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