Using a digital back with a film-era camera body forces you to stand in two different generations with regard to photography and design. Hasselblad makes this contradiction a reality with their CFV 100C digital back, which is natively compatible with all of their 500 and 200-series camera bodies from the past 70+ years. This unique ability points to Hasselblad’s success in design—being able to maintain compatibility for more than 70 years—as well as the enduring commitment to quality image-making tools.
Before diving into using the CFV 100C back on a 500-series camera, it’s important to cover the most typical and likely use case for this back: pairing it with the slim 907X included body and the XCD line of autofocus mirrorless lenses. The 907X experience is somewhat similar to working with the X2D 100C, their popular and more conventional medium format camera—it’s a mirrorless system with a bigger sensor. The 907X & CFV 100C, though, mimics Hasselblad’s classic camera design and waist-level shooting method whereas the X2D is a much more typical eye-level style camera with a built-in right-hand grip. This slight-but-significant difference affects how you hold the camera, compose shots, and, generally, how you photograph.
Shooting this way, with the 907X and CFV 100C back, feels nostalgic but only in the sense that you’re looking down at the camera. There’s still an LCD, you still have autofocus, and it feels very “digital camera-like.” This isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not a 1-for-1 replacement of the film photography shooting process.
However, once you remove the CFV 100C back from the 907X body and add it to a 500-series camera, you have an entirely new shooting experience. You now have an SLR system, fit with the large optical finder and reversed image (assuming you’re working with a waist-level finder), and are now responsible for cocking the shutter between exposures. Things are mechanical again; it feels like shooting film. It’s a shooting method that is more novel than practical, but it’s also fun and gives you more access and versatility to lenses, bodies, and working methods.
This setup also clearly reveals where the CFV 100C design inspiration came from. It looks exactly like an A12 film back, down to the chrome edges and leatherette body—it’s a digital back that seamlessly slides onto a 500-series camera and Hasselblad has ensured essentially perfect compatibility between the two pieces of equipment despite them being produced decades apart.
I used the CFV 100C on a 503CX, one of the later 500-series bodies, but still, something very classic. I chose to keep the shooting as film-like as possible—you can go through a process of opening the lens’s shutter and using the digital back’s live view function for accurate composing and exposure metering, but that felt overly clunky for casual handheld shooting. Instead, the inherent compatibility of the back and camera meant I could just shoot using the viewfinder, cocking the shutter and mirror in between exposures, and using a handheld light meter.
One caveat to working this way is that the ground glass and native format of these cameras is still 60 x 60mm despite the digital back’s sensor size being 44 x 33mm—the digital back is effectively a cropped format of what the camera is setup to produce. To counter this, Hasselblad includes a translucent crop guide to place on top of the ground glass for more accurate framing. This solution works great—the translucent design feels natural—and it’s easy to remove and replace as needed when switching back to shooting with an actual film back.
A consequence of this cropped format, however, is that it is … a cropped format. Just like working with APS-C and Micro Four Thirds formats, the lenses will feel a bit longer than their associated focal lengths—the standard 80mm lens is now a bit of a portrait lens, and you’ll need to step down to a 50mm or 60mm lens to better approximate a “normal” field of view. And, if you’re a fan of wide-angle and ultra-wide lenses, you’ll have fewer choices with options only going as wide as 30mm (which will feel like a 24mm in terms of a full-frame equivalent).
One other issue I have with the CFV 100C back in general, when working with either the 907X or a 500-series body, is the effective inability to shoot in a vertical orientation. This is a non-issue for a camera that has been designed to shoot in a square format, but when you add a back that has a rectangular aspect ratio, the design of the camera and back itself forces you to shoot horizontally. A workaround for this, on a 500-series body, is to use a 90° viewfinder rather than the more typical 45° viewfinder of the system. If you want the experience of shooting with a waist-level finder, though, you’ll effectively be stuck shooting horizontal shots.
It's also worth pointing out that the CFV 100C back itself has an angled LCD that is slightly tilted upward, which make it inherently difficult to use when shooting vertically, even before attaching to a square-format camera body. As someone who prefers shooting vertically (especially for portraits) this has always been a drawback of the system for me and something that has pushed me to favoring the X2D. It’s funny, though, that using the back on a 500-series body with a 90° viewfinder is the most effective workaround for shooting vertically with CFV 100C.
Beyond some of these quirks of design, one of the major pluses to the combo of CFV 100C + 503CX is access to the variety of classic ZEISS-produced lenses for the Hasselblad film cameras. Using these lenses on their intended camera body, rather than adapting, feels much more natural and the shooting experience has a similar cadence to when working with film. The lenses themselves have a very character-forward look that’s not nearly as sharp or clinical as most modern lenses; at the same time, the warmth and glow of the lenses doesn’t feel as contrived as some of the more vintage-inspired lenses of today either. Color and tone rendering is warm, smooth, and balanced—at least with the 80mm f/2.8 Planar CB lens I used while shooting. This is in line with my past experiences shooting film with a Hasselblad, too—it’s that distinct character that draws so many to the system in the first place.
Focusing can be a bit tricky with this system; the tolerances of a 100MP digital back feel much narrower than with film, so I made a lot of use of the flip-down magnifier of the waist level finder (and stopping down) to make sure images stayed sharp. One other consequence of the viewing and focusing method is the shooting angle this system promotes—it feels most natural to photograph subjects from a ‘looking-up’ perspective; even subjects at eye level are shot from below. This is the case with any type of waist-level shooting, but it, along with the inability to shoot vertically, felt like the heaviest constrain against how I would typically shoot—working with this setup is quite the stylistic imposition!
By shooting with the CFV 100C digital back and 503CX body, I got to fulfill a bucket list shooting method I’d been hoping to try since the very first CFV back was released more than 15 years ago. I think a lot of photographers of a certain age or upbringing long for a digital shooting experience that’s akin to how they used to work with film. Whether you prefer one medium or the other, the process is undeniably different between the two.
This Hasselblad CFV 100C setup is likely the closest digital shooting experience I’ve had that still feels like I’m shooting with film. In a way, it’s so quirky, slow, and deliberate that it forces you to work at a speed similar to how precious you are when you only have 12 shots per roll of film. I think this system is best reserved for the times when photography is meant purely for fun and enjoyment. Since most of us are not professionals, that is most of the time we’re making photographs. There is little competition for this system; it’s unlike anything else available besides actually shooting film, yet you have the convenience of digital, instant access to your images, huge 100MP resolution, and much more shooting flexibility.
