I want A Hasselblad. Talk Me Out Of It!

campy51 said:

Who says the Hasselblads are reliable? Everytime they are mentioned as a purchase one of the first things mentioned is you should send it out for a cla. A cla on the body, back and lens is not going to be cheap, and if they are as reliable as people say, they shouldn't need one as long as it's functioning they way it should. How many stories have you heard, that someone sent in for a cla only to come back with a new problem? There is a lot of truth to leave well enough alone. It certainly applied to the my 50 plus years of servicing copiers. The more a camera is taken apart the chances increase of doing damage.

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I bought a second (or third) hand Hasselblad 500 c/m with 3 lenses, never had it serviced in the 10+ years I had it and it always worked just fine. I did exercise the shutters in each lens at least once or twice a year. Extremely reliable, but I should have used it more often, so I sold it since it sat around too much.

campy51 said:

Who says the Hasselblads are reliable? Everytime they are mentioned as a purchase one of the first things mentioned is you should send it out for a cla. A cla on the body, back and lens is not going to be cheap, and if they are as reliable as people say, they shouldn't need one as long as it's functioning they way it should. How many stories have you heard, that someone sent in for a cla only to come back with a new problem? There is a lot of truth to leave well enough alone. It certainly applied to the my 50 plus years of servicing copiers. The more a camera is taken apart the chances increase of doing damage.

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The need for maintenance does not mean it is not reliable.

campy51 said:

Who says the Hasselblads are reliable?

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Most people who say this arn't speaking from personal experience but hearsay and their imaginations.

Arthurwg said:

Most people who say this arn't speaking from personal experience but hearsay and their imaginations.

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EXACTLY! One rule I try to follow, to the letter, when I make a statement on this site is to only talk from personal experience. If I have a problem with a film developer, paper, camera or whatever doesn't work right, it's because it happened to me. No hearsay or second hand BS!!

John Wiegerink said:

EXACTLY! One rule I try to follow, to the letter, when I make a statement on this site is to only talk from personal experience. If I have a problem with a film developer, paper, camera or whatever doesn't work right, it's because it happened to me. No hearsay or second hand BS!!

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+1
If only...

John Wiegerink said:

EXACTLY! One rule I try to follow, to the letter, when I make a statement on this site is to only talk from personal experience. If I have a problem with a film developer, paper, camera or whatever doesn't work right, it's because it happened to me. No hearsay or second hand BS!!

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I would qualify this.
Some of us have the benefit of very reliable vicarious knowledge.
I worked with and around several Hasselblad users who learned the lesson that if you wanted your camera to work reliably, you needed to be sure to keep it serviced.
So technically, if I report what I learned in that context, it would be hearsay.

campy51 said:

Who says the Hasselblads are reliable? Everytime they are mentioned as a purchase one of the first things mentioned is you should send it out for a cla. A cla on the body, back and lens is not going to be cheap, and if they are as reliable as people say, they shouldn't need one as long as it's functioning they way it should. How many stories have you heard, that someone sent in for a cla only to come back with a new problem? There is a lot of truth to leave well enough alone. It certainly applied to the my 50 plus years of servicing copiers. The more a camera is taken apart the chances increase of doing damage.

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Probably millions of frames and 10s of thousands of shooters over 60-ish years say so, including a ride to the moon as you'll recall, say so. There is a reason that 'Blads were the overwhelming choice of hard shooters working in MF. Not RBs, not Rolleis. not Bronicas, not Mamiyas ... 'Blads. We saw them in fashion, portraits, weddings, architecture, and landscape work for decades.

Anything of this vintage may require a CLA, but this is not a sign of inferior design, it is routine maintenance, no different than changing the oil on your car. I wouldn't buy a car from 1985 without expecting it to require a battery, oil change, tyres, and tuneup.

As I mentioned up thread, I worked in a very large pro rental facility in my youth and watched 'Blads under continuous hard professional use come in- and out. They had no remarkable failure rate unless their were physically abused. This was across probably several dozens of 500 bodies and many, many lenses. I know this because I worked in the repair and maintenance shop. Mostly, the only 'Blads we ever saw were either dropped or rental units that had so many actuations, they were literally worn out from use - they were at end of life.

