do you recognize this photo what about these they were all taken with a hasselblad camera it's a name every photographer knows but if you wanted to buy this hasselblad camera you'd need over thirty thousand dollars and that doesn't even include the lens so why would anyone pay so much for a camera and what makes hasselblad's so expensive to understand why people love hasselblad cameras it helps to look at this image if you zoom way in you can see incredible detail the photos are fantastic but it's a little more complicated than that hasselblad has been making cameras for 80 years but they weren't always this expensive in 1948 hasselblad's first consumer camera cost around 500 or about 5900 today and adjusted for inflation its film cameras from the 70s cost around 5 300 but when the company transitioned to digital the price exploded in 2004 hasselblad's first digital camera sold for around 24 000. that was more than a two hundred percent price increase from its previous model which used film okay so it's expensive but what actually makes this camera different hasselblad's high-end cameras consist of three main parts the digital back the body and the lens just the digital back which includes the sensor costs over 26 thousand dollars the hasselblad sensor is unique in the way that it's much larger in an area the individual pixel is bigger and that provides a lower noise and wider dynamic range take a look at this photo of a motorcycle when you zoom in you can clearly see the texture of the handle and the wear on its tires larger sensors capture more detail and hasselblads is one of the biggest available its cameras are what's called medium format basically it means the sensor is big and it's what makes these cameras so expensive your smartphone camera sensor is around this big a popular professional camera like the sony a7r is much larger but it looks tiny compared to hasselblad sensor when medium format technology transitioned from analog to digital the media format sensors became extremely expensive and the camera systems became extremely expensive and very niche the sensor in this camera is actually made by sony but hasselblad has its own proprietary calibration process to achieve the colors and image quality it wants it's very useful for the skin tones or the reproduction of the artwork and so on where you really need to make sure that the colors you have in real life are the ones that will end up later in the photographs medium format cameras are mainly used for product and fashion photography as well as art reproduction photographers who need this type of specialized technology can't use off-the-shelf consumer cameras and these shoots usually take place in a studio where the camera's bulky size isn't an issue but there's another factor that makes hasselblad cameras unique unlike other companies hasselblad doesn't mass produce its cameras it makes them in small batches assembled by hand this is partly because hasselblad doesn't make that many cameras hasselblad doesn't disclose exactly how many cameras it makes but in 2018 the verge reported that hasselblad's yearly production was under 10 000 units other manufacturers like canon produce millions of cameras each year but this process also ensures that each camera meets hasselblad's quality standards here in production we have people that works here for over 30 years and for special tasks we have people that they just do that task nobody else can do that hasselblad assembles its cameras here in gothenburg sweden remember this old photo production today looks pretty similar its facility is more like a lab than an assembly line here each component is tested connected and soldered but learning how to adjust each part isn't easy assemblers rely on both precise instruments and the sound and feel of each component to know that it's working properly my favorite part is the mirror assembly this part i know that's not working well because of the click you have to work here maybe in in just assembling this part maybe months actually are capable of making it right when you charge thirty thousand dollars for a camera quality control is a top priority and assemblers take their job very seriously the whole process requires a lot of patience you will end up learning to be very careful while mounting these tiny parts otherwise you will run into different issues afterwards while testing the camera assemblers complete a camera in around six to eight hours the calibration can take up to a third of that time what's unique about hasselblad cameras is that each sensor is individually calibrated and tested to a single pixel level which is very time consuming and quite unlike in this industry but pressure to deliver consumer-focused cameras has increased in the past few years hasselblad has released more affordable cameras around six thousand dollars these cameras have a smaller sensor compared to other more expensive models the competition in this price range is steep sony's latest alpha one camera costs a bit more but it can shoot 8k video and has super fast autofocus and while the sensors on cheaper cameras aren't as large those cameras pack more features that appeal to a wide range of photographers hasselblad says that it's working to introduce more entry-level medium format cameras but that it will continue to support its high-end customers and for many photographers who need uncompromising image quality this hasselblad continues to be worth the price