Be a Square, Man!

Be a Square, Man!

There are two cameras that will always be associated with the decade that I caught the photography bug. And two iconic films about the decade (more or less) showcase them perfectly.
In Apocalypse Now, Dennis Hopper played a rather deranged photojournalist in a rather deranged war: hung about with Nikons (and they were the most Nikon of Nikons, the original F), he was a camp follower for the villain (or tragic would-be hero) of the piece, played by Marlon Brando. I’ve never owned an F, but they are durable (if not literally bombproof – though one did save its owner from a bullet in Vietnam).

The other film is Blow Up, the other camera the Hasselblad 500 (Nikons appear in the film as well – after all, it’s about excess and the hedonism of Swinging London). When I was buying a medium format camera in the late Eighties, I looked at one, and decided that you need three hands to use it, so I bought a Pentax 67. I’ve never regretted that – but when I saw a really nice-condition ‘Blad in a local dealer’s window… You know the story.

Let’s talk about the minuses first. There actually is a way to hold the camera that requires only two hands, and gives access to all the controls, though you’d be hard-pressed to shoot terribly rapidly: left hand below camera, focus with forefinger below and thumb above lens, then slide forefinger down to shutter release on the front bottom right corner: right hand supporting camera body and sliding onto lever wind. Alternatively, keep the left hand on the lens, and move the right forefinger onto the release… Simples? Not terribly!



The mirror doesn’t return until you wind on: no matter – by then, you’ve taken the picture. And for a rectangular print, you are always cropping the square negative.

But… the quality is superlative, and the camera is modular: you can change viewfinder, screen and lens in seconds. And the film is in a detachable back, with a stainless steel darkslide, so you can take one shot on colour film, than another on fast black-and-white. Interlocks mean that you can’t take the picture with the darkslide covering the film, and you can’t take the back off without putting the darkslide in. The darkslide is quite easy to put down and forget, though…



My ‘Blad has a waist-level viewfinder (just right for getting legs in perspective, as it moves the viewpoint down from eye level), and a lever wind, instead of the standard knob. Unlike my Pentax, it synchronises with flash at all speeds.

High point of ownership was in a studio with a dancer. I’d just shot twenty frames with a digital camera, and missed the peak of her jump with nineteen of them. Switching to the ‘Blad, with its laterally-reversed waist level viewfinder and blackout mirror, I shot a whole film with perfect timing. No AF to slow things down (this was well before I’d heard of focus lock and back button focussing).

Best description? In 2007, on a thundery afternoon, I was shooting a model in her flat in Preston, chatting to her and her boyfriend. He looked at the camera, held it, and said it was ‘camera porn’ – there is, simply, more of everything. More controls, more knobs to twiddle, more business-like decoration.

A classic!