Does anyone know what this Hasselblad Accessory is??

[Kaluacat_Camera]

I imagine it is some sort of macro or microscope attachment, but can't find any info anywhere on it. Thanks for any insight!

 

[AgX]

It is an adapter to "couple" the camera to a microscope.

Hasselblad state that the idea behind making this adapter as bellows, and not as rigid tube as with other makes, is to uncouple vibrations between microscpe and camera.

Something that does not make sense to me.
The advantage I see is, that one can use a plain microscope with just one optical outlet with the eyepice oneself and then shove it under a reprostand with the, already adjusted, camera mounted and just have to pull down the bellows, without having to move the camera up and down as with a rigid tube.

I hope some microscopist can comment on my view of this.

 

[BAC1967]

Camera shake is a big problem with photomicography, especially with big shutter and mirror slap on a medium format SLR. I can see where the bellows would help with that. I get around that by hooking my microscope light up to a darkroom timer. Open the shutter, wait for the shaking to stop, then use the timer in place of the shutter. I adapted my Bronica ETRSi to my Leitz SM microscope with an adapter I cobbled together myself. That’s attached to a Leitz MIKAS adapter designed for m39 cameras.

 

[Light Capture]

This appears to be Microscope adapter for Hasselblad 1600F/1000F bodies.
Hasselblad product code TIOB

 

[AgX]

Camera shake is a big problem with photomicography, especially with big shutter and mirror slap on a medium format SLR. I can see where the bellows would help with that.

But if you do not cancel out the vibration from the start, the "soft coupling" by a bellows would allow the optical axes of microscope amd camera to move, even tilt against each other. This would be no good either.
Then rather couple all sturdily to each other.
Or have I got it wrong?

 

[Light Capture]

But if you do not cancel out the vibration from the start, the "soft coupling" by a bellows would allow the optical axes of microscope amd camera to move, even tilt against each other. This would be no good either.
Then rather couple all sturdily to each other.
Or have I got it wrong?

I would suspect that this the only way to achieve maximum quality.

From my extensive tests done on small repro stand and large more stable repro stand at magnifications 1-5x life size, there is a big difference when it comes to the end result.
On small repro stand longer lenses and higher magnifications gave progressively worse results since it was wobbling more.
On large repro stand there were no longer issues and big differences between different lenses. There was still some motion blurring observed in images.
Resulting image was more directly related to the lens quality with more stable platform.
Digital camera on live view and magnification easily displayed that even more stable stand isn't stable enough.
Basically, If I want to improve my results, even more stable repro stand is required before looking for better lens.

With microscope attached cameras, magnifications are much higher than this and microscope can't support camera screwed in small adapter properly.
All should be placed on stable repro stand if microscope is mobile. If it's larger microscope, it might be able to support camera through the adapter.

On top of this there is also and issue with parallelism to the image plane. If either one of the adapters is not perfect, camera is tilted.
With precision level or other alignment device this can be adjusted if camera is decoupled from microscope.

 

[AgX]

Thank you !

 

[BAC1967]

But if you do not cancel out the vibration from the start, the "soft coupling" by a bellows would allow the optical axes of microscope amd camera to move, even tilt against each other. This would be no good either.
Then rather couple all sturdily to each other.
Or have I got it wrong?

I would expect that the soft coupling would keep the microscope from shaking but have no effect on the camera shaking. The advantage of the bellows may not have been for shake but instead to zoom in and out for framing the image. I have done this with a 4x5 camera and it worked pretty good. I also do it with the Bronica by adding extension rings. Changing magnification by switching microscope objectives is a large jump and greatly decreases what little depth of field you have. The bellows would allow for a fine adjustment of magnification with no effect on the depth of field.

 

[JensH]

But if you do not cancel out the vibration from the start, the "soft coupling" by a bellows would allow the optical axes of microscope amd camera to move, even tilt against each other. This would be no good either.
Then rather couple all sturdily to each other.
Or have I got it wrong?

No, you are right.
A sturdy microscope plus fixed coupling and a very low vibration shutter - think of a Prontor Magnetic... like in the Zeiss MC63 cameras... great for 4x5" btw.- is a better but much more expensive solution. These are heavier than a Hasselblad F.

Best
Jens