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Back in the Hasselblad family

Darron Spohn

New Member
I bought a 501CM (new) in 1999 and used it for landscape photography when I worked in the tech industry in California. When the tech bubble burst I found myself out of a job, so started a freelance motorsports photography business. Alas, I had to sell my 501CM to buy a Canon L lens. I've progressed from a Canon D30 to 60D over the years, but always missed the Hasselblad.

Now that I'm out of the event photography business I grew tired of the weight and bulk of the 35mm size gear, so I bought a Sony RX-100 just before Christmas and took it to Big Bend National Park. I sent my favorite photo off to Aspen Creek Photo to test the camera and was amazed at the image quality. Even a cropped 16x21.5 inch print looked very good. Meanwhile, I was playing around with some drum scans from my previous Hasselblad and comparing them with the digital images I have shot over the years. I have some very nice 12x18 prints from a 60D hanging in my living room, but they look chunky compared with a 16x20 from my Hasselblad.

So in mid January I went to Precision Photo in Austin, TX, to see what kind of used gear they had. My eyes grew very large when I spied a mint 501CM kit just like the one I used to own. I walked out the door $1200 later, sold my EOS gear on eBay for a bit more than $3000 net, then promptly loaded my first roll of Velvia backward and got a blank roll back from the lab. Oh well. At least it wasn't anything important.

I've purchased everything I'll need to process B&W at home and will use Holland Photo in Austin to process my slides. I should mention I have a bit of experience processing and printing B&W. I used to be a newspaper photographer, and have owned two professional B&W darkrooms. I've processed about 10,000 rolls of film over the decades and printed probably 30,000 B&W photos.

Glad I found this forum. I've already learned some good stuff and hope I can contribute as well. This is a shot from my previous 501CM. Shot on Fuji Astia, drum scanned at West Coast Imaging and converted to B&W in PhotoShop.
 

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