5 Frames with a Hasselblad XPan – By Simon King

It wasn’t long after deciding to take film photography a little more seriously with my CL that I decided to finally adopt an XPan into my lineup. I know for many people the XPan is a divisive camera, and it is an odd choice to go for as a second film option – however my style for a while has called for manipulating the frame into odd aspect ratios, which are often cinematic.

Cinema and videography composition has always been influential over my work, storytelling approach, and the way I frame scenes since I started photography, and this specialist camera seemed ideal for capturing images with those elements. The XPan exposes across two frames of 35mm film (making this a “10 Frames With” write-up) and offers very a unique panoramic aesthetic.

I am used to rangefinder cameras from my digital Leica M’s, and film CL, so there was no learning curve there; however I did have an issue framing through the letterbox viewfinder. There is so much more context than I am used to, especially considering that the majority of my work is shot in portrait.

Having such a vast horizontal field of view to work with was quite tricky to navigate, and I lost many images due to elements entering or exiting my frame when I did not notice, or was not ready for them.

I think this will be the hardest thing to master about the XPan, truly owning my frames and paying special attention to the edges where things most often go amiss.

Although I like my black and white work I think that colour film really looks great when shot in a cinematic ratio, and I will be using some CineStill 800 in future projects with this camera.

Thank you for taking the time to read my thoughts, and look at my photographs. If you’d like to see more of my work, please follow me on Instagram, where I have links in my Bio for my personal blog and portfolio.

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