And this is why they persist today for this sort of shooting. They work, they can be CLAed or fixed if needed, and lenses and accessories are plentiful. There are plenty of newer cameras for which this is not true (looking at you Mamiya 6, Mamiya 7, Fuji GWs, and nowadays, perhaps the RB/RZs etc.). I'd much rather have a 'Blad that needs work than, say, a Rollei of comparable vintage and format.

By the way, the RB67 users I also worked with and around had similar experiences to the Hasselblad users, although they probably needed slightly less maintenance .
Something to do with more in-studio use and slightly simpler film backs I expect.

Over 40 years, every pro I worked with as an art director had at least two bodies on the shoot, with the exception of large format. Nothing is immune to failure or accidents.

chuckroast said:

Probably millions of frames and 10s of thousands of shooters over 60-ish years say so, including a ride to the moon as you'll recall, say so. There is a reason that 'Blads were the overwhelming choice of hard shooters working in MF. Not RBs, not Rolleis. not Bronicas, not Mamiyas ... 'Blads. We saw them in fashion, portraits, weddings, architecture, and landscape work for decades.

Anything of this vintage may require a CLA, but this is not a sign of inferior design, it is routine maintenance, no different than changing the oil on your car. I wouldn't buy a car from 1985 without expecting it to require a battery, oil change, tyres, and tuneup.

As I mentioned up thread, I worked in a very large pro rental facility in my youth and watched 'Blads under continuous hard professional use come in- and out. They had no remarkable failure rate unless their were physically abused. This was across probably several dozens of 500 bodies and many, many lenses. I know this because I worked in the repair and maintenance shop. Mostly, the only 'Blads we ever saw were either dropped or rental units that had so many actuations, they were literally worn out from use - they were at end of life.

And this is why they persist today for this sort of shooting. They work, they can be CLAed or fixed if needed, and lenses and accessories are plentiful. There are plenty of newer cameras for which this is not true (looking at you Mamiya 6, Mamiya 7, Fuji GWs, and nowadays, perhaps the RB/RZs etc.). I'd much rather have a 'Blad that needs work than, say, a Rollei of comparable vintage and format.

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It's not even close to having your oil changed in a car or a battery. I am going on replies I have read here from members who were shooting weddings they would send all their gear to be serviced or a cla every year before wedding season started. Now I'm sure they all had more than 1 back, lenses or bodies so this I would think would cost at least $800 per body, back and 1 lens. I'm not bashing the reliability, I'm bashing that if it needs to be serviced that frequently. Also for every Hasselblad being used I would guess there were many more Mamiya, Bronica and whatever else is out there and that would account for so many of them failing. Not everyone shooting medium format had Hasselblad. Did you do any of the repairs and if so what were the most common failures other than being dropped?

MattKing said:

I would qualify this.
Some of us have the benefit of very reliable vicarious knowledge.
I worked with and around several Hasselblad users who learned the lesson that if you wanted your camera to work reliably, you needed to be sure to keep it serviced.
So technically, if I report what I learned in that context, it would be hearsay.

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Very true Matt, but I think you get the drift of what I was getting at.

Buy a 500C with an 80mm Planar, they are very cheap these days..

This isn't going to help the OP, but Ted Orland's poster "Photographic Truths" includes "A new Hasselblad would take better pictures than your present camera."

This is from the original early 1980s version. The later 2008 copyright version is more digital-centric and lacks this bit of wisdom. As far as I can tell this poster is no longer available new.

David

campy51 said:

It's not even close to having your oil changed in a car or a battery. I am going on replies I have read here from members who were shooting weddings they would send all their gear to be serviced or a cla every year before wedding season started. Now I'm sure they all had more than 1 back, lenses or bodies so this I would think would cost at least $800 per body, back and 1 lens. I'm not bashing the reliability, I'm bashing that if it needs to be serviced that frequently.

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It's insurance, nothing more. You certainly can shoot year after year without a CLA but weddings are a one-time-only opportunity. I did them, they're nerve wracking. You need two of everything and things need to be in tip top shape. (I didn't do that and have unpleasant memories of this.)

Regular maintenance is not the sign of inferior machinery. It's the sign of responsible ownership.

