Nothing to write home about

When I got my first rolls of film developed I realised that there were light leaks coming from one of the backs of my brand new (to me) Hasselblad. Trouble was, I didn’t know which one was leaking. So for some time Vlad has been looking decidedly shabby, with a piece of black tape sealing the back where the magazine meets the body.

customer service

I emailed the Hasselblad dealers in Holland (they didn’t bother to reply) and Hasselblad in the UK and who were much more helpful, and after some to-ing and fro-ing I had placed my order. The process was quite convoluted, with emails back and forth an invoice sent by post and me writing a cheque - I haven’t done that for so many years that I couldn’t remember how to. But to their credit, Hasselblad has been really friendly and super nice, even putting another set in the post at no extra charge when the first order didn’t materialise.

a scary moment

Finally, last weekend my light traps sets arrived and I set to work changing the seals. Everything I’ve read tells me that this is an easy task but taking a screwdriver to my beloved Vlad was a moment of truth and I began to doubt my sanity. In truth I’m not good with screws, I tend to gouge out a groove in the screw head that makes it impossible to repeat the process next time around (you should change the seals every 12 months to avoid embarrassing leakages like this one).

But now I had the seals, and instructions thanks to the Hasselblad historical website, I had to go through with it so I took a deep breath and went for it.

the reality

Some of the screws were tight enough to warrant the use of a pair of pliers, but in truth the hardest thing was keeping the damn thing still. The shape of magazine’s back means it pivots and swings when pressure is applied at the edges, making it difficult to keep still and apply enough force to get the screws to turn. Add to the mix the fact that I made it the subject of my self portrait, then it becomes nigh on impossible. But as I found out, that’s what knees were invented for, and some lateral squeezing of the knee joints applied enough pressure to the bulb on my cable release to take the shot.

The instructions warn to be careful that the pivot arm, the wire spring and the foil springs don’t get dislodged, and I was reluctant to take off the front plate for fear of metal parts pinging out at me from all directions. But none of that happened. The hardest bit is getting the cover back on as the light traps have a habit of pinging open unless you insert the dark slide to hold it in place.

The whole process took around 10 minutes, and though the black tape has served me well over the past few months, I’m happy to put it back where it belongs, with my sorely neglected Holga.