Analogue Adventures

I love digital photography. The ease it brings, certainty to have some good (or at least decent) results at the end of a gig and being able to perfectly set up the camera for every shot. However, this ease also means you loose a bit. Being restrained to 36 images (heck, I shoot 200 or more now if I feel the need), NOT knowing exactly what you shoot, fiddling with manual focus.

For concerts analogue photography isn’t really that interesting any more (at least; not to me), but analogue is still a very nice way to shoot your photos. And as the Hasselblad camera was one of those camera’s I dreamt about when I got into photography, now seemed a good opportunity to actually get myself a ‘Hassie’.

Bought the various parts via eBay and got myself a lovely chrome/leather version, the Hasselblad 500C.  Bought an A12 film back (and a Polaroid back just for fun), a WaistLevelFinder and an 80mm lens. But the system isn’t all to willing unfortunately. The Polaroidback is a pain in the arse, ripping out at least two empty sheets for every shot image and the images that are lighted, often have strangely illuminated lines over them.

The A12 120-rolfilm back I got had trouble with filmtransport. So I got another back and that turned out to have lightleaks. A third one is in test now and I’ve ordered light trap kits for the last two backs hoping to solve the problems. If it does ever work, I’ll have a really beautiful medium format camera, that I’ll use for other kinds of photography and perhaps a concert every once in a while. But first it will have to shoot some decent images. For a fun camera, it’s starting to cost a lot of money for really poor results and it’s not half as much fun right now as I was hoping it to be.

But I’m do keep a positive view (with the money I put into it so far, I have to). There are still a few parts coming my way and I’m hoping to add a lens (or two) in time, for a really complete set.

Also (in the spirit of analogue photography and basically because I’m nuts) I’m currently looking into the possibilities to get a 4×5 view or press camera. A press camera would be a great large format camera that is also very mobile. Can hardly wait to get my hands on one of those

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