Familiarize yourself with the H2

Take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with the H2 and its various controls. Note the diﬀerence be- tween a long press, a short press and a ’click’ with some buttons. For example from the main screen a click of the ON.OFF button will take you to Proﬁles while a longer press will turn the camera oﬀ.

With your right hand holding the ergonomic grip for security and control, your thumb and ﬁngers have immediate access to all the controls without letting go. The H2 sits comfortably in the palm of your left hand for support but leaves your ﬁngers free for eventual manual focus adjustments.

Note the changes on the LCD as you press the various buttons and rotate the control wheels. Notice too the changes in the viewfinder LCD as you do the same. You cannot damage the camera by pressing the wrong buttons or controls or using them in the wrong order. The worst that can hap- pen is that you might get ‘lost’ in the menu or you might activate a certain action that takes time to complete. In this case simply click on the escape button ( ON-OFF - PROFILES / ESC) to return to the ‘main’ screen again.

Attempt a half-press with the shutter release button with the camera set at autofocus too see how the lens focuses and the light metering reacts. Notice that the lens barrel does not revolve in auto- focus but you can immediately change the focus manually and immediately revert to autofocus again by using a half-press again.

Note the readily accessible customizable buttons that provide direct access to most functions (in- vestigate how you can exploit this excellent function to the full in a later section).

Note the safety features integral in the magazine so you cannot remove a magazine without the darkslide in place or (unless set otherwise) make an exposure with the darkslide in place.

Feel for the stop down button positioned between the lens and the grip.

Press the AF button and then turn the front control wheel to change from AF single to AF continu- ous to Manual to try out the diﬀerences in how the camera behaves in these diﬀerent modes, for example.

Press the EXP button on the viewﬁnder and then turn the rear control wheel to change the metering method to see the changes in sensitivity of the exposure meter.

Quite simply, just explore the camera for a little while to feel at home with the general handling and the idea of control buttons and wheels and LCD information, etc. The sooner you become accus- tomed to moving the controls instinctively the sooner you will be able to eﬀortlessly use the ﬁnesses on oﬀer.

The remainder of this manual will slowly take you through, stage for stage, each feature and setting so that you can master this marvellous piece of photographic equipment and exploit it to the full.

Finally, remember to check occasionally with your camera dealer or on the Hasselblad website on the Internet to see whether a ﬁrmware update is available. The functions and options described in this manual refer to ﬁrmware version 9.1.0 and later. The ability to update camera ﬁrmware is an advantage you should not forget to make full use of to maximize the capabilities of your H2!