Hasselblad is one of the most storied names in photography. The company was founded in Sweden in 1841 as a trading business, but later in the decade, Victor Hasselblad began producing cameras that defined the brand and set a new standard for precision and design.
Hasselblad cameras were soon used by professionals across the world. Its reputation was sealed when NASA chose Hasselblad to document the Apollo missions, including the first steps on the Moon.
Yet, over time, that reputation began to fade. As the industry shifted into the digital era, Hasselblad struggled to maintain the same standards of craft and prestige that had once defined it. Materials and design gave way to compromises, and the brand that had symbolized photographic luxury started to lose the very qualities that made it special. On top of this came a series of misguided collaborations and product decisions that felt gauche and unbecoming, choices in direct opposition to what luxury represents.
What is Luxury? Luxury is a specific kind of value. It rests on heritage, craft, aesthetics, rarity, time, and pleasure that goes beyond need. In consumer research, this isn’t a vague idea. The landmark study by Dubois, Laurent, and Czellar analyzed attitudes toward luxury across multiple countries and found consistent themes. From their work, six key characteristics appear repeatedly.
- Exceptional quality: Materials and workmanship are meaningfully above the norm. Quality is the base that makes everything else coherent.
- Very high price as a signal: Price is a visible marker that often reflects time, skill, and scarcity. It signals commitment rather than serving as the purpose on its own.
- Scarcity and selective access: Luxury is not everywhere. Scarcity includes how much is made, how it is distributed, the store experience, and how access is staged, with client service and aftercare protecting meaning.
- Aesthetics and multi-sensory pleasure : Luxury should look and feel beautiful. Sight, touch, sound, and even scent are part of the experience. Setting and ritual matter.
- Time and heritage: Lineage, stories, and the expectation of long life are central. Luxury is kept, serviced, and often passed on, so permanence and serviceability carry weight.
- Superfluousness beyond need : Luxury is not necessary in a practical sense, yet it becomes meaningful because it offers pleasure, identity, and symbolism that ordinary goods do not.
The Dubois, Laurent, and Czellar study on consumer rapport to luxury is a good guide as it shows something simple and important: people can admire luxury and resist it at the same time. In a survey of 1,848 people across 20 countries, they found three attitudes often sitting together. Elitism keeps luxury selective and preserves ritual. Democratization asks for wider access through broader distribution or entry products. Distance steps back because of price, personal values, or discomfort with display. When these pull at once, debates cross wires. Someone may praise craft while rejecting status, or want access while still wanting standards to stay high.
Additionally, philosophers such as Lambert Wiesing add a useful perspective. Luxury is an aesthetic experience tied to owning something unnecessary that is chosen freely. The point is what the object is, not what it does. This fits the research on aesthetics and superfluousness and helps explain why the best luxury feels more like art you live with than a tool you justify.
Two quick examples make it concrete. A Patek Philippe is not valued for time-telling accuracy alone; cheaper quartz watches often keep better time. It is valued for its heritage, design, and craft that endures. A Rolls-Royce is not transport alone; it is engineering and aesthetic perfection built to be kept, serviced, and enjoyed for years, the opposite of disposable.
Hasselblad the Icon
Hasselblad began building cameras in the 1940s under Victor Hasselblad, a keen bird photographer who wanted a compact and precise system he could carry into the field. That vision produced a modular camera you could shape to the work: A body at the core. A viewfinder for how you prefer to see. A film back for speed or resolution. A lens for the look you want.
The first generation set the pattern with focal plane bodies. The 1600F arrived in 1948, and the 1000F followed in 1953, establishing the square format and the idea of a system that could evolve. The 500C in 1957 refined the concept with leaf shutters in the lenses, which gave quiet operation and flash sync at any speed. The partnership with Carl Zeiss added optics that became part of the brand’s identity and gave the system a catalogue of lenses that professionals came to trust.
From studios to expeditions, Hasselblad earned trust because it combined precision with a rhythm photographers enjoyed. You mounted a back, advanced the film, watched the world on a bright ground glass, and pressed a shutter that felt confident rather than loud. The materials were metal and leather, meaning the camera aged well and gained presence as it did.
Certain models became landmarks rather than simple upgrades. The SWC of 1954 paired a 38 mm Biogon with a compact body for edge-to-edge clarity that architects and landscape photographers used with confidence. The motorized 500 EL of 1965 enabled faster work and consistent sequences. The 500C and later the 500C/M became classic studio tools.
