The Hasselblad 500C
Victor Hasselblad had been building his modular medium format cameras for just under ten years when he introduced the 500C.
It was pretty well
a last ditch attempt to get things right.
The first model, the focal plane shuttered 1600F, had been about as close to a disaster as any company would wish to get and its successor, the 1000F, had fared little better. Everyone felt that the Hasselblads ought to be successful but that nasty shutter kept letting them down.
Eventually, Victor must have decided that a fundamentally new approach was required if his company was not to join the long list of also-rans in the camera design sweepstakes. In 1957, he launched his third attempt and, if the previous designs had been conspicuous by their failure, this camera was to be the spectacular success that so many photographers had prophesied.
Victor Hasselblad had been building his modular medium format cameras for just under ten years when he introduced the 500C.
It was pretty well
a last ditch attempt to get things right. The first model, the focal plane shuttered 1600F, had been about as close to a disaster as any company would wish to get and its successor, the 1000F, had fared little better. Everyone felt that the Hasselblads ought to be successful but that nasty shutter kept letting them down.
Eventually, Victor must have decided that a fundamentally new approach was required if his company was not to join the long list of also-rans in the camera design sweepstakes. In 1957, he launched his third attempt and, if the previous designs had been conspicuous by their failure, this camera was to be the spectacular success that so many photographers had prophesied.
Bits and Pieces.
A
500C was nothing more
than a mirror box, to which the user fitted a lens (which contained its
own
shutter), 
a back to hold film or plates, a viewfinder and, Oh yes, a
winding knob.
a back to hold film or plates, a viewfinder and, Oh yes, a
winding knob. Yes,
you read correctly, on the
500C even the winding knob is
exchangeable. This concept was to make the Hasselblad system pretty
well the longest lived design in history because, while components
might become obsolete, the design never did.
The camera illustrated here is a good case in point: the mirror box is an original 500C dating from the early 'sixties; the lens is a T* black, 80mm, Zeiss Planar from 1975; the back is a late A12 sold new around 1985 and the viewing hood is from a 503CX introduced at the end of the 'nineties.
The Hasselblad shared another feature with the Nikon SLR that was to emerge only over time. Even more, indeed, than Nikon, the Hasselblad was to retain compatibility between every model and component for the next forty years!
The camera illustrated here is a good case in point: the mirror box is an original 500C dating from the early 'sixties; the lens is a T* black, 80mm, Zeiss Planar from 1975; the back is a late A12 sold new around 1985 and the viewing hood is from a 503CX introduced at the end of the 'nineties.
The Hasselblad shared another feature with the Nikon SLR that was to emerge only over time. Even more, indeed, than Nikon, the Hasselblad was to retain compatibility between every model and component for the next forty years!
Instant Success.
The 500C was taken up by an enormously wide range of photographers almost from day one. Despite its price, an eye-watering two hundrend and seventy pounds in
the
UK (when
a good family income for the year was
five hundred pounds) its obvious superiority in both quality and
effectiveness made it the default choice for anyone using medium format
film to earn their living. It found its way into fashion studios and forensic laboratories. Famously, the 500C even made its way into space as NASA's default camera on the Apollo missions (there's at least two Hasselblads on the moon if you care to go and get them).
Success bred success and ever more specialised equipment was produced for the 'Blad, in turn widening the market even more.
Non-photographers who purchased photography, came to see Hasselblad ownership as a token of quality. Several commercial photographers who seldom, if ever, shot anything smaller than 5x4, made a point of keeping a Hasselblad around the studio. It made the clients more comfortable.
Flashy.
The one feature of the Hasselblad that, more than any, led to its success, was the leaf shutter fitted to every lens. At the beginning of the 'sixties, electronic flash was taking over from incandescent lighting in most studios. To get the best out of flash lighting requires a shutter that can synchronise at all speeds. And that would be a leaf shutter.
Until the appearance of the 500C, the cameras of choice in fashion and commercial studios were either the Rollei twin lens reflexes, which were small and handy but didn't let you change the lenses, or the big sheet film monorails which were incredibly adaptable but correspondingly slow to use. The 500C brought a whole new level of speed and convenience to using flash and that was enough to justify its use by thousands of photographers in itself.
Lessons
learned.
The one feature of the Hasselblad that, more than any, led to its success, was the leaf shutter fitted to every lens. At the beginning of the 'sixties, electronic flash was taking over from incandescent lighting in most studios. To get the best out of flash lighting requires a shutter that can synchronise at all speeds. And that would be a leaf shutter.
