Enter the Digipan

People who have known me (photographically speaking… anyone else would glaze over at this stage) will know that I am, and have been for some years, completely obsessed by the Hassleblad XPan and Fuji equivalents (TX-1 and TX-2). These are HUGELY expensive beasts though, with prices constantly going up. I was looking at one last week with both lenses in remarkably good condition for a 25 year old camera and they wanted about £5,000 for it! This cost was part of what led me to shooting panoramic medium format, that camera with 2 lenses was brand new (Straight Outta Chingquing) was about £800 before I was thoroughly abused for VAT, import duty and handling fees… but I diagress. The film panoramic is much better quality than an XPan in terms of output (the negatives are an order of magnitude larger after all, and it is fitted with a Fujinon and Schnieder pair of lenses which are exceptionally high class). But it’s big. REALLY big.

So today I have added a second hand digital that gives me that same panoramic form factor on a 28mm lens, which is about where I want to be. It is quite small, tiny even when compared to even the Fuji GSW690 which is it’s spiritual ancestor in many ways. So that is me raring to get out there and start shooting some exciting landscapes - and this is the camera that I will be taking to Iceland too as I won’t have space for a mass of gear on that trip!

I must admit, I am now a bit obsessed by compact digital cameras of a certain quality - and have a shopping list of a Fuji X100 VI, Fuji Half Frame, Ricoh GR VI and Ricoh GR VI Mono! I will see how I get along with this one first though.

What is it you ask?

I will let you work that out for yourselves!

16th April 2026