Those milestones set up the most public test of the system. NASA adopted Hasselblad for crewed spaceflight. Gemini crews carried modified 500C bodies. Apollo astronauts used the motorized 500 EL Data Camera with a 60 mm Zeiss Biogon on the lunar surface. It was a practical decision and a clear sign of reliability when failure was not an option.
Across decades, the system kept its promise of continuity. Backs, finders, and lenses from different periods often worked together without fuss, which is part of why the system stayed relevant for so long.
The same modular system proved useful in fashion, portrait, architecture, and fine art work. You could set it up the way you liked, and it behaved the same from job to job. The workflow was clear, the handling was solid, and the frames came out as expected. That reliability is part of why professionals kept using it for so long.
Vintage appeal comes from that mix of function and feel. Clean V system kits are still sought after because the experience has not really been replaced. The cameras have weight, quality materials, and parts that can be serviced. They reward care, and they get better with use.
For years, that pattern held. Then the medium changed. Film gave way to digital, and qualities that once felt effortless needed new answers.
The Decline of Hasselblad
The shift from film to digital was never going to be simple, but for Hasselblad, it felt like more than just a technological change. It was as if the company no longer knew what it wanted to be. Decisions seemed uneven, and the identity that once felt so clear began to blur.
Part of the problem came from leadership. Under CEO Larry Hansen, many of the choices during this period showed little understanding of what made Hasselblad special or even what luxury means. It became one bad decision after another, often looking like quick cash grabs built on the back of Hasselblad’s reputation rather than investments in craft and heritage.
H-mount System
The H line was Hasselblad’s route into digital, beginning with the H1 in 2002, then the H1D in 2004, H2D in 2005, H3D in 2006, and later the H4D and H5D. On paper, the series looked like progress, but in the hand, it felt like a break from the company’s heritage.
The V system bodies had been all-metal with leatherette finishes, solid controls, and a sense of permanence. The H bodies replaced that with rubberized grips, polymer panels, and a look and feel that lacked the refinement of the cameras that came before. They were functional but felt cheaper, less like heirloom tools and more like modern consumer electronics.
Image quality didn’t always make up the difference either. The sensors themselves were excellent, capable of rich colour and detail, but the lenses often failed to take full advantage of them. We even tested the popular HC 150mm f/3.5 portrait lens against the Canon EF 135mm f/2.0, a full-frame lens released back in 1996, years before the Hasselblad lens appeared in 2002. The Canon lens consistently outperformed the Hasselblad in sharpness, despite being far less expensive and much older.
This pattern held in our wider comparisons, too. We reported how full-frame lenses often matched or beat the H6D 100c with its native lenses. This showed that the sensor was being let down by the lenses.
So, you had a camera built from cheaper-feeling materials than its predecessors, carrying Hasselblad’s reputation for quality, but without the lenses needed to justify the name.
The Ferrari Collaboration
In 2010, Hasselblad released a Ferrari edition of the H4D-40. The flagship camera was painted bright red with Ferrari badges and included a presentation kit. There was no visible co-development, no shared craft, no technical exchange that improved the tool. It was a badge exercise on the main product.
This is where luxury logic breaks. The flagship is sacred. You protect it and deepen it. You do not dress it to borrow attention from a louder partner. Luxury collaborations generally work best when both houses add substance that neither can achieve alone. This one did the opposite. It made Hasselblad look like it was trying too hard to impress someone else’s audience rather than serving its own.
It also revealed leadership priorities. Hansen emphasised visibility and doing things that looked like progress, instead of investing in optics and experience.
Stellar and Lunar
The Hasselblad Lunar in 2012 and the Hasselblad Stellar in 2013 were rehoused Sony cameras. Lunar was a Sony NEX-7, and the Stellar was a Sony RX100. Hasselblad simply added shells, wood or leather grips, presentation kits, and price tags, many times the original models.
The design of these cameras was childish. Loud, bulky, and not a single unit of measurable sophistication. Underneath, they were just third-party consumer cameras in expensive shells. To long-time users, that signalled the engineering focus was gone. To professionals, it said surface and packaging now mattered more than products and services. Dealers were left trying to justify why a reworked compact or mirrorless camera cost several times more than the original. Reviews tore into the same point. Coming so soon after a painted flagship, these cameras made it difficult to argue that leadership understood the brand they were running.
Luxury Status Lost
Put together, the cheaper-feeling bodies, the painted flagship, and the rehoused Sony cameras meant Hasselblad lost its luxury status. The brand looked like it had stopped believing in its own craft and started selling its name.
Hansen was unceremoniously removed as CEO in early 2014. And later that year, the company filed a lawsuit against him in Hong Kong over deals tied to Sony. Whatever the outcome, that sequence shows how far trust had fallen inside the company and how much damage those choices caused outside it.
