Recently I had the opportunity to access the  Official Residence of the Portuguese Consulate of Macau, an elegant, colonial style, neoclassical building in Macau Peninsula.

The building sits in a privileged location in Penha Hill and has this long colonnade balcony with a captivating view over the city. Mind me, it used to be a view over the sea, but ever since land reclamation and development took over, the view became a bit different now.

In any case, still a fascinating view. We were having a glorious, sunny day. And, incidentally, I had my Hasselblad with me.

I casually took the photos I’m sharing here now. I was not there to shoot photos, I had some business to take care of, so it was all a bit in a hurry when we were walking by and chit-chatting with some people.

The photos were taken in RAW at full resolution, processed using Hasselblad’s own Phocus 2 app. Not much editing, just some cropping and keeping the native light falloff of the XCD 4/28P lens. I like the character it gives to the photos, highlighting the glow in the center of the image.

And this is the point I want to address here. The way this camera captures the light is amazing. I like the glow and the smoothness of the transitions between light and dark. And the colours are so deep, but not saturated. They are deep. My medium format Fuji GFX 50R was good at this, my Leica Q2 as well.

But the Hasselblad is clearly on a different league.

In September I will be travelling to Portugal and the Hasselblad is (obviously) coming with me. I’m going to the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, midway between Portugal and the US East Coast.

Breath taking scenery everywhere and definitely the perfect stage for this super camera to perform.