Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Hasselblad 500C

In the seventies, this was the Great Dream for the teenaged Eolake, to own one of these, and now I finally do.
Unbelievably, in the meantime, I've never even held one!
This is forty years old, amazingly, but it still feels like the high quality kit it is.


Of course Hasselblad was, and is, like Leica, very expensive because it's hand-built in Europe by European workers for European salaries.

It'll be interesting to see what happens to prices if and when the planet ever gets to the point where there are no more Third World countries where we can get our shit built for bottom prices. If that whole world is a First World country, what then? People don't often think about how Wall-Mart keeps those amazing prices.

7 comments:

Dibutil said...

s exactly like mine! :) Hope you will do real shooting with it. You need to get one of those metering 45° prisms from Hasselblad or at least Kiev.

Anonymous said...

I wanted one of those years ago, myself. I always figured I'd pick up one the discarded ones left on the Moon by the Apollo astronauts, but as it turns out, I haven't been able to get up there yet. Busy, busy, busy.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I think what with fuel prices now, it's cheaper to just go eBay.

Anonymous said...

Is it still possible to get medium format film developed like before? How much does it cost?

Also, don't you need a special medium format film scanner if you want to scan the developed film? Or can all the film scanners people use to scan 35mm film also do medium format?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I guess somebody must do developing.

A quick google reveals HP Scanjet 8300 at under $500. If it's really good, I dunno.

Paul Perton said...

Bought mine in Cape Town last year for bird seed. I love it; 500C, 80mm lens, prismatic viewfinder, 2 backs. What a bargain ;-)

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Sounds like it. They are still fetching a pretty penny on eBay.