Since changing career paths about a dozen years ago, I’ve let my photographic expeditions sort of go to seed.

In the interim, I delved back into guitar. Now as I near at least semi-retirement, I have way too many guitars. I’m currently in the process of thinning that herd. The proceeds from that should neutralize any debt I have laying around.

Since I am eyeing the Pacific Northwest for the next chapter of my adventures, I can hopefully balance guitars and cameras.

Now I am finding that some of my gear needs a little TLC. The unfortunate part of that is the cost of said TLC. So I am going to keep much of the Nikon DSLR equipment that I have now. The repair cost or trade value will keep me shooting with it until it just quits.

Looking toward the future, I would like to modernize with modern mirrorless equipment. The electronic viewfinders I dabbled in a decade ago have come a long way. I tried the offerings from Fuji, and they were like stumbling about in a room with the lights off.

I have narrowed this down to two candidates. A second generation Hasselblad X system, or the Nikon Z9.

Both have similar features. Forty five to fifty megapixels, weather sealing, and focus peaking. Lenses have gone nowhere but up in price over the years, but the Nikon system averages about $1000 less per item. Both will allow an XPan style 65:24 crop yielding about 25 megapixels. The Z9 wins on operating speed and has video capabilities that I will likely never use. The Hasselblad wins by fairly large margin on aesthetics. I envision the largest part of my usage will be on a tripod, so the speed should not be an issue. If I swing back to portraiture, the duplicate controls on the Nikon call out to me.

I can use the existing Nikkor lenses I have on either platform. Extra batteries are actually cheaper for the X camera, though.

I don’t see myself choosing both, but this is a bit of a conundrum for me.

Any of y’all want to chime in?