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Hasselblad is a traditional Swedish manufacturer of medium format cameras based in Gothenburg / Sweden. The current owner is the Chinese group DJI Co. Ltd.
Victor Hasselblad (great-grandson of Fritz Wiktor Hasselblad) founded Hasselblad AB based in Gothenburg in 1941, which developed and manufactured cameras for the first time. Over the years, the Hasselblad brand has become the epitome of the standard for 6 × 6 medium format cameras and the corresponding high-end scanners. At the beginning of 2017, Hasselblad was majority taken over by the Chinese technology company DJI.
The focus of Hasselblad is the production of analog and digital cameras in the film and sensor formats 6 × 6 and 4.5 × 6. Hasselblad cameras for analog film were a kind of de facto standard for medium format cameras until the triumphant advance of digital photography in the 2000s, which are mainly used in the areas of fashion photography, portrait photography, art and advertising because of the far higher image resolution than with 35mm film.
In the field of digital photography, the company has been producing fully digital medium format cameras since 2005; the models from 2021 will offer a resolution of up to 400 megapixels. Production of the analog cameras has been completely discontinued since around 2013! In addition, digital camera backs for mounting on analog models are offered, which replace the analog film with a medium format digital image sensor.
Many world-famous photographers work or have worked with the manufacturer’s cameras, including Ansel Adams, Andreas Gursky, Robert Mapplethorpe and Karl Lagerfeld and many others …
The photos of the US astronauts on the Apollo program on the moon were taken with Hasselblad cameras, as were numerous famous record covers, such as Abbey Road by the Beatles.
From the 2000s, the former family business changed hands several times. Hasselblad has been majority owned by the Chinese company Da-Jiang Innovations Science and Technology Co., Ltd (DJI for short) since 2017.