Hassleblad 4116 moto-mod

bykfixer

Flashaholic
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Aug 9, 2015
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20,348
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Dust in the Wind
This thread is dedicated to RedLED.

It's an unfortunate fact that good photography is going the way of the film camera. Celcams. Yuck!!
Many-a good company has gone by the wayside thanks to digital technology and worse.... iPhones. Yeah, they take fine pix for emails, for PowerPoints and dare I say it... Insta-crap.

Back in late summer my HTC M8 commited suicide. A glitch in 3 year old HTC circuitry caused it to malfunction along the lines of Windows' blue screen of death. RIP M8. Well being I was staying at a vacation spot with epic sunrises and sunsets, along with being away from CPF as a result I needed a celphone and fast. But I was staying miles away from civilization. The nearest town had a postage stamp sized WalMart and about 15 tractor repair shops. Yet a Verizon store had just opened. Ok, cool.

The Samsung 8 was days from being released, the X wasn't even mentioned beyond rumor mills and they were out of Google pix phones. I'd had success with older Motorola phones so I considered the Play. While waiting for assistance I used the wifes phone to research this so called Play and all the buzz was about some projector mod the thing could do. What caught my attention at first was a spare battery that could morph to the phone. Hmmmm, 2-3 day runtime? Cool. But then I saw a point n shoot thingy by Hassleblad.

Still waiting on assistance I started reading reviews. First the phone, then the attachments. Runtime got 5 stars everywhere. The supplied camera got 2-3. The HTC had a decent lens, and so did the Play. I really liked the features of the HTC camera but the Motorola was a plain, auto everything but.... it prompts to 1.7 aperature. Ok, I can like that. Reviews of the Hassleblad were varied based on modern day thinking. Yet mentions of full res 10x zoom, a great hunk of glass and a xenon flash caused me to think "good still life cam".

Knowing Hassleblad is notorious for slow focus I figured the 1.7 aperature of the Play would be a boon. Eh, it's nothing I'll be acquiring anytime soon I thought, especially if I have to purchase it online. But one evening I bought my wife a new Motorola Force when a Samsung update murdered her S7 about a week after the S8 was out (imagine that). The store had a Hassleblad. Yikes. I held it, clamped to my phone etc etc. I left the store, wife loaded with goodies for her new rig thinking "perhaps this summer".

Mrs. Fixer gave me one for Christmas. All I'd bought her was the worlds softest pajamas and a gift cars.
Uh oh.
She remarked how I kept mentioning how crappy my phone cam is for taking flashlight pix and knew I stay bogged down at the computer re-sizing etc when using the Nikon.

Ok, the camera:
IMG_20171229_105110.jpg

Looks like a point n shoot.

Sooooooo 2012, right?. Yet it magnetizes easily to my telephone. And stays put. It turns a razor thin slab of alluminum into a grippy camera. It makes the celphone feel like an actual camera. Buttons are laid out in a logical manner. No surprises and uses typical form. Operation is like those automatic type point n shoot cameras so the Instagram user won't be bogged down by the requirements of actual thinking.

The pix:
Ok, if you are looking for a zippy focus, a ton of features and SLR quality stop reading here. It's a Hassleblad.

If you're still reading, this little jewel in the rough definitely has limitations. It's never going to appeal to the masses. It's a Hassleblad with the typical Hassleblad good and not so good. Yes it's slow. But if you want to use your celphone to take quality photos zoomed as much as a 200mm full frame'd deal at full resolution or about 28mm at wide open using a tiny sensor that at so-called f1.7, actually equates to about a 6.3 this thing is nice. No hunting like a celcam that just as you push the shutter in low light goes out of focus. Once it's locked it stays, just like a regular camera.

Using the Motorola camera app it shows you the focus point with a touch dial that allows an ev adjustment if you choose. You can choose your favorite app to drive the 4116 too.

IMG_20171229_104054.jpg

An indoor shot in morning light.
Shot from across a 25 foot room zoomed in about 50% with the camera well braced, I slightly cropped the photo and resized to 800. It's posted from a site host that slightly degrades your photos. Good enough to paste in a forum imo.
Anyway, compared to the typical photo from my factory celphone lens, I found the 4116 creates a drastic improvement over the phone-cam. And any zoom from the factory phone cam drastically reduces the quality while introducing noise. I have my factory camera set at 400 iso to speed up shutter speed slightly. The Hassleblad is set to auto.

At $250 it aint for most. But armed with a pocket sized bean bag and my 4116 I can finally take some decent photographs with my celphone.
 
Last edited:

Esko

Enlightened
Joined
Nov 17, 2008
Messages
514
thingy by Hassleblad. ...Reviews of the Hassleblad... ...Knowing Hassleblad is notorious...
etc.
It is Hasselblad, the Swedish high end camera manufacturer. NOT Hassleblad. :rolleyes: :grin2:

Samsung had an optical zoom camera phone some 4-5 years ago. I did consider buying that. If I remember correctly, the phone was thick like a compact point and shoot camera and not very good when compared to good quality compact cameras (or better phones, apart from the optical zoom which wasn't particularly sharp either). It was rather basic as a phone, too. So, I decided to go with not so bulky phones.

I saw this add-on in a local store's outlet section while I was looking for a phone for my wife before Christmas. I was first interested in it but once I saw it was just an add-on (to a phone that I don't have) it pretty soon killed the interest. I think that the biggest flaw of the machine is that you still have to carry it on purpose - like a separate compact camera. It either makes your phone very bulgy (if attached) or you have to carry 2 phone size devices. There are also rather good small compact cameras with multiple ways to connect them with your phone&social media and they are compatible with any current and near future model. You could have a phone with a good built-in camera and pair it with a decent point and shoot camera (e.g. Lumix DC-ZS70) whenever you feel that you can carry something extra for photography purposes.
 
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