How Hasselblad XPan can be relatively compact?

anta40 · May 28, 2024

I shot a few frames on its brother, TX1, a few years ago. Wasn't mine so didn't inspect it throughly.

Some XPan alternatives like Brancopan and PressPan are bulky-ish, not suprisingly they uses Mamiya Press lenses.
On the other hand, the XPan is reasonably slim. Pretty sure it's not thicker than any Leica M.

Now I wonder, how could they design XPan to be pretty compact?

mshchem · May 28, 2024

Xpan is much larger than a Leica M. Big bulky all electric motor and rewind. It's a terrific wide field camera. Not like a Leica. Leica viewfinder on the newest M bodies is stunning also dozens of lenses to choose from.

armadsen · May 28, 2024

The Xpan is definitely bigger than a Leica M. It's especially wider (as you'd expect). But it's not unwieldy or bulky, at least to me. I don't really find it significantly less comfortable to carry around than I do my MP.

anta40 · May 29, 2024

mshchem said:
Xpan is much larger than a Leica M. Big bulky all electric motor and rewind. It's a terrific wide field camera. Not like a Leica. Leica viewfinder on the newest M bodies is stunning also dozens of lenses to choose from.

I know. It's indeed much wider than a Leica M. But thickness wise? Not so much.
Makes me wonder, what are the engineering challenges faced when making a mechanical pano camera as slim as XPan, considering the alternatives are much thicker.

Richard Man · May 29, 2024

The lenses are the key to XPan's slim size. The design criteria was to design a set of lens with image circle just large enough to cover the diagonal of 24mmx64mm (or thereabout) but not larger. The Mamiya Press lenses can cover up to 6x9, so the IC is much larger.

How Hasselblad XPan can be relatively compact?

anta40

mshchem

armadsen

anta40

Richard Man

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