Hasselblad the best medium formatcamera in the world so they say. I used to use one on an everyday basis when I was a photographer in the RAF I admit the camera is a good solid workhorse but it has quite a few drawbacks. Firstly the price, they say quality comes at a price but for that money I would not only want top quality but latest technology. The quality of the lenses is excellent but as far as I am aware the Rolleicameras come with the same or similar lenses although obviously they are in a different mount.
The Hasselblad is a real heavyweight this has it’s good and bad points. The camera is solid it will absorb quite alot of heavy knocks(I’ve seen a number of ‘blads’ dropped and still work). The downside of this is that it really is quite a lump to carry round especially using the narrow strap supplied with the camera (it starts cutting into your shoulder and neck). The camera is really quite an effort to use in certain circumstances because of the weight (I used a ‘Blad’ for air to air and air to ground photos finding the camera awkward to use in a confined cockpit because of the weight, a 35mm camera although easier to manoeuvre would not have produced the same quality image as that of a medium format).
As with most medium format cameras the leaf shutter is built into the lens which allows flash synchronisation at all shutter speeds a real bonus for fill in flash when there is alot of sunlight requiring fast shutter speeds.
Some of the drawbacks in using the camera are that unlike the Bronica range the ‘Blad’ will operate when not loaded with film (I’ve seen people taking photographs onto an invisible film before!) Another quirk is that when the film is loaded it must be manually advanced to the first film frame position failure to do so will allow the user to take photographs on the film backing paper prior to the first film frame an easy task to forget if the operator is distracted during film loading (on the Bronica Range it is impossible to take a photograph prior to the first frame being wound on)
All in all the ‘Blad’ is a good quality camera at a premium price given a choice of medium format cameras I would place the ‘Blad’ at the bottom of the list not because it is bad but because I think that there are better cameras (lighter, more user friendly) producing photographs of the same quality costing less money.
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Useful opinion - balanced against the fanatical Hasselblad entusiast and useful to hear from someone who has used one "in the field". Also nice to hear a comparison against the Bronica (my medium format system).
Feb 16th, 2001
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