As a photographer who started with digital on a Canon 450D as film was waning to give way to the new kid on the block, I grew up with my parents using film as well as taking it on holidays as a child but my serious, business photography was always in the digital age. In 2014 I got the itch, as most do, to try film and I had set my sights on what a lot of professionals from the 80’s would have used, the Hasselblad 500cm. It was small enough to be a walk around camera whilst giving beautiful, large 6x6 images on medium format film with its standard 80mm T* lens.

Now, in 2026 I still use the 500cm (not the same one I bought as I sold that one to try something else and instantly regretted it) to capture portraits whether in the studio or on location as well as my travel photography. It’s fully mechanical nature means I don’t have to rely on batteries or an internal meter (I use my Sekonic handheld) and it will keep working in the most adverse conditions.

Hasselblad contact sheet of Kate in the studio. You can see the one frame where the flash didn’t fire.

Some people add the option prism viewfinder to the Hasselblad to add a degree of ease to their framing and more importantly, focus as the waist level viewfinder reverses the image which can be disorientating at first and focussing medium format wide open at f/2.8 can be a challenge on the standard focus screen.

Being a primarily analogue photographer, especially now AI is dominating the space and taking the human connection away from culling and post processing in a lot of genres, shooting film makes me really connect with not only my sitter but also with the process and the Hasselblad 500cm also leads to conversation about the medium and the camera as an object to capture the moment.

The Hasselblad 500cm for Portraits in 2026