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Original 500CM 500ELM SWC sales manual

simonpg

Active Member
Yesterday I got lucky. The owner of the Fuji Frontier lab I have all my film processed at gave me a Hasselblad sales manual dated August 1974. It even has a serial number printed inside the front cover!

It is a very large spiral bound manual that details every component and accessory offered for the 500C/M, 500EL/M and SWC. It even includes a description of the attributes of every lens offered including comments about their optimal use.

It is about the size of a square A3 page (wider and shorter) if you get what I mean.

It includes huge full page hardboard B&W images illustrating the quality a Hasselblad will deliver - wow.

Funnily enough when he handed me the manual, he opened it to one of the huge photos and said "now you will never get that from a digi-cam!"

I was intrigued to see some of the accessories offered like underwater kits! I also did not realise that the 250mm Sonnar Superachromat was offered originally as a C lens. I thought it was a CF version initiative.

Mine is serial number 2742. The fellow who gave it to me was clearing out a storage space and salvaged it to give to me. Well this will now not be stored away but is now on a coffee table for all to see!

I suppose these were used by Hasselblad's sales staff and maybe given to dealers as part of their product sales training.

Maybe our Hasselblad historian QG has seen these?

Has anyone else seen these sales manuals?
 
Simon,

Yes, i know them. I even have a couple of them too.
They were indeed given to dealers, telling them how to demonstrate a Hasselblad camera (a step by step guide), what items there are, what they are meant to do, etc.
As such, they are not very rare; every 'official' dealer had at least one of these.

They vary with age: new things coming, old things going. And also depending on how well the dealer 'maintained' his Manual: did he remove the old stuff and insert all the updates, or did he not care, and use a recent catalogue as reference, etc.

Enjoy yours!
 
Thanks QG. And yes I am enjoying mine - it sits on a coffee table among those wonderful large format "Victor" magazines.
 
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