After that, the reset began. Hasselblad stopped chasing attention, tightened the range, focused on build and design quality, and returned to developing its own cameras. The recovery that followed was astonishing. In just a few years, the brand rebuilt credibility and desirability to a level that deserves study. It stands as one of the most remarkable modern turnarounds for a luxury brand.
Why Hasselblad is a Luxury Brand Today
Perry Oosting can be credited with laying the foundations for recovery. The first major change was the menu system in the H6D. With a background in smartphones, Oosting understood how to design a clean interface, and he put a true touch screen at the centre of the camera. The whole experience was built around touch, not as a gimmick but as the way the camera actually works. Large targets, plain labels, clear pages. Tap to change ISO or white balance, swipe to review, pinch to zoom, and you are back to shooting. No clutter, no hunting. It felt natural on day one, and it still does. This menu was ahead of its time then, and it is still the best menu system of any camera on the market today.
The bigger move was direction. Oosting began stepping away from the H line and built a new system around a new mount. The X1D-50c was the first modern mirrorless Hasselblad, and it was built like it mattered. The body was solid metal with a design that continues today, simply beautiful. The grip brought genuine joy when you picked up the camera; it felt perfect, and it was in a luxury product that mattered.
It was an object you wanted to pick up before you even switched it on, and the experience matched the promise. That is what luxury should do; it needs to evoke emotion.
Despite this huge step forward, the X1D had real failings. Early bodies had glitches. It would overheat relatively quickly. Autofocus was poor. The camera was slow, and even starting it up took an unreasonable amount of time. These issues likely made it harder for the company to sell enough units at the time. Nonetheless, Oosting must be credited with laying the foundation for Hasselblad’s recovery. He was crucial in this process, and the direction he set is the base the brand still builds on today.
Oosting Steps Down
The following is based on reporting from credible industry sources, but treat it as unconfirmed.
There is a story about how the development of the X1D camera system was financed. The account says that in 2015, DJI agreed to loan Hasselblad money to develop the new system and took a minority stake in the company. Unfortunately, this financial gamble did not pay off, and sales of the X1D were lackluster at best. As a result, Hasselblad could no longer cover its loan obligations.
At this point, rumors suggest that Oosting was forced out of the company and DJI took majority ownership of Hasselblad. Although DJI’s ownership of Hasselblad has been widely reported, neither company has confirmed this publicly.
However, what’s clear is that even if the risk did not pay off for Oosting personally, the work he started set the course for the brand. This foundation is what made the recovery possible because it gave Hasselblad something worth refining and perfecting.
DJI and Hasselblad Today
Hasselblad today is defined by quality and restraint. Decisions feel careful, the design language is steady, and the cameras read as considered objects rather than marketing moments. The H-mount system has been discontinued, closing that chapter cleanly and freeing the brand to focus on the X mount system.
What’s great to see is that DJI appears to understand Hasselblad. The brand has not chased a long list of needless cash grab collaborations. When collaborations happen, they make sense, and they are handled with deep consideration.
Craft and quality are back at the forefront. The 907X and CFV system is, in particular, a standout. It is, in my opinion, the most beautiful camera system on the market today, a work of art in its own right. It also respects the past. The CFV is compatible with X mount, H mount, and V system cameras, essentially unlocking decades of Hasselblad lenses from the 1950s onward. That is what luxury should do: it should refine, perfect, and connect heritage to the present.
The product line is short because it is meant to be understood at a glance. X2D for the core mirrorless path and 907X and CFV for those who want classic handling and form. No clutter, no stunt models, no confusion about what each piece is for.
Hasselblad today reads as a true luxury brand. Materials, design, and optics are treated with respect. The brand is not trying to be everywhere at once. It is choosing to be exceptional in a few places. DJI deserves credit for that restraint. In many other hands, this name could have been shredded for a quick buck. Instead, the decisions have been careful, the lineup is coherent, and the cameras feel worthy of the badge.
Final Thoughts
Hasselblad’s recent history reads like a rare redemption arc in the world of luxury. A name that drifted found its footing again, rebuilt its products with care, and recovered its place with surprising speed. That is not common, and it is great to see.
The cameras look and feel like objects made to last, and pieces like the 907X with CFV backs reconnect past and present in a way that feels natural rather than nostalgic.
As for the future, the signs are encouraging. Decisions are measured, the range is focused, and the brand is respected. For now, it seems the company is in good hands, and the story of this historic brand continues.
Editors’ Note: Any opinions expressed in the story above are soley those of the author.
Image credits: Elements of header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
