I HAVE DECIDED. (16/11/12)

  One from the bin….Magpie Mine near Sheldon in Derbyshire. The lump in the middle is the old Cornish Engine house.

I’ve decided at long last to buy an old and hopefully perfect Hasselblad and go back to film.

After a couple of years looking at digital shots and whilst admiring many of the images taken by competent folk, they never seem to have the depth and crispness that is possible with film. Having said that I’ve seen some bloody awful scanned film.

This has changed a bit for those using, Leaf, Phase One and Hasselblad . All are making monster digital backs, up to eighty million pixels with big sensor sites and sites without filters. They are superb but they cost….  about five pence a pixel and one still needs.. The bane of anyone's life, a centre filter on wide angle lenses plus a colour correction shot against an opaque bit of white plastic to get rid of magenta colour shifts. Then the cheeky devils say the job is a ‘Good Un’….Forty thousand pounds and it doesn’t work….On your bikes and up your Private Bits! Leica were as bad. With the M8 they gave you a correction filter for the front of the lens….I’d still love an M8 rangefinder….I like their attitude. Agricultural though their solution is on five grands worth of camera. Just lend me one without the filter.

I was uninspired when I swapped my Olympus E-3 for the E-5. It had video…I like watching fillums but  I hate editing them.…..It had pre-programmed effects of all sorts of funny things….the same funny things that I do but why do they put them in and not something useful like an interval timer? I have PS Elements for doing funny things. All I want is a good RAW image and a JPEG, the later to save buying Lightroom and so save cataloguing time. I thought of switching to Canon and still would given unlimited finance. Their anti alias, anti infrared anti this and that filters do soften images and they are proud. So proud they popped them in front of the sensor.

At least Leica gave one the choice but not any more with the M9.  

After studying the job….I decided to retrograde. Back to the happy times of my youth when music was played in village halls with the whistling and a screeching of ‘feed back’ . A fight over a particularly nubile lady was commonplace and the Olympus OM1 was a real camera that cost a fortune and a Hasselblad cost two fortunes

It is horses for courses and the Lord forbid we were all the same.I hate shooting video. The best video man in the world is KEITH he wanders about and chats on his. An art form he should benefit from. It’s bloody hard to do, he spends ages filming bushes full of birds we can’t see and describing them but having been out with him I can assure you if he says they are there then they are there.

  Digital is coming of age but it isn’t there yet. It’s great for the web, the cameras are ten times better than monitors…or Minotaurs….or whatever the mythological  bull like thing was called. I have got to an age when all I want is a better camera than I will be capable of getting the best from.

The build of a Hasselblad! WOW! It is strong enough to forge steel in it’s dark shade, drop proof, freeze proof, crank up and fire, Hasselblad is the one for me. The racket it makes lets one know one has taken the shot. That’s why NASA took them to the moon, they possibly didn’t notice the noise in a vacuum but who am I to say? Having listened to two weeks of American elections I am convinced they can hear. Hasselblad are that good. Will work in freezing, will work in a heat wave, will even make the Stars and Stripes blow and flap on the moon. Cunning devils are the Swedes. There was I belittling Olympus for building effects into cameras….I’ll chew on soap…………..That tastes…..not too bad… much like a Big Mac.

I would never have found this company FFORDES if it hadn’t been for a lass who got a camera from them. Her blog is worth a look BROOKWOOD. Her images have come on a treat since she went to Ffordes.

Yes I’m plugging them  here is what I covet.

L… L….Looks a million dollars in yellow….I love it. FFORDES also have it and half a dozen others in black and chrome…One in gold for the seriously wealthy. They are just a wee box. A wee light proof box. I’m showing my age but I want one more than I want Uma Thurman.

The lenses are almost automatic one determines an exposure value locks it and the picks ones desired speed or aperture. All without running out of electric… Spot on!…Almost! One has to wind the buggers up. Load film, I can’t wait  for the smell…..get it processed, then scan it if you ever want others to see the fruits of all this labour ont’tinternet.

    Drop dead gorgeous they are even in black….No bloody batteries. Well there are in the exposure meter, It comes as an independent unit.

I’ll guess…. I could never work them, I’ll guess exposure then  I’ll guess I’ll have the yellow one. I will buy one or use the SLR as one or use the DSLR as a rough and ready guide.

A system change is not a whim or a waffle job. One is into serious money…..(Don’t look Steve at Fffordes….bugger. One too many ‘fs’)! I need treating gently. So do you so we’ll leave the ‘Fs’ till I pole up.

I also need extension tubes/ bellows, lenses. Odd bits and bats like remote cables, lens hoods, a scanner, a load of film cassettes, A Manfrotto geared tripod head to support the weight and that’s before I get into prismatic viewers/ screens. Filters! Almost forgot, I have a stack of Cokin ones but they need binning. Lee is what I want.

Still, all said, I thought I wanted a prime Canon 400mm and that is 6K. Second Hand. The prime 40mm and a100mm macro  will be two and a half grand a piece.. the camera body will be another two thousand second hand…... A Schneider tilt shift on a Canon another two thousand or so and it doesn’t get near what this can do but this doesn’t get near what any large format can achieve .Here is a rare and lovely beast….   The Hasselblad Flexbody. A snip at a couple of grand…..Again image by kind permission of FFORDES. The Flexbody is not  that well thought of but it would be nice to own and learn to love the black sheep of the family. I wonder if they ever made them in pink or yellow?

Have fun and have a great weekend.