Hasselblad H3DII-39 and Flower Photography

Every now and then it’s good to step outside your photographic comfort zone. This is what I tried to do last week when I started a project to photograph flowers. The initial idea was to produce huge prints that had a studio-like quality about them. The key things that I really wanted to get right were composition and lighting. Although the concept of photographing a beautiful flower on a black background is a bit of a cliché, there is a reason why it is so popular – the results can be really striking.

In order to create a series of massive prints, I needed to take very high resolution images. The problem with making big prints from 35mm DSLR files is that they often require interpolation to get the required dimensions at an output resolution of 300dpi. The only way of avoiding this is to use a camera that already has a high native resolution, i.e. lots of megapixels! I’ve always wondered about the quality that digital medium format systems could offer and since I was recently given the opportunity to borrow one, I thought this project would be the perfect chance to try it out and see for myself what all the fuss was about!

The camera that I used was the Hasselblad H3DII-39, a 39mp beast with a 48×36mm sensor (approximately double the size of a 35mm frame). The huge sensor size results in astounding detail, low noise levels and subtle tonal gradations. The 16 bit files at ISO 50 have amazing vibrancy and dynamic range.

After getting my hands on the camera and spending a bit of time figuring out how to use it, I started to set up my first shot. I was using a 120mm f/4.0 macro lens. The close working distance coupled with the large sensor meant that typical apertures necessary for a decent depth of field and sharpness were around f/16 to f/32.

Photographing the flowers against a black background often meant the Hasselblad’s metering system wasn’t able to provide accurate results. Each photograph would have different amounts of the frame filled with the flower, meaning that most of the metering modes (centre-weighted and averaged) were fooled. To get reliable exposures I used a Sekonic light meter and I reduced the contrast by using a reflector to shade the flowers.

Due to the small apertures and working distances, a tripod was essential to prevent camera shake. Using mirror lock-up and a shutter delay of between 5-10 seconds allowed the camera vibrations to dampen before the image was recorded. This is very important, since the high resolution of the Hasseblad’s sensor makes poor focus and camera movements immediately obvious, especially when blown up to 100%. However, if everything remains sharp then the level of detail captured by the 39 megapixel sensor is just astounding.

Apart from enjoying something a bit different, I have learnt that branching out and diversifying your subjects can really improve other aspects of your photography, both technically and creatively.