Monday 26 September 2016

Hasselblad portrait - 503 CWD on film

Recently my good friend and photographer Simon asked if I could take a portrait of him. I said "sure, come over to the house and we'll do it".

"Lets do it on my Hasselblad using film" replied Simon.

So that weekend Simon turned up at my house with his Hasselblad kit and a film back with 6 exposures remaining.

Whilst familiar with the newer digital Hasselblad I've not used the Hasselblad 500 series of bodies; winding on the film after each exposure, something once so familiar felt so alien after 10 yrs of digital.

We set up the lighting, balancing natural light with my Neewer studio strobes and, with Topsy sitting in using a digital back fired off some exposures to check the lighting.

Hasselblad 503CWD, Carl Zeiss 150mm f/4 Sonnar CFi 1/125s f/8 photo by Simon Hill
 Satisfied with the lighting we put the film back on the 'blad loaded with Ilford FP4 and I fired off the 6 exposures. 
The film was processed by Ilford Labs then Simon scanned the negatives on a Fuji Frontier SP 3000 Pro. 
Post production was in Ps and Silver EFX Pro
Hasselblad 503CWD, Carl Zeiss 150mm f/4 Sonnar CFi 1/125s f/8 photo by stereodesign

I really enjoyed the afternoon using the 503 and I think the result speaks for itself, however I've no desire to go back to film, I much prefer digital.

1 comment:

  1. Great photo. Thanks Huw. Sorry I couldn't persuade you to join me on the dark side ... film is not dead yet ... and neither is the Hasselblad V series (despite Hasselblad's best attempts to kill it). Back to Iceland tomorrow ... with a 5D4 although I have fond memories of using the 503 on our earlier expedition!

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