A holiday romance with medium format

by Alexander Mustard

Reproduced from in focus 71 (June 2001)

There was no denying it, I was in love. Not only was the object of my desire Swedish, but she had biggest trannies I had ever seen! Here we were in clear sunlit waters at a depth of three metres, surrounded by stingrays. I was in heaven.

However, this has not been a brief affair. My adventure into the world of shooting on two and a quarter inch (60 mm) film started about a year and a half earlier, at work. A clear-out of the photographic department revealed a dusty and faded camera housing, Made in the 1970s by the Hasselblad Underwater Division. Hasselblad Housings do not usually turn up in most off ice clear-outs, so maybe I should explain. I am a marine scientist, indeed I am writing this while on a research ship riding out Force 9 winds at 60N 20W in the Iceland Basin. And the housing was previously employed as a survey tool, but had spent most of the lost two decades collecting dust in storage.

After some hard bargaining and some downright underhandedness I managed to persuade the department that I should be entrusted to get it working again. And soon I was lugging the 5 kg beast home.

At home I greased the o-rings and undertook some extensive trials in the bath tub. No leaks - excellent. Despite the rigours of my tests, I was not convinced, so I decided to get the camera serviced by someone who knew what they were doing. Thankfully, and I am most grateful, fellow BSoUPer Warren Williams was just the man for the job, because he has experience of these cameras in their heyday. I must also thank Peter Rowlands and Steve Warren for putting me in touch with Warren. In addition to the service we also decided to change one of the flash synch plugs to be compatible with Nikonos synch leads. Warren's expertise is first class, and it is the original synch plug that now looks out of place next to the new one he has fitted. In fact, I think that biggest challenge for Warren was carting the housing across London to the Holland Club!

While Warren worked his magic I invested in an old rusty 500C camera with a Zeiss bistagon 50 mm lens, which has a field of view roughly equivalent to 20-24 mm on a 35 mm camera. Luckily all this came together less than two weeks before I had planned to go on holiday to Grand Cayman (in April). I was all set. My luck has certainly been in with this project, and this was reconfirmed when I turned up at Gatwick, where the conveyors were broken and they could not weigh my luggage!

I am a photographer of the electronic camera age, I believe that God gave me fingers to operate the aytof ocus, and that flash guns have settings other than TTL only for decoration. So the change to the fully manual Hasselblad was quite a shock. But soon and to my great surprise using the Hasselblad become a pleasure. Its chunky gears are smooth and certain, and the extra concentration required made each photograph more precious. The involvement in the creation of each image was such that my 35 mm pictures now feel like snap-shots.

So much of the joy of this hobby is in the process and not just the results. Electronic aids had made me forget that.

In the water the Hasselblad soon shed its pounds, although it remains a little nose heavy. The view finder is monstrous and I can almost look through it with both eyes simultaneously. It is dimmer than that of a 35 mm camera because of its sheer size and the slow lens I was using (f4). Another surprise was the square picture format which proved a refreshing and suitable shape for many marine subjects and also meant that flash positioning didn't need to change.

A medium format lens with a similar angle of view to a 35 mm lens wiI I have a much reduced depth of field because of its longer focal length. I found that I did not have a big problem with depth of field in the bright, shallow, tropical waters of Grand Cayman. Even using Velvia I was not limited, although backgrounds were noticeably blurred compared with 35 mm. In my opinion, where I chose simple backgrounds the effect was often positive. Many underwater photographs are taken to maximise depth of field but with less range in focus the subject con have more impact. I shall be certainly be taking more 35 mm shots with less depth of field in the future.

This was definitely the most enjoyable underwater photographic experience I have had. The love affair was not about the subject matter, or the diving but shooting with such an involving piece of equipment, which made each twelve shots an unrivalled pleasure. And those big trannies? Well they just blow you away.