Hasselblad Hailey

This is my Hasselblad 500 C/M camera with 50mm Distagon lens. This medium format system uses 120 or 220 roll film, which yields negatives that are 2-1/4" x 2-1/4".  These are considerably larger than the more common 35mm format, and yield great prints due to the larger size.  I bought the camera new in 1993, with an A12 film magazine and 80mm Planar lens and it cost about $3500.  A year later I bought this 50mm Distagon lens, which cost about $3750.  At that time there was a promotion on, and I got a "free" A12 film magazine with the lens, a $1200 value.  Nowadays with everyone bailing out of film photography and switching to digital you can buy a used camera body, in excellent condition, for about 500 bucks.  A used film magazine goes for $100 to $200 depending on whether it is a newer A12 style, or an older 12 peephole type, like the one on my camera in this photo.  The 50mm Distagon lens now goes for about $600.  This is one of the benefits of digital photography... it has made this high end film gear a lot more affordable.  In recent years I have purchased a second camera body, some extra film magazines, and several lenses including a 60mm Distagon, a 150mm Sonnar and a 250mm Sonnar.  All of these lenses were less than $500 each... a far cry for what they originally cost...

My 12-year-old daughter Hailey has recently started using this camera system.  She came with me on the recent Spring Photo Weekend with the Monochrome Guild.  That was her first time using this camera system.  I gave her a crash course in how to mount it on the tripod, how to compose the image and focus the camera, how to use a hand held incident meter, and how to take a picture.  I had to help her quite a bit for the first roll or so, but after that she did it pretty much on her own.  I only had to assist her in changing lenses, and loading and unloading the film magazines.  We had a couple of issues with the shutter getting jammed... as it is critical that both the camera and the lens be cocked when changing lenses.  But we got this resolved and she managed to do pretty well.  

She also came along with me on the recent May day trip down to the Drumheller area.  She shot six rolls of film over the Spring Photo Weekend, and then another roll and a half on the recent day trip.  Earlier this week we went down into the darkroom on two different occasions and she started processing this film.  I gave her a crash course on this as well, but she has processed 35mm film in the past and this was very similar.  I limited her to one type of film when she was getting started, to minimize the confusion that can arise when working with different films.  With the Hasselblad system you can remove the film magazine and switch between different ones, utlizing different types of film, in mid roll.  We avoided this for the time being and she only shot with Fuji Neopan Acros 100.  We developed 6 rolls in D76, and I recently scanned all the resulting negatives for her.  Here are a selection of a few of the better ones.