Until the appearance of the 500C, the cameras of choice in fashion and commercial studios were either the Rollei twin lens reflexes, which were small and handy but didn't let you change the lenses, or the big sheet film monorails which were incredibly adaptable but correspondingly slow to use. The 500C brought a whole new level of speed and convenience to using flash and that was enough to justify its use by thousands of photographers in itself.
What
you got for your money, above all, was reliability. Victor Hasselblad
had taken to heart the harsh lessons taught by the failures of the
focal plane shuttered 1000F and 1600F. The 500C was over-engineered to
a degree that hadn't been seen since Stevenson built the Forth Bridge.
Every part is accessible to a trained technician and, where things can
go wrong, there's options in place for putting them right.
Take
the lens shutter. A 500C has a
horrendously complex set of
interlocks. For example, you can't take the lens off unless the shutter
is wound and you shouldn't be able to put it back unless the mirror is
down.
Still, accidents do happen and people have been known to fit an un-cocked lens to a wound body, which leaves them holding a camera with a lens that can neither be cocked nor removed.
Well, not quite.
Take off the film magazine and look through the gate. Now you can see the back of the lens. At the six o'clock position there's a little screw head. Put a suitable screw driver in there and turn it clockwise until it locks. Voila! The shutter is wound and you can release the lens.
The Hasselblad abounds with little touches like that. Yes, it was expensive when new but it's very difficult to say that it was over-priced. Most photographers that used Hasselblad, indeed, found them surprisingly cost effective. Once you'd got over the basic hump of buying in to the system, maintenance was remarkably low and the longevity of the system and the individual components meant that the payback went on long after the capital cost had been written down in the accounts.
To begin with, the Hasselblad wasn't popular among amateur photographers. There were
a lot of
reasons for that. One of those reasons was price: did I
mention
that the Hasselblad was
expensive?
Then there was the weight, bulk and, no less of a problem for many amateurs, the amazing noise that emerged when you released the shutter.
Over the years, though, as second hand equipment became more common, amateurs began to buy in to the system, if only to emulate their favourite professional idols. Like many of those professionals before them, the amateurs discovered that the Hasselblad could take them in almost any direction, if not into space!
The V series Hasselblad, of which the 500C is the earliest example, is still going strong. There have been a lot of mirror boxes since the 500C but they can all still use the components introduced in 1959. What's more, they can also join the modern digital stakes, courtesy of digital imaging backs from manufacturers such as Leaf and Hasselblad themselves.
It looks like there's life in the old dog yet...
Take
the lens shutter. A 500C has a
horrendously complex set of
interlocks. For example, you can't take the lens off unless the shutter
is wound and you shouldn't be able to put it back unless the mirror is
down. Still, accidents do happen and people have been known to fit an un-cocked lens to a wound body, which leaves them holding a camera with a lens that can neither be cocked nor removed.
Well, not quite.
Take off the film magazine and look through the gate. Now you can see the back of the lens. At the six o'clock position there's a little screw head. Put a suitable screw driver in there and turn it clockwise until it locks. Voila! The shutter is wound and you can release the lens.
The Hasselblad abounds with little touches like that. Yes, it was expensive when new but it's very difficult to say that it was over-priced. Most photographers that used Hasselblad, indeed, found them surprisingly cost effective. Once you'd got over the basic hump of buying in to the system, maintenance was remarkably low and the longevity of the system and the individual components meant that the payback went on long after the capital cost had been written down in the accounts.
To begin with, the Hasselblad wasn't popular among amateur photographers. There were
a lot of
reasons for that. One of those reasons was price: did I
mention
that the Hasselblad was
expensive?Then there was the weight, bulk and, no less of a problem for many amateurs, the amazing noise that emerged when you released the shutter.
Over the years, though, as second hand equipment became more common, amateurs began to buy in to the system, if only to emulate their favourite professional idols. Like many of those professionals before them, the amateurs discovered that the Hasselblad could take them in almost any direction, if not into space!
The V series Hasselblad, of which the 500C is the earliest example, is still going strong. There have been a lot of mirror boxes since the 500C but they can all still use the components introduced in 1959. What's more, they can also join the modern digital stakes, courtesy of digital imaging backs from manufacturers such as Leaf and Hasselblad themselves.
It looks like there's life in the old dog yet...
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