Falling in Love with the Hasselblad X-Pan II

In 2003 I found myself in Tunis, teaching Photoshop to a room full of wedding, portrait and commercial photographers who were trying to make sense of the digital shift.

I was invited to one of George Dawber’s Photo Training Overseas trips, the famous “busman’s holiday” style events where you worked hard during the day and relaxed hard in the evening. Education wrapped in Mediterranean light.

The archived PTO site from 2004 still exists on the Wayback Machine. Reading it now is surreal. There it is in black and white:

“Digital wizard Stuart Little’s classes were bursting at the seams…”

Long before my career made a lateral move into filmmaking and video editing, that was the atmosphere of the time. Packed rooms. Heated debates about the new RAW vs JPEG workflow. Delegates swapping notes in the bar at night over one too many Gin & Tonics. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, I fell in love with a camera that complicated everything.

The Camera

The Hasselblad X-Pan II produced a true panoramic frame: 65×24mm on standard 35mm film. Roughly a 2.7:1 aspect ratio. Captured in a single exposure. Not stitched, not cropped later.

That detail matters.

The viewfinder forced you to think horizontally. You stopped stacking subjects vertically and started arranging space laterally. In Tunisia’s long coastal horizons and medina streets, it felt made for the place.

The titanium top plate. The restrained design. The quiet leaf shutter lenses. It wasn’t just wide. It was calm.

The Dilemma

Here’s the twist.

I was there teaching digital workflow. Efficiency. The future.

At the same time, Fujifilm’s team from Bedford let me try the brand new X-Pan II. It was gorgeous. But it left me torn.

If I committed to it, I was committing to:

• Buying film
• Processing film
• Scanning panoramic negatives
• Dust spotting
• Time

Meanwhile, the Fujifilm FinePix S1 Pro, a Nikon-Fuji hybrid DSLR, represented speed, immediacy, and a cleaner digital workflow.

Film meant romance. Digital meant momentum.

I was standing in Tunis teaching the future while being seduced by the past.

What the X-Pan Taught Me

The panoramic format encouraged horizontal relationships, context, and scene continuity. It worked beautifully for landscapes, architecture, street scenes, and cinematic still imagery.

More importantly, it slowed you down. It demanded intention.

The X-Pan didn’t just shoot differently. It made you see differently.

Fast Forward to Now

Here’s the irony.

Today I can shoot in the same 65:24 format on an iPhone 15 Pro Max using the Pearla app.

Pearla brings the X-Pan aspect ratio directly to mobile photography. Enable the 65:24 frame, compose within the panoramic guides, and capture. On supported 48MP iPhones, even after cropping to the X-Pan ratio, you’re still working with roughly 24 megapixels of detail.

Combine it with an anamorphic lens and Pearla can de-squeeze optically expanded footage before cropping to 65:24, retaining even more horizontal resolution.

No film. No lab. No scanner. No dust.

But the discipline remains.

The Real Choice

Back in 2003, I thought I was choosing between film and digital.

Looking back, that wasn’t the real decision.

The real question was always this:

How do you see?

The tools have changed. The eye hasn’t.

In Tunisia, the Hasselblad X-Pan II taught me to think horizontally. In 2026, Pearla lets me apply the same mindset instantly from my pocket.

The technology evolved.

The way of seeing stayed the same.