I have been waiting for a reasonably priced digital back for my V system Hasselblads. I have my first purchased 500 CM from Fox Talberts in London, a 503CW and SWC/M with a bunch of lenses. This new offering of the back and tiny body has me interested, I would rather just buy the back as I have all wide enough glass for my needs. So the question is what is this system like with the 80/50/150 lenses attached. I am a black and white film person primarily but I am prepared to use it for color if need be. So what about it ?
As Vince said, just fit the back, set the body to whichever V system 500 series body you have (you need a different setting for the SWC than the 500CM or 503CW), and go shooting. In essence, the back becomes an infinite roll of film.
You can also use the LCD on the back to nail critical focus when needed for precision work (set exposure to Bulb and release the shutter, lock the shutter release) and use the aperture stop-down on the lens to see actual DOF.
You can also use the back's electronic shutter to do everything, essentially reducing the body to acting as a bulky XV Adapter tube. It's only useful for relatively static subjects due to the 300ms sensor readout speed, but is useful nonetheless.
Shooting with a 500CM or 503CW and a waist level finder, it's best for me to lock the framing to a square crop (the full frame is recorded in raw, but the LCD shows the square crop as do JPEG files produced if you've set it to produce JPEGs). That allows "native" framing, with the benefit of having a peek past the borders of the actual taking frame like you do with RF cameras.
I have the Distagon 50, Planar 80, Makro-Planar 120, and Sonnar 150. All perform beautifully on the CFVII 50c when used with a 500CM. Hasselblad's Phocus software contains lens corrections for all of them too, although I haven't found much need for the corrections so far and have been processing my raw exposures with Lightroom Classic. The effect of setting the back to square crop means that my lens kit is jumped up one lens in FoV ... the 50 acts like the 80 does on film, the 80 acts like the 120 does, the 120 acts like the 150, and so forth. Used on an SWC, the FoV goes from "super wide" to a wide normal.. that's why I bought the XCD 21mm to use on the 907x body: so that I could retain the SWC FoV.
Whether you prefer B&W or Color imaging is completely up to you; capture in raw format and render whatever you like. I do both. Color from the 907x/CFVII 50c is truly lovely at the default settings, but that doesn't mean that you can't manipulate the rendering however you like.
Oh yes: Buy and install the focusing screen that Hasselblad used to include with the CFV 50c standalone product for use with the SLR bodies. It makes focusing much more consistently accurate and has the engraved markings so you can see the 33x44 format boundaries clearly and explicitly.
My guess is that they won't offer the CFVII 50c as a standalone product until demand for the 907x package tails off at least. The 907x body unit is likely being sold in the package for only a few hundred dollars; I can't imagine a standalone CFVII 50c package being much less than $5900 or so anyway. Right now, I suspect that demand for the 907x is high enough, and the availability of CFVII 50c backs limited enough, that they're basically using all the backs they can make to keep the supply of 907x cameras rolling. For me, I'd only want the full package anyway as it extends my Hasselblad kit to include the X system line of lenses, which are all excellent quality.
I've been adding all my 907x/CFVII 50c and 500CM/CFVII 50c photos and such to an album on flickr.com if you feel like perusing it:
https://www.flickr.com/gp/gdgphoto/N1f60D
I have more that I've not processed and posted yet, of course.
G
