I recently purchased a nice kit of Hasselblad equipment from across the country on Craigslist and, upon opening the package, saw something that had me completely stumped.
An A12 back with... an extra button on top? A phone call to the original owner wasn't fruitful. He too had no idea what it was for.
I messed around with it a bit, trying different pushes and prods during different parts of the image taking process. At one point I got a nice moment of panic when I thought I had jammed the camera and the back seemed fused to the body. Thankfully some frantic wiggling eventually separated the two. At that point I was a little too scared to use the back without fully understanding what I had on my hands.
So I dug deeper.
Pulling off the button presented me with a little piece of metal sticking out of the top of the back. Still not much to be seen. So I popped off the cover plate and saw...
A small sliver of metal, slot cut in the middle, a spring coiled around its body, and a small standoff post underneath holding it proud of the cover plate surface.
When talking to the owner, one of the questions I posed was if this was some kind of double exposure modification. Seeing this mechanism, and its position relative to the main gear of the magazine made me think that was indeed the answer.
Some intense Googling finally came up with a clue. My hero ended up being a 1999 thread on Photo.net. A user mentioned something that sounded very similar to my modified A12 back and a name: John Kovacs.
It turns out that John Kovacs was a career Hasselblad technician who ended up running his own camera store for many years in New Hampshire. John also owned a patent filed in 1979: US4232957A: Camera multiple exposure control mechanism.
And, after a few hours of exploratory deconstruction, button pushing and researching, I had my answer. After seeing the technical drawings, I realized that my particular mechanism had become a little bent out of position at some point. Some needle nose pliers and a drop of epoxy and I was the proud owner of a unique, almost unheard-of piece of Hasselblad history.
After taking an exposure, a press of that extra button while actuating the body crank allows the magazine to be re-cocked while the frame counter, and the film, remain in position. Sure beats the old workaround to do double exposures on the V system.
I hope this is at least a little bit interesting to some other folks on here. I know I found a lot of satisfaction learning these little tidbits of history that seem to have nearly been lost to time. I've yet to put this back to good use, but I'm excited about the possibilities it presents.
As a bonus, I found this story about a photographer who had a run in with John. The author paints a really kind picture of the man whose handiwork has now fallen into my possession.
An A12 back with... an extra button on top? A phone call to the original owner wasn't fruitful. He too had no idea what it was for.
I messed around with it a bit, trying different pushes and prods during different parts of the image taking process. At one point I got a nice moment of panic when I thought I had jammed the camera and the back seemed fused to the body. Thankfully some frantic wiggling eventually separated the two. At that point I was a little too scared to use the back without fully understanding what I had on my hands.
So I dug deeper.
Pulling off the button presented me with a little piece of metal sticking out of the top of the back. Still not much to be seen. So I popped off the cover plate and saw...
A small sliver of metal, slot cut in the middle, a spring coiled around its body, and a small standoff post underneath holding it proud of the cover plate surface.
When talking to the owner, one of the questions I posed was if this was some kind of double exposure modification. Seeing this mechanism, and its position relative to the main gear of the magazine made me think that was indeed the answer.
Some intense Googling finally came up with a clue. My hero ended up being a 1999 thread on Photo.net. A user mentioned something that sounded very similar to my modified A12 back and a name: John Kovacs.
It turns out that John Kovacs was a career Hasselblad technician who ended up running his own camera store for many years in New Hampshire. John also owned a patent filed in 1979: US4232957A: Camera multiple exposure control mechanism.
And, after a few hours of exploratory deconstruction, button pushing and researching, I had my answer. After seeing the technical drawings, I realized that my particular mechanism had become a little bent out of position at some point. Some needle nose pliers and a drop of epoxy and I was the proud owner of a unique, almost unheard-of piece of Hasselblad history.
After taking an exposure, a press of that extra button while actuating the body crank allows the magazine to be re-cocked while the frame counter, and the film, remain in position. Sure beats the old workaround to do double exposures on the V system.
I hope this is at least a little bit interesting to some other folks on here. I know I found a lot of satisfaction learning these little tidbits of history that seem to have nearly been lost to time. I've yet to put this back to good use, but I'm excited about the possibilities it presents.
As a bonus, I found this story about a photographer who had a run in with John. The author paints a really kind picture of the man whose handiwork has now fallen into my possession.
