Hasselblad H1

I now have a new favourite camera. It weights a ton. Two tons if you don’t use the “stock” lens and switch to the super-heavy wide angle or telephoto. It is over 20 years old. The shutter sounds like a small mechanical explosion. It can’t take video. On a good day you can take one shot every few seconds. It has no image stabilisation. In poor light the results can get grainy. In bad light you have to fetch the tripod. But the pictures it produces are some of the best I’ve ever seen. It’s a Hasselblad H1.

I took the above pictures in York. Admittedly the light was lovely and I could have got vaguely similar results with my phone. Except that everything would have been in focus and artificially crisp. Phone cameras are amazing. But they do lots of things to your pictures that you might not want. They add dynamic range. They sharpen everything. They tweak the colours. They add digital blur to separate foreground and background elements. And their images look unreally good.

The Hasselblad has super sharp lenses, so no need to sharpen the image. These lenses are a long way from the sensor, so you get your out of focus effects from physics. It takes real effort to cart the camera around and you have to work hard to line up shots. The viewfinder is optical and shows you the view straight from the lens. The good news is that this makes taking the pictures super fun. The bad news is that it is very hard to see exactly what the camera has captured. My camera has a tiny screen (also around 20 years old) which shows me what I’ve photographed but I need to view my shots on my computer when I get home to discover what they are really like.

However, it turns out that I really like this way of working. I really feel that I have a hand in the results that I get. At the moment I can’t think of taking any other camera out if I go and take pictures.

The Hasselblad brand is associated with very pricey cameras, but the good news is that the very old ones are not that expensive. And the really good news is that all the lenses for the system are all superb and reasonably cheap (certainly compared with modern ones). My complete setup has cost me less than just a camera body for one of the modern systems.

I realise that I’m running a few risks. A device this old could suddenly fail and turn into a paperweight. But I bought most of the bits from MPB.com who give you a one year warranty. And because the camera is made up of separate bits (body, lens and sensor), failure of one component won’t affect any of the other bits. So if the body fails I’ll simply pick up another one and use it with the lenses and bits I’ve already got.

If you are thinking of getting into photography and want to stretch yourself a bit I would strongly advise taking a look at the Hasselblad H system. The older H models (H1 and H2) don’t cost that much and the Phase One digital backs that work with them are not that pricey. The newer versions can be scary expensive but are completely awesome (and you can use all your old lenses with them). The cameras have large sensors which makes for a lovely look to your pictures. And they help you build upper body strength too.