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Leaf shutter or backrear shutter Ibm rather newbie P

Paul,

(If you have sent anything to my email addresse registered here, i'm afraid you will have to send it again. I got a message yesterday from the provider hosting that addresse that it is no longer valid. I have changed the registered addresse to one that is working just now.)


I do indeed not see why Victor Hasselblad would object to a copy of his system being made, especially considering that it was launched in a market in which very little spending money was going around (Hasselblads are, as we all know, very expensive).

And as mentioned, the few small but 'vital' differences between the original and copies ensured that users of the copies could use Hasselblad system parts, but not the other way round. Why did that happen?

And Hasselblad had given up the Salyut's original as unreliable years before (the 1000F was an almost complete redesign - as fas as the important functioning bits are concerned) and had been thinking about (and working on) replacing the improved version from the time they were fabricating the design for the original SWA.

(Remember too Hasselblad's ad c&aign directed against Bronica? (Whatever happened to Robert Monaghan? Anyone knows?)
They ridiculed the Bronica (another copy of Hasselblad's concept) for using the focal plane shutter they had just abandoned in favour of the leaf shutter.)

However...
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There is 'very little' (= nothing at all) said about the Salyut/Kiev line by Hasselblad.
That may be because there is no direct connection, and they did indeed copy the 1600 F without Hasselblad being involved at all. It could also be because they did not want to associate themselves with a thing that always had been very much below the quality standards Hasselblad was aiming for.
 
Q.G.

I did sent a message to you not concerning this matter and wondered why you did not respond to that.
I will send it again it was not urgent.

The information I have on the matter of Hasselblad copies is not complete yet.
I will forward it to the mail address of the Hasselblad Historical in Holland.

Paul
 
Mikolaj,

Yes.
But "the Kiev connection" always does. Because there is so little known (and perhaps there is not much, or even nothing, to know to begin with), any guess is as good as any other, providing &le room for speculations.

On the whole, it is not a matter of great importance.
And Kievs - bad though they are - can create the 'warm feeling' that you have approached the Hallowed Halls of Hasselblad a bit. With a Kiev, you do at least have a copy of a Hasselblad, do you not?
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So i don't share Paul's (sorry Paul!) blanket rejection of anything Kiev related.
Yes, they indeed are not very good. And i can't stand people defending Kiev's lack of quality by pointing at their low price - as if being cheap is a quality that can well replace craftmanship, reliability, optical quality, and everything else that Kievs are sorely lacking.
But that doesn't mean you can't have fun with Kievs.
 
@ Mikolaj

Yes you certainly did that!

@ Q.G.

This low affection for K... cameras is strictly personal.
It is based on good insight information about the horrors you find
when you open these things to see what is wrong with them.
I will spare you the long list of imperfections.

The pleasure of spending little money is soon forgotten when neverending problems appear.

The pain of spending more money is shortlived when the pleasure of good long lasting quality is still there.
In the case of Hasselblad you may say many decades.

Paul
 
My 1600F camera will be fully serviced in a little while.
I just bought a very early Salyut camera (1959) that will be repaired at the same time.
It has a shutterproblem at the moment.
The Salyut is supposed to be the 1600F copy.

It presents a nice opportunity to compare both cameras and their parts.
It may give more information about the history behind the Russian camera.

The literature about Russia in the fifties I just came across does not indicate that there was an agreement between Hasselblad and the Russian camera makers to make licensed copies of the first Hasselblad SLR camera. So it is likely that copies were made without permission.
This practise would be more in line with the Russian denial of intellectual property rights in general.

Paul
 
It is now clear that Russian copies made after the original 1600F were made without any prior permission from the Hasselblad company in Sweden.
This is in line with Russian view that patents and other rights on original designs do not need to be respected in Russia.

Parts from K... and the likes are either to big or too small and will not fit a Hasselblad 1600F or 1000F for that matter.

Victor Hasselblad was a financially healthy company that did not need to sell the rights for a camera sytem that was only 10 years old at the time.
The system also contained parts that were used with later cameras like the filmbacks.
Patents for these had another 15 years to go at the time the first Russian copies became available.

Paul
 
Paul,

Thanks! But we, of course, need sources.
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Could you please tell where you found the confirmation?

Victor Hasselblad AB, by the way, was then not a financially healthy company.
Quite the contrary. Making and selling Hasselblads did not bring huge profits, if any at all.
The deal that Victor's grandfather struck with George Eastman, making Hasselblad the sole distributor of Eastman, later Kodak, products in all of Scandinavia however brought in lots and lots of cash. And it continued to do so until Victor sold it at some moment (poor memory - sorry!) in the late 1960's to mid 1970's period. Victor Hasselblad had other business interests too that brought in money.
Those, and Victor's love of photography, were the things that kept his camera making business alive. But it struggled for many, many years.
 
Update:
Victor sold Hasselblads Fotografiska AB - the goose that laid golden eggs - to Kodak in 1965. Kodak regained control over sales of Kodak products, and Victor Hasselblad, the man, got even richer.
 
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