andyfalsetta

Looking for a Hasselblad 1600F preferably complete but not working. Have Hasselblad 500C equipment to trade but would consider purchasing the right camera. The older the better.

It bears mentioning that Hasselblad gear is meant to be serviced and that is both good and bad. Good in the sense that they usually don't wear out; they just need to be cleaned and "calibrated". Bad in the sense that you need access to someone who is handy with Hasselblad gear to do the servicing. As with old cars, the best one to buy is one that has already been "put right". The cost of buying something on the cheap and then having it serviced usually ends up with you being upside down regarding total expenditure vs resale value. Having said this, someone who is used to repairing pocketwatches and mechanisms of similar complexity/fragility can learn to service his own Hasselblad gear to a good result. My go-to is a '58 500c with chrome lenses and I love it.

And FYI, the notches in a few of the teeth on the reverse side of the counter wheel is normal also.

Have you tried seeing how the frame advance works without this gear/wheel in place? Would that be a way to prove your theory?

Sorry for my poor typing. The gear you labeled as 1 (white) is the gear I am talking about. On one side is a lever that must be clean and free moving. On the other side you can see there is a disc and rivet that need to rotate around freely. Make sure these are operating correctly and installed correctly when you assemble the gear train. When you put the chrome gear number 1 (white) in place, the rivet should be on the left side of the nylon lever. Now the gear you are concerned about, that has the apparent missing teeth is fine. The missing five teeth are necessary to allow the counter wheel to slip when the counter gets to 12. Have you noticed that if you manually advance the back as if you were winding completely from frame one to twelve, that the counter stops at 12? Even if you continue to wind, the counter just stays at 12 and just rocks back and forth rather than advancing. This is because the "missing teeth" allow the gear that drives the counter wheel to continue to turn while the counter wheel slips. If the teeth were all there, the counter wheel would just continue to rotate round and round. But as I said earlier, if you find teeth missing in more than this one spot, then you have another problem to resolve. Hope this helps.

The gear you labeled 1 (white) is he one I am talking about. The mechanism on both sides of this gear need to be clean and working crisply for the advance to work properly.

Macaluan needs to inspect that wheel closely. It is normal to have five teeth cleanly machined out of that wheel. If there is another spot on the wheel where teeth are bent or broken out, all bets are off. You are right, its really hard to tell from this photo what we are actually looking at.

I too would be focused closely at this assembly. It is a double clutch arrangement. The lever is one part that needs to move freely but if you flip it over, you will see that there is also a certain amount of rotational movement between the two parts that needs to take place freely and "smartly". If you have not totally removed the top chrome gear and this double clutch set up, you need to fully soak it in naptha to get it clean. The appearance of missing teeth on the counter wheel assembly is totally normal but it DOES attract attention doesn't it?

A more appropriate analogy might be "akin to ...towing a motor home with your Rolls Royce" :)

Don't forget home improvement stores if Michael's or Hobby Lobby don't have the self adhesive foam. Look in the aisle where they have door and window seals. You may have to trim them with a razor knife, scissor or blade but they have the stuff too.

Two years ago I found a complete kit on ebay for under $600. Granted I got a little lucky but I'm sure it will happen again. Linhoff Model III with three lenses, the correct lens cams and focus scales (not that I will use the rangefinder), sports finder, and the aux finder that is used to estimate which lens might be best for the shot. I love shooting my 4x5; it is a deliberate process, slowed down, and totally enjoyable. What incredible detail these devices will provide.

I watched a half hour show on Ansel Adams shooting around an old farm house in Northern CA. He used a 500C exclusively on that shoot. Loved his car with what looked like a shooting platform on top too.

Uh oh, an MGB and an Alfa GTV? Ben, did you hear that? Taking this off topic for a minute, I too have a GTV 2000 ('73) Its an original 31,000 mile car and I love it. Since they really are "60's cars" in disguise, I hear you about the fall off of cars with souls. Having said that, I see all sorts of young guys these days scooping up cars you and I might consider soul-less. It has a lot to do with what we grow up with I guess and the cars we lusted after as young adults. Its good to see the car hobby alive and well even if the changing of the guard is happening in some quarters. Good luck with your decision re: Medium Format.

For me, I really appreciate TTL metering. Once I start spinning a polarizer on top of a Y2, in front of an image with nice dynamic range my ability to get accurate exposures starts to fade. For that reason my SQA-i kit with the metered prism is the most comfortable for me to shoot with.

Maybe this would help.

I agree. If optically, you see no issues, then a good cleaning and relubrication will get you on track for another 50 plus years of use. ;)

All I can add is "barbecue grill" and "oven". My wife doesn't like the smell of 60 year old grease baking into her oven so when I run into a ceased helicoid that a hair dryer doesn't help with I introduce the lens to my "barbie" and welder's gloves. Hasn't failed yet.

As Jochen was saying, it has a lot to do with what you intend to do and what your priorities are. It sounds like weight and serviceability are two important factors. An interchangable 3 lens setup (as you know from your RB67 Pro S) gives you the luxury of always carrying two lenses you aren't using. While that might pay off by givng you flexibility, the weight and space penalty can be significant and you did mention weight as being important. A folding rangefinder such as a Super Ikonta (and there are others) have fixed lenses but retain the 6x6 format and in some cases the SI can be found in 6x9. You lose the extra two lenses but they are much lighter and fit in a jacket pocket. If carrying the extra lenses is not an issue then you could look at Bronica's SQA or SQAi system. They are relatively inexpensive and have optical quality that rivals equivalent Hasselblad offerings. I don't mention the ETR because I don't see the advantage of carrying (hypothetically) 4.5 pounds of 6x4.5 gear rather than 5 pounds of 6x6. Is it really worth the saved half pound to leave all that potential imaging space on the table? If servicability is an issue, then you really need to consider that as good as a Bronica system would be (I have an SQA-1 and love it) the list of repair options shrinks every day. Whether you go for SQ A or ETR, people who can source parts or repair these are getting older and retiring. Of course, the lower price of the Bronica gear DOES give you the option to just chuck a component that has failed and buy another but this approach isn't the most convenient and has its own set of risks. Hasselblad gear has its attraction but its expensive, heavier, and has its own set of serviceability land mines. Another option would be a TLR

Use restraint when lubing a shutter. They like to run dry. The only caveats for me are: - pivots on slow speed controllers - Heat the head of a needle cherry red and then flatten it with a hammer against an anvil. This tip will now retain a small drop of oil. Once cool you can dip it into watch oil or your oil of choice and apply a small drop to the pivots. - cocking cam. As KMAC said, the inner circumference of the cam has a lot of stress on it as it rotates around its mating/bearing surface. A thin film of oil here might be enough but I tend to use a heavier lube here. - springs. Since I can't find replacement springs for most of my cameras these days, prevention of broken springs is paramount. I apply a small drop of oil to every spring so it can spread over the entire length of the spring over time preventing rust and eliminating rust related breakage. If you have a manufacturer's lube schedule, use it. Otherwise, that's it. If you have to lube anything else, chances are there is something else wrong. As for CRC electronics cleaner, if it works for you, that's great. I find that it's not the cheapest solvent and it emits noxious fumes. I don't like using it at my workbench. It does seem to not affect plastics or painted lettering or glass though. The one thing I dislike most and the main reason I stopped using it in favor of naptha is that its an aerosol, it leaves the parts cold due to the propellant and rapidly evaporating fluid (remember those noxious fumes?). This causes condensation and a thin film of rust to develop anywhere that the parts are not plated.

Zeiss used a thread locking compound on many of their screws. There will be no external trace of it on screws you find on the barrel. Heat the lens barrel with a hair dryer and if necessary use gloves to handle it. Put a small drop of lacquer thinner on the screw and give it a few seconds to do its work. The screws just might come loose that way. If you have to drill them out, you can buy inexpensive taps for these small screws and get good results in aluminum barrels.

Now that we've pretty much veered off into helicoid cleaning, it really makes a difference if you scrupulously clean each helicoid thread after givning it a bath. I have a needle mounted in a pinvise that has a tip that I ground down to a flat tip. I then "chase" each thread (both sides) on each set of threads. It doesn't take long to go through all sets and you might be surprised at how much comes out of a "clean" helicoid. A good set of helicoid threads (especially Zeiss) leave no room for debris so get all of that out before applying your lube of choice.

That's good info and helps justify the extra effort to get the glass out before a flush.

Shutter leaves run dry (as does most of the shutter mechanism). The naptha or any degreaser will wick out lubricant from everywhere it reaches, depositing the oil and dirt as it disolves. That is why I recommended positioning the mechanism so that when you "flush" the controller the runoff doesn't get into the blades. To do this you have to hold the assembly nearly upside down as you apply the naptha. Definitely you need to get any glass elements out before proceeding with any cleaners. Although a Mamiya may not have any compound elements in it, I know too little about lens cement history and techniques to want to risk starting separation by introducing windex, alcohol, naptha, etc in a quantity I can not totally control. I am sure you can repeatedly flush shutter leaves and endlessly wipe them and literally wash, rinse, repeat over and over again. But rarely do you get all of the oil off. The shutter blades will have trace lines of oil/dust on the edges on one side or both and they can get a "rainbow" look to them. This will attract dust and flecks of whatever flies around in there and sooner or later you need to get back in there rather than enjoy another 40 years of trouble-free operation :) Additionally, the constant swabbing deposits hairlike fibers on the blades or around the edges of the assembly that you need to look closely for and remove. The best approach is to go a little further and remove all the blades, clean them individually as well as the aperture control assembly and then put it all back together. Its intimidating at first but you would be surprised at how good you can get at putting them all back together. Once you have done a total disassembly and reassembly of an aperture assembly you will find