"Is that a Hasselblad?" - Never fails

Well, I just got back from the local glass store having a blank cut

for my new ground glass. Well, going by what was said in a book I

read, until I can order the grit, it will be a Rust-Oleum Frosted

glass. But anyway, the owner who cut the glass asked what it was for.

Trying not to confuse him while he cut the "critical" measurements, I

told him it was for "a big camera, the kind with a bellows" and

measured out about 70cm with my hands. "Oh. You mean like a

Hasselblad?" he responded. Is it only me, or is this the normal

question? I always get it - especially with my Bronica, which I got

in chrome partly to fool the un-photographically-educated.

 

Oh, PS - the "critical" measurements were off by a critical 1mm.

Luckily I tried the fit in the store.

With my bastardized Sinar 5X7 I usually receive the question: "What kind of TV camera is that?"

 

You don't want to hear my answer!!! :)

hmmm....never heard that one before. I guess I might when I start shooting 8x10 in the field.

I was shooting with my Calumet 8X10 a couple of weeks ago at Mt Rainier, and a guy asked me if the camera was a "AVALANCHE Detector"? Of course I said YES !!!

You should have followed that up with a concerned look at your equipment, an exclamation of "oh shit" and a fast break for your car.

Last week in Big Bend someone looked at my Wisner Technical Field and asked "Is that a Hasselblad?"

New Yorkers often seem to know their cameras. I get my share of naive remarks, but sometimes old guys will walk by and say "ooh, 4x5, that's a nice camera. I used to have a Speed Graphic back in the 40's." Or once when I was carrying my little folding 35mm rangefinder, I overheard someone walking past me saying, "Hey, that's a Voigtlander Vitessa."

When last in L.A. I had a carful of drunk teenage gangsta wannabees ask what movie I was shooting, and demand that I give one of them a part. This was about 2 in the morning, shooting a Mamiya Universal from a tripod, down by the LA river. About a half-second into "It's not a movie camera, it's a..." they burned rubber.

 

But I have had a couple of pleasant chats with ex-Graphic users in airports...

Hmmmm. All I get around the San Francisco Bay area is, "Too shiny to be a Deardorff, must be a Tachihara." (lol)

 

Actually, I'm waiting for, "Wow. I've never seen a CompactFlash card that big!" as I slide the film holder into the camera. ;-)

In no particular order, here are the questions I tend to get. "What kind of camera is that?", "What are you looking at?", "Is that the type of camera Ansel Adams used?", "Are you a professional photographer?", "What are the benefits of using that type of camera?", "What kind of film does that camera take?", "Is it all right to walk in front of the camera?", and "Can I see what you're looking at?".

 

My favorite reaction was when I was using my Minolta Autocord (mf TLR) in a town square in central Mexico at night. I wanted to get a picture of one of the lighted buildings along the periphery of the square, but only had my table-top tripod with me. So, I got on my knees and set the camera up on the ground. I spent a fair amount of time crouched over the camera composing in the near darkness and trying to focus, all the while looking down at it (as is the custom with TLRs). Anyway, a few boys became intrigued and finally approached me. Not knowing how the camera works they assumed I was taking a picture of something very small and interesting on the ground. To the casual observer I must have looked like some idiot looking for a contact lens in the middle of the night.

Funny you should mention it, because last fall someone asked me if my Canham DLC was a Hasselblad.

 

While we're sort of on the subject, do any of you have problems with people coming right up and looking through your camera while you are using it? Last fall at Mt. Rainier a group of Japanese tourists pulled up in two big rental cars and converged on me while I was setting up for a shot next to an otherwise deserted section of road. They stood between me and my camera as I transferred equipment between my trunk and tripod. They smushed their faces right up to the groundglass, and I had to step around them as I worked. The funny thing was, I hadn't attached a lens yet. One by one they looked through the groundglass, shook their heads at the crazy American whose big camera had no image, and walked a few feet away to take pictures with their Nikons. Then they sped off again.

 

None of them asked me if it was a Hasselblad though.

Two weeks ago in Arches a woman comes up to me while I'm setting up my 8x10 Dorff and says, "My Dad had a Hasselblad just like that."

I tell her "Wow, there's not to many of them you know."

Two friends told me of this one. Wish I was there to watch it unfold.

 

Aldo (tall, thin and about 80) and Mike (shorter, quite round, in his mid sixties, with a full white beard and floppy western style hat) were standing at the obligitory Yosemite tunnel look-out point. You, perhaps, see where this is going? Mike was setting up for an exposure when a tourist walked up beside Aldo and asked, "Is that Ansel Adams?"