A much more relevant metric would be how often failure actually occurs on a per capita shooting basis, especially for these older cameras. I have seen no indication anywhere that it's particularly high or remarkable. If have data to the contrary, do please provide that citation as I'm curious.

campy51 said:

Also for every Hasselblad being used I would guess there were many more Mamiya, Bronica and whatever else is out there and that would account for so many of them failing. Not everyone shooting medium format had Hasselblad.

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A fair point. A larger population of any given item will have an absolutely higher number of failures. The question is what the failure rate per capita is. I don't know and doubt we'll ever be able to find out. But again, among pros whose livelihood depended on their equipment, Hasselblad overwhelmingly was the dominant brand.

You want reliable? Edwin Land of Polaroid fame, helped design the first "Keyhole" spy satellite imaging systems. They needed a way to be able to determine where over the earth a photo from space was taken. Bear in mind this was long before GPS or modern positioning systems existed. He solved the problem by installing a Hasselblad pointing "up" toward the stars that would fire every time a picture over the earth was taken. By looking at the star configuration and time, the NRO could determine the exact position over the Earth the actual photo was taken.

He incidentally also solved the static electricity problem that occurred when they moved film through a Earth-facing camera a high speeds during a 'bird pass.

campy51 said:

Did you do any of the repairs and if so what were the most common failures other than being dropped?

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I did not personally, but I was side by side with the camera mechanic repair dude, at least for some of the stuff. (I worked on electronics like Nagra recorders.)

I cannot answer your question about the most common failures because it was many decades ago AND I just don't recall seeing many 'Blads come through. The pros worked them so hard, they were more likely to get retired from old age and heavy use than they were to be repaired from failure, but I am largely working from faint memories at this point.

P.S. I have personally owned V 'Blads for about 35 years. Three bodies, many lenses, and many backs. During this time I have had exactly 4 issues:

1. An 80mm f/2.8 CF Planar had a failing 1 second shutter speed

2. That same lens had the plastic cosmetic collar around the flash sync fall off and disappear

3. The plastic collar on a 250mm f/4 Sonnar that holds the rubber focusing ring in place cracked. A nice person here sent me a new replacement. It took 15 seconds to replace. This was apparently a common problem.

4. I bought a VERY VERY used A24 back that needed cleaning and lube in the advance mechanism. Out of caution, I also preemptively replaced the light trap.


Of these problems, only #1 was an actual serious issue.

In fairness, I did buy my current second 500 C/M body and 100mm f/3.5 in used but just-CLAed condition so I kind of expect them to go a long time w/o further intervention.

Andy - enough already!

Have you or haven't you (been talked out of it, that is)???

chuckroast said:

It's insurance, nothing more. You certainly can shoot year after year without a CLA but weddings are a one-time-only opportunity. I did them, they're nerve wracking. You need two of everything and things need to be in tip top shape. (I didn't do that and have unpleasant memories of this.)

Regular maintenance is not the sign of inferior machinery. It's the sign of responsible ownership.

A much more relevant metric would be how often failure actually occurs on a per capita shooting basis, especially for these older cameras. I have seen no indication anywhere that it's particularly high or remarkable. If have data to the contrary, do please provide that citation as I'm curious.

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Exactly. It seems to me that the "reputation" that Hassleblad has among some forum members (here and elsewhere) might be b ased on the periodic reports where folks buy older Hasselblads, often lowballing, and then find that it needs to be serviced. Often this seems to be 500CMs and earlier, which date from the olden days. These older cameras, of course, have a higher probablility of being broken or needing a good servicing to get back into shape. Those reports aren't really indicative of reliability at all; they are more indicative of a incomplete understanding of reliability and maintenence principles.

BTW, I never knew that KH included a Hasselblad. How cool!

BrianShaw said:

Exactly. It seems to me that the "reputation" that Hassleblad has among some forum members (here and elsewhere) might be b ased on the periodic reports where folks buy older Hasselblads, often lowballing, and then find that it needs to be serviced. Often this seems to be 500CMs and earlier, which date from the olden days. These older cameras, of course, have a higher probablility of being broken or needing a good servicing to get back into shape. Those reports aren't really indicative of reliability at all; they are more indicative of a incomplete understanding of reliability and maintenence principles.

BTW, I never knew that KH included a Hasselblad. How cool!

