I have had Hasselblads for years and the best way to avoid problems is to take the film back off the camera every three months and fire every lens from 10 to 15 times at 1 second as advised by my Hasselblad repair man. That keeps the shutter from getting slow or sticking. Beside that always be sure that the camera body and lens are cocked before removing or attaching. Those two things will avoid most of the things that could go wrong with a Hasselblad.
I have three different paramenders, but have pretty good success even without them.
I don't know how Matt does it, but I use the reference marks on the VF ground glass. It involves a certain amount of guesswork and potentially some cropping in post.How do you manage to do that? Any tricks/tips you can share?
I'm planning an extended series of long daylight exposures with a 10 stop ND filter and another series of infrared landscapes. In both cases the filters, ND and IR, are essentially opaque and black out the viewfinder of a SLR. It is tedious chore screwing and unscrewing a filter off a SLR lens a few dozen times a day, and not forgetting to do so, and not dropping the filter, and so on. A TLR avoids these problems.
How do you manage to do that? Any tricks/tips you can share?
I have professionally owned and used both mamiya 6x7 and a pentax 6x7 for 40 years. I found the mamiya best for studio work, and its all mechanical manufacture means none of the problems associated with battery powered cameras. It is HEAVY, I never found using it handheld a practical proposition outside the studio, I used my pentax 6x7 in preference all the time, even lugging it around Greece on a location shoot. It produced fantastic results with no trouble for 20 years and I only had to change the 6volt battery half a dozen times in 20 yrs. The pentax lenses were very good and most come without the need for internal shutters because of the focal plane shutters. In other words your choice depends on what type of work you do!
As always excellent advice from Sirus Glass. I would add:
1. Store lenses in uncocked state. No pressure on the shutter spring.
2. Store film magazines with the dark slide removed so light leak foam is expanded.
3. Store everything in a <40% RH 60-75F environment. I keep them in a sealed ammunition box with silica gel to provide low humidity.
4. When exercising the shutter also exercise the selftimer "v" setting
5. Exercise the aperture by manually opening up and closing down the aperture
6. Rack focusing ring in and out.
I don't know how Matt does it, but I use the reference marks on the VF ground glass. It involves a certain amount of guesswork and potentially some cropping in post.
I have three different paramenders, but have pretty good success even without them.
How do you manage to do that? Any tricks/tips you can share?
I don't know how Matt does it, but I use the reference marks on the VF ground glass. It involves a certain amount of guesswork and potentially some cropping in post.
All of the above, plus it is really easy to mark the 50 mm distance between the optical centres of the viewing and taking lenses on the centre column of my tripod. Compose with the column set to one position, than raise the centre column to the second position before shooting.My C330f has a parallax indicator bar that moves with bellows extension (and is manually set to the current lens on the camera). This is close enough for some work.
That line of thought makes sense to me. What kind of camera do your current heroes shoot? I've mostly abandoned fillum but I'm tempted to get back into LF for studio type work (I'm more into Avedon and Penn than I am into Ansel)
I am currently looking at digital as well, Full frame, at minimum of 46mega-pixels prices seem grossly over the top! The sony apha looks good but the top end of this one is still £thousands so I I am also looking into smart phones one says it has 108 mega-pixels which sound a bit far fetched, anyone tried that one? Although they don't offer the same manual-choices of DSLR, if the MPixels count is true then downloading and adjusting in photoshop might be ok. What digital DSLR camera do you use?
Thanks for the replies everybody. This.. isn't making my decision any easier haha. Lots of supporters on each side.
I will say that I expect I'll be using the cameras mostly for hiking and camping trips, without a tripod. I've got a sufficiently light backpacking setup that I can afford to take an MF camera along with me. There's a part of me that's worried about how the Hasselblad will fare with tons of vibrations (even in a padded bag) from ascents/ descents, given how precisely tuned it is. The fear of constant maintenance is real.. tho as Sirius has pointed out, selling before having problems is irrational.
@cirwin2010 excellent summary, thank you for sharing. I agree with absolutely everything, except maybe your assessment of the 55mm lens.
My biggest issue with that lens if flare and the need to always carry a lens hood, which is quite awkward and bulky for this lens. Speaking of sharpness, I find it pretty sharp. This is my lens of choice for indoor use, and I shoot it mostly wide open. Here's a 100% zoomed fragment of a 6,000x6,000px scan. Wide open, slightly off-center:
View attachment 310612
Perhaps there's variability between copies, or maybe my standards are lower than yours
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