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First month with the XPan

Well. I bought another camera. This is the last one I promise. 

Haha. 

Anyways, yes, as alluded to in the previous post and spoiled in the title, I bought an XPan. The Hasselblad XPan is a rangefinder camera that shoots panoramic frames that are almost double the width of the standard 3:2 35mm frame.

First roll of panoramic frams out of the tank, using SmartConvert mobile

I've toyed with the idea of buying one, but always convinced myself I would try putting 35mm film in a medium format camera and taking panoramas that way. Then if I really got into it, I would deserve an XPan. 

I did in fact buy all the stuff to do 35mm panorams in a medium format camera. I got a 3d printed adapter that would let me mount a 35mm film canister in a 120 slot, I got a cheap medium format camera that would support doing a 35mm pano mod, I even picked up a lomography sprocket rocket over a year ago and shot a few times (was impossilbe to scan the results with my old setup so never really bothered). But did I ever try it with a medium format camera? No. 

35mm film in a medium format camera ©️ Ben Cushwa for Lomography.com

Instead, some guy on the local craigslist (tutti.ch) had posted his XPan for significantly lower than the usual price I had seen the (very few) other XPans get listed at, AND it had been CLAd in the past couple years. It stuck around up there for a while and no one bought it, probably because it looked like it had been in the war. I finally got up the nerve to ask him about it, he responded, then a day later the listing disapeared. Fuck!!!!! But it was ok, turns out the listing had expired and he had to manually relist it. We negotiated a lower price and then a few days later it showed up at my door.

The hasselblad version uses paint that hates titanium, so it patinas easily (mine is a particularly extreme case)

It was love at first sight. As Grainydays puts it, "The camera itself is, how do I put this delicately: it's quite f*ckable."

I immediately put a test roll of kodak double x through it while taking my sister to the train station.

I was in love, truly madly deeply. I shot a ton of random rolls just walking around Zurich. The weather was bad so I didn't take it to the mountains until very recently, but that's for another post. 

Walking to the lake from the office, on Wolfen NC400

Blew through that roll extremely fast. Continued walking to the lake on Phoenix 200:

Some particularly moody Foma Ortho 400

On a much sunnier day, when I finished with testing some lomo purple at the succulent garden, I popped in a roll of Proimage 100 and walked to Kinawiese

Well, I didn't make it there on one roll. Loaded proimage after

One night, I shot a roll of Reflx Lab 800T on my 10 minute commute to the office to do my evening meetings.

Anyways, I love this camera so much, I will never sell it, and I will be so sad when it dies. Shout out to the man who loved it every day of its life before he sold it to me, I'll try to make you proud.

Also this might truly be one of the last stupidly expensive cameras I'll buy (except of course to replace one of mine that fails). I've got every niche more or less filled now. I also haven't picked up any of my M-mount cameras since I got the Contax G and XPan, oops.