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The flocking inside the 503 does deteriorate with age, causing headaches.

Pieter12 said:

The flocking inside the 503 does deteriorate with age, causing headaches.

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Is it fixable?

Pieter12 said:

The flocking inside the 503 does deteriorate with age, causing headaches.

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Same with 501. It cracks, but have you seen it flake off?

chuckroast said:

Is it fixable?

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As far as I know, the material is NLA and most people just live with it, considering it a cosmetic problem. Chunks can fall off but in most cases the lining cracks. I suppose there are materials available to replace the lining, but I'm not a technician and would never attempt such a thing myself.

David R Williams said:

Andy - enough already!

Have you or haven't you (been talked out of it, that is)???

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Nope. Still want one!

BrianShaw said:

BTW, I never knew that KH included a Hasselblad. How cool!

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<Brief Detour>

I did a little digging to find a source for this because I'd read it years ago. According to at least one Grok query, the Hassy didn't make an appearance until the KH-7 (GAMBIT) satellite:

The use of a modified Hasselblad camera as the stellar (star-tracking) component in the KH-7 GAMBIT satellite system is described in declassified National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) documents released in 2011. These documents confirm the camera's role in attitude determination by photographing star fields with a reseau grid for precise geolocation of Earth imagery. The Hasselblad was a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) model (likely a modified 500C with a wide-angle Zeiss Biogon 38mm f/4.5 lens), adapted for space use by superimposing a fiducial grid on the film plane to calibrate satellite orientation.

• Title: "Summary Analysis of Program 206 (GAMBIT)"
• Date: August 29, 1967 (original classification: TOP SECRET; declassified September 2011)

BUT!!!! TAKE NOTE: Not all AIs agree on this because they are really Artificially Dumb. We cannot know whether the Grok claims above are correct or just an AI hallucination. In fact, Grok cannot even agree with itself on this, so I think it needs to be at least named as Questionable at this point.

(Interestingly, there seems to be no question that Hasselblads certainly played some post mission role for NRO in helping to understand the pictures brought to Earth from the bird. Go figure.)

If true, we'll never know is whether Kodak modified a 500C to trigger electrically and that became the 500EL, or whether they built it on a prototype 500EL (assuming it was electrically advanced, which is likely), or whether they were entirely independent activities. It is an interesting coincidence that the 500EL prototype showed up in 1963 - the same year the KH-7 first flew!

Consult your favorite research resource if you want more info on the star field cameras using on the KH-7 and thereafter.

There is also a bunch of stuff around that documents the actual ground taking optics. As I recall, at least at one point they were actually using a Petzval design:



<We return now to the Hasselblad reliability debate and Andrew's purchasing conundrum>

campy51 said:

Who says the Hasselblads are reliable? Everytime they are mentioned as a purchase one of the first things mentioned is you should send it out for a cla. A cla on the body, back and lens is not going to be cheap, and if they are as reliable as people say, they shouldn't need one as long as it's functioning they way it should. How many stories have you heard, that someone sent in for a cla only to come back with a new problem? There is a lot of truth to leave well enough alone. It certainly applied to the my 50 plus years of servicing copiers. The more a camera is taken apart the chances increase of doing damage.

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Any camera if allow to sit for years of non use or infrequent use will need a CLA. Also Hasselblads are probably the most widely sold MF SLRs and therefore most commonly posted about.

I bought two newer motorized Hasselblad bodies for super cheap, mostly for the focusing screens. Mirror wouldn't return. A little solvent, movie film cleaner, on the gear train got both up and running.

mshchem said:

I bought two newer motorized Hasselblad bodies for super cheap, mostly for the focusing screens. Mirror wouldn't return. A little solvent, movie film cleaner, on the gear train got both up and running.

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Yep. I was doing my semi-monthly camera firings today and my 501 C/M that show just a bit of "stickiness" when fired but only in one instance. After firing it a few more times, it worked flawlessly. Hassys need exercise.

I have also loosened up a very crudded up old A24 back with surgical application of naptha in the gear train and working the back. It's not a replacement for a CLA because the naptha may just be moving the crud around, but it worked in this case.

Then again, this is a 25-ish year old camera I bought new that's never been touched. It may just be time for a CLA.