To which Aldo promptly replied, "No, that's a--hole Adams."

 

BTW at the time of this story Mr. Adams had been the late Mr. Adams for many years. And Mike was using a 35mm.

 

OK, so it's not a mistaken identity story about a Hassy. But it's a good one anyway.

 

Paul M. - remember that one?

Funny stories...

 

I was in a cemetery in Brooklyn last year with my Linhof TK45. The security guard drove up in a van, leaned out the window and shouted 'No videotaping allowed!"

Going through customs in Syria several years ago, I was pulled aside and made to register my Nagaoka 4x5 as a profession camera (!), to make sure that I took it with me when I left. No problem. On my return through JFK I was pulled aside, my belongings gone through by humans and dogs. In the end the customs agent pulled out my 4x5 by its handle, looked at it, folded up, and said "oh, sorry, I thought it was a camera." I wonder what he thought it was? I never asked.

I'll have to say, sometimes folks have insight. On Sunday, a rather old guy (I'm above 50) stopped as I was composing a long root/tree base, and asked "what are you focussing on?" -- and he later related he had no personal knowledge of large format, just knew that older cameras could do such things.

 

We then discussed that we both could have been home watching tv, like too many other folks, and he said -- every minute I watch it, I will live that much shorter.

The next time someone asks whether you're shooting a Hasselblad, tell 'em, "No, it's a Leica..."

I get the Hassy question once a month....Makes me Laugh....I enjoy peoples curiosity

Hi,

 

Big camera seem to provoke two things:

 

1) People starting to ask questions about what it is or what you are doing, many wanting to have a peek on the GG (the obvious upside-down reaction as a result of that).

 

2) People start taking pictures too! I climbed over several rocks to get a decent point of view for the Porz-Kamor lighthouse (Brittany, France). After I was standing on a big rock, several others started to climb also over the rocks near the surf to take pictures. After I returned, people dissapeared within 15 minutes and in the following hour I saw nobody climbing the rocks to take pictures. On several other locations the same thing happened.

 

Huib

 

 

While in Brittany, France we experienced both:

a few years back, I'm photographing west of Las Vegas, in Red

Rock Canyon area, using a 4x5, and sitting on a huge rock

behind me are these two tourists, from Germany or thereabouts.

I'm doing all the 4x5 things and the boyfriend hasn't said

anything yet. So I make the negative, and start packing up. Just

as I'm starting to leave, I hear him turn to his girlfriend, and in an

all-knowing whisper, say" He does not know it yet, but he had his

lens on upside down". Swear to God, I almost hurt myself

laughing back to the car.

I get the Hasselblad question all the time. Mostly from people who are just curious and almost always very pleasant, however, so it doesn't really bug me. The other common question is "Wow, that's an old camera. When was it made?". In the case of my old Eastman 8x10, the answer supports their assumption but when I am using my very new Wisner, they look startled when I say "Last year". Another one of my favourite questions is "Can you still get film for that." I usually explain that 4x5 is common professional size but once I said, just for the hell of it, "No". A puzzled look crossed the man's face and I could hear him saying in his mind "Then what the hell is this nut doing?". I laughed, told I was just kidding, and we had a great conversation.

 

Don Wallace

My variation is this: I was making a night shot of Bruton Parish

Church in Williamsburg, VA with my Ikoflex TLR. A tourist came

by and asked if I was trying to 'capture' the church. He was being

nice, so I choked back my initial smartass jokes about lariats

and nets and decided to go for the "I'd need a bigger camera"

approach. "It's a big church," I said. "For that, I might need my

large format camera." "Oh," he replied knowingly, "You mean

like a Hasselblad."

 

As for curious questions in general, I've never had a rude one

and they're usually very nice. Once in Williamsburg I was

hand-shooting my Crown Graphic and I heard an old guy say

"Hey look -- it's Weegee!" Of course, that made my day.

Gee Daniel... I envy you for being mis-identified as Weegee... <p>

The best I could do while out with my speed graphic was being called "Jimmy Olson", and it has happened more than once...

I was recently in Red Rock Canyon in Nevada standing beside the roadway setting up a shot with the Wisner, when a bicycle rider came along and shouted "way to go Ansel", I responded, "thanks Lance". Made both our days.

Paul

I had the same expirience as Huib. At Etretat I found a nice spot and set up my equipment to make the shot. Soon a swarm of tourist were flocking around me trying to take the same shot. One even stoot in front of my camera, took his compact and made this shot, turned around and smiled at me as if he had done something astonishingly clever and walked of. I turned the camera around towards the see and sat down. Soon everybody was gone and I could make my shot with no-one on it.