Note: Originally written in Nov 2019 but never posted.

Dream camera project part 1

I’m hoping this is the first post in a new series. I’m going to try to get a hold of and use some cameras that I would consider to be my dream cameras. Maybe because they are more expensive than I can afford or just hard to find in good condition these days or maybe both.

The Idea came to me when a friend agreed to let me borrow his early model Hasselblad SWC. Sadly I was unable to shoot with it a lot due to a few things going on in my life at the time but the experience of using it was still super interesting and I learned a bunch of stuff with it.

The Hasselblad SWC gets its name because from Super Wide Camera. It’s slim by medium format cameras standards. The body comes with a Zeiss Biogon 38mm f4.5 CF lens permanently affixed. This lens is the main part of the magic of this camera. I’ve always been a fan of wide angle glass. Because this camera shoots in a square 6x6 format it’s hard to give you an equivalent focal length in 35mm. It’s about 21mm in one direction and 16mm in the other. The lens is well regarded for its sharpness and lack of distortion considering how wide it is.

The main body of the camera is unlike a typical Hasselblad 500 series because it contains no mirror, ground glass or viewfinder of any kind really. Instead of the body is more of a spacer to separate the lens from the standard A12 film back. There is a hotshoe viewfinder on the top of the camera. The viewfinder on the early version of the camera I used is, lets be honest, poor. It only gives you a rough estimate of what the lens sees. There is no focus aid in the viewfinder and has to be done via the lens markings. I thought I did an okay job but I found the images to be a little soft. This is more likely my lack of experience with the camera than anything technical with it. I should also point out there is no light meter of any kind. I happen to still have a hand held meter so I used it when trying out this camera.

The engineers who designed this things thought about it a lot. Maybe I should not be surprised considering it’s Hasselblad but the tolerances even on a 50 plus year old camera are still pretty perfect. The film backs clip into place perfectly and the film advance winder on the side of the camera feels good. There is a nice feeling click when you hit the end of you wind and the next frame is ready to go.

So now that you have a bit of background why I think this camera is cool, let's talk a bit about how it was to use. I’ve used a ton of digital and film cameras over the years but never a hasselblad. Maybe some of these things won’t be surprising to those of you who have.

Setting your exposure is interesting, You can change the shutter speed and aperture independently by holding back a little clutch and turning the aperture dial. Once you have your correct exposure set you can turn the whole dial without pressing the clutch to change the aperture and shutter speed in sync. You can also set the correct exposure based on the exposure value scale. This was handy for me since I was using a light meter that showed me a EV number I could just match on the camera. Something that I had to keep in mind was that the shutter speed of this lens only goes up to 1/500th which is not uncommon on these types of cameras. It’s not a big deal but you do need to plan for it with your film selection on a sunny day. I often found myself shooting at this upper limit with 100 iso film stock. Later I found that a lot of my images were under exposed. I suspect my light meter was at fault for this.

One thing that I found to be very smart is that you cannot make an exposure until you’ve removed the darkslide from the film back. You also must inset the darkslide before removing that back from the camera body. It’s simple but it proves they were thinking about the usability of the system. Loading film was simple enough. It’s similar to loading other medium format systems if you’ve ever uses one.

Overall I found the camera easy to use and had a good time with it. It’s not super heavy so you can totally hand hold it comfortably if you want. However putting it on a tripod so you can make sure it’s totally level when you’re framing is probably better. I know people use this camera for all kinds of subjects but to me it really shines as a landscape or architecture camera where you likely to use a tripod anyway.

So what comes next? I don’t know I’m going to pester some people I know to see if anyone has some gear they are willing to let me get some hands on time with. I know there are a lot of neat film cameras out there, X-pan anyone? However I’m up for digital stuff too if it’s interesting and something I haven’t gotten to play with yet. Let me know if you’re willing to help out in this endeavor, thanks.