Monday 11 May 2009

A lesson learnt

I set out to the excellent Millington Woods in the Yorkshire Molds today with my Hasselblad as my weapon of choice. This is a little unusual - I've been pretty much exclusively using my Chamonix large format over the past few months. So I decided the time had come to free up a bit and take to the woods with 'blad.

I set up my first shot and pressed the shutter - the shutter didn't sound right, so I tried again without the film back on and figured out the lens wasn't firing properly. Took it off the camera, fiddle about a bit and tried again - it still didn't fire and consequently got jammed on the camera. Damn.

So this is where my lesson begins - to free the lens you need to turn a small screw head in the camera. Simple - if you haven't left your small multitool in your other (large format) camera bag. Not simple if all you have as stand-in screwdrivers are car keys and twigs. So that was the end of my first outing with a Hasselblad fora a while. So, lesson one – take some basic tools out with you. A simple multitool, some gaffa tape, string... any other useful suggestions?!

Luckily all wasn't completely lost, at the last minute I picked up my little Ricoh GX100, and I also had my Agfa Isola in my camera bag - a very basic 6x6 camera which dates back to the 50's. I'd have rather had my Sony a900 with me but I was traveling light. So my second lesson learnt is to always have a back up camera with you. Whilst my back up cameras weren't ideal, at least I managed to make a few acceptable photographs, meaning I hadn't travelled 150 miles for nothing!