The Hasselblad Leaf Shutter – What’s that Noise?!

 In Hasselblad, Hasselblad Tip, Hasselblad XCD, News, Steve Hendrix, X2D

I wrote an article some time ago about the loud-ish shutter sound coming from the Hasselblad 25mm f/2.5 V Lens. Someone had questioned whether that was a normal sound. I, of course, determined that the sound was normal.

I’ve since seen—pretty regularly—someone else getting their new Hasselblad lens and post whether the shutter sound is normal. So, I thought it would be a fun and interesting project to dig into this a bit deeper, and since we typically have almost every Hasselblad lens in our demo/rental inventory, I sat down and did a run-through of each lens for a comparative sound reference video. So now whenever you buy a new lens, you can just go there and compare how yours sounds.

In the above video, I noticed not just that most lenses sounded different in subtle ways (or more dramatically in some cases), but also that some lens shutters had not just a different sound, but a busier one. This struck me as odd. So I decided to dig in again a bit deeper, and as I suspected, there are completely different shutters in these lenses. We already know this to be likely, because some lenses have a maximum shutter speed of 1/2000th, and some go to 1/4000th. But what I was hearing, and wanted to get to the bottom of, was that some of the shutters sounded like there was just more happening in the shutter sound sequence. So I wanted to see exactly what was happening there. Slo-Mo video to the rescue. Now I didn’t do this with every single lens, only the below 3 lenses:

What you can see is starting off is that the leaf shutter in the 45mm lens is open. The aperture blades are open. Upon release of the shutter, the leaf shutter – situated in front of the aperture blades – closes, then opens to reveal the stopped down aperture blades. The 1.4 second exposure duration elapses, then we see the leaf shutter close and open again.

Then the 38mm. Again, the leaf shutter is open and the aperture blades are open. But here is where things change. Upon shutter release, no leaf shutter in front of the blades closes and then opens. What you see is only the aperture stopping down, the exposure (again, 1.4 seconds) is occurring, and then at the end of the exposure, the leaf shutter closes and then opens. But the leaf shutter is behind the aperture blades.

So – several things here. The leaf shutter in the 45 XCD is in front of the aperture blades, the leaf shutter in the 38 V is behind the aperture blades. And the leaf shutter closes then opens twice with the 45 XCD, but only closes and opens once with the 38 V. This explains the less busy sound I was hearing with some lenses (like the 38). I also tried the 35-100 but surprisingly, it did have the same leaf shutter position and operation as the 45 XCD (in front of aperture blades and opened and closed before the exposure and again at the end of the exposure.

So there you have it – a dissection of Hasselblad lenses, old and new, sounds and mechanisms, and now we know a bit more than we did before. We hope this was helpful!

steve hendrix medium format expert

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out! Your purchase strengthens our business, and we appreciate it!

steve@captureintegration.com – 404.543.8475

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