even better, Hasselblad’s own HNNR (Hasselblad Natural Noise Reduction) feature in its Phocus software for desktop and mobile.

The autofocus is fast (for medium format), accurate, and even able to track subjects. The X2D II’s new lidar-assisted autofocus is allegedly much quicker and more confident than its predecessor’s. I can’t speak to that, since I never used the original X2D.

It feels noticeably faster and more sure-footed than what I’ve experienced with the Fujifilm GFX100RF and GFX100S II, though, and while it doesn’t quite keep up with the best full-frame and APS-C bodies, it’s still more than fast enough for all but the most demanding sports and action photography. It also performed extremely well in low-light environments, such as inside the teamLab BioVortex art installation in Kyoto.

The stabilization is the best I’ve ever encountered. Hasselblad claims 10 stops of image stabilization using its in-body, sensor-shift technology. I can’t reliably test that, but I can say that out of more than 1,200 frames shot during my time with the camera, none showed blur due to camera movement.

Even when I intentionally tried to stress the stabilization, I was able to get clear shots with up to 2-second exposures, particularly at the 35–100mm zoom’s wider focal lengths.

Its build quality and ergonomics are mostly great. The Hasselblad X2D II is a joy to hold, with a surprisingly compact body despite the massive sensor. Although it’s just 43 grams lighter than the Fujifilm GFX100S II, it’s quite a bit thinner, yet it retains an ergonomically sculpted front grip and rear thumb rest.

The materials are all top-notch, as you’d likely expect from a camera at this price, mostly machined aluminum alloy with a matte-gray coating that minimizes fingerprints and other schmutz.

Other small, refined touches include strap lugs that swivel unusually smoothly, magnetic closures for the doors over the various ports, and a clever repeating “H” grip pattern engraved in the lens’s focus and aperture rings.

The joystick — a welcome new addition to the original X2D’s design — is a huge bonus when it comes to setting your focus point, and you can also use it to move between images in playback or scroll through menus if you prefer not to use the touchscreen.

That huge, clear, and bright (1,400 nits) 3.6-inch, 2.36-million-dot rear OLED display tilts up 90 degrees and down about 45 degrees for waist-level and above-the-head shooting. The electronic viewfinder is also OLED, with a 5.76-million-dot resolution.

The minimal menus are a breeze to use. Like the Sigma BF, which I tested last year, the X2D II is designed to keep you focused on photographing — not digging through menus. The touch-driven interface is very smartphone-like, with only the most necessary options. It also does a great job of creating a visual hierarchy of information.

For instance, the status screen shows all the key shooting settings, and it uses font size and bolding to ensure that you see the most vital information first. The current aperture and shutter speed appear in extra-large, bold fonts, while the ISO sensitivity is one step smaller, and EV compensation is smaller still.

The main menu, meanwhile, is broken into 11 subsections, each represented by an icon. These categories include exposure, focus, crop modes, stabilization, and so on. None of them contains more than a handful of options, which is refreshing in comparison with the overly complicated submenus found in our mirrorless camera picks.

The built-in 1 TB SSD is great to have. Although plugging the camera in via USB-C (or transferring images wirelessly via the excellent Phocus Mobile 2 app) isn’t every photographer’s cup of tea, the X2D II’s built-in 1 TB SSD might make you want to try it. And even if you prefer to use the CFe card slot for primary storage, you can still use the SSD for redundant backup, or for spillover in case your card fills up.

End-to-end HDR is impressive, if not to everyone’s taste. High dynamic range has a bad reputation in photographic circles, mostly because for many years it meant displaying HDR images on SDR monitors, which resulted in garish, unrealistic colors.

But now that HDR screens are more common — including in high-end smartphones and laptops — it’s seeing a resurgence. Other cameras, including some of our mirrorless camera picks, offer HDR capture, but the X2D II is one of the first cameras to employ end-to-end HDR. That means it can capture, display, and pass along HDR images for viewing on other monitors.

Hasselblad has paired that capability with what it calls Hasselblad Natural Color Solution (HNCS), which “extends the color gamut to the wider P3” and features a 1,400-nit peak brightness, matching the capability of the camera’s rear display.

Essentially, this means the camera is capable of producing JPEG or HEIC images with very bright highlights that aren’t blown out while still displaying very dark shadows in the same image. If these images are shown on a SDR display, they automatically fall back to SDR brightness. And as a bonus trick, the Phocus desktop and mobile software can process any Hasselblad 3FR raw file, not just those from the X2D II, to produce HDR JPEG or HEIC files.

Hasselblad says the X2D II’s sensor is capable of 15.3 stops of dynamic range, which is one of the highest ratings we’ve seen, and real-life shooting confirmed that it’s capable of impressive HDR results. But whether you actually like those results on a subjective, aesthetic level is entirely down to personal preference. I wasn’t the biggest fan in most cases, since the results seemed far too iPhone-like for my tastes. Your mileage may vary.