Wanna know how Leica and Hasselblad escaped the digital death spiral that killed off Rollei?

There are quite a few examples of camera companies losing their way as financial problems led to multiple changes of ownership, a revolving door of key personnel and slashed budgets, all hampering meaningful research and development.

Rollei is a classic case, first failing in 1981 (taking Voigtländer with it) and then lurching from one financial crisis to another over the next 30 or so years.

The earlier history, of course, was a storied one that included the legendary Rolleiflex TLRs and the hugely innovative – for the mid-1970s – SLX, which took the professional 6x6cm SLR into the electronic era when everything else was stoically mechanical.

The SLX evolved into the 6000 series, but there was always the feeling that money – or the lack of it – was holding everything back.

Rollei made a half-decent attempt at jumping into digital capture – remember it all started in professional photography with medium-format camera systems – but the huge investments needed to keep up with the fast pace of development finally did for the last owner that actually still made cameras.

Leica very nearly went the same way after losses started to mount up in the 1980s (the rising popularity of 35mm SLRs killing the sales of rangefinder cameras) and continued into the 1990s as investors came and went, as did management teams – all with different ideas about how to revive the company’s fortunes.

Eventually, Leica Camera was rescued by somebody with very deep pockets, a singular vision for the future and the fortitude to carry it through. Consequently, today, the marque is stronger than it’s ever been, based primarily on a clear understanding of how to balance a rich heritage with a profitable future.

Hasselblad has a rich heritage, too, having had as much of an impact on medium-format photography as Leica did with 35mm. Again, though, the many challenges of the transition to digital took their toll – not just on finances, but on the people planning the company’s future.

Inevitably, there were differing opinions – not unusual in film camera companies in the late 1990s and early 2000s – so the way ahead involved some twists and turns without a lot of clarity.

Hasselblad's pro-digital management – after the acquisition of scanner-maker Imacon – were zealots with little regard for the past. The longer-serving engineers were traditionalists who viewed the future with a degree of caution.

To its credit – because its financial situation was still quite grim – in 2016 Hasselblad came up with the X1D, the world’s first mirrorless medium format camera.

It beat Fujifilm’s GFX 50S by a matter of months, and the Japanese camera embodied a very different design philosophy, but in comparison, the X1D was distinctly underdone.

It looked fabulous and the concept was brilliant, but the execution was flawed in quite a number of areas – a studio camera mentality compromised what was, by virtue of its compact size, a supremely portable field camera.

What’s more, Hasselblad didn’t have the funds to build it in the volumes needed for it to be profitable. Consequently, drone-maker DJI upped its minority shareholding to a majority one and the X System has slowly evolved since – ironing out the wrinkles with each successive model.

It’s still not clear whether the Chinese shareholders fully understand the Swedish Hasselblad, but who cares because now we have the X2D II 100C – which finally realizes all the promise of that first model. Ironically, it’s the Hasselblad of old: expressed in a thoroughly contemporary re-interpretation of those original values which Victor Hasselblad established with the 1600F in 1948.

There are other parallels here, too, because the 1600F had its problems that weren’t fully sorted until the 500C, half a decade later. But then look what happened – the long-lived 500 series cameras made Hasselblad, and legions of professional photographers all benefited.

With its forward-looking emphasis on an in-camera HDR workflow and a host of other important upgrades, the X2D II 100C is going to remake the brand. Aside from the technical prowess, it’s high on desirability – literally an X factor – and consequently in demand like no other 'Blad since the XPan.

The obvious lesson here is about investment and return, and how not enough of former inevitably means not enough of the latter either. Give photographers what they really want – and desire – in a cam-era and the profits will surely come.

This article was first published in Australian ProPhoto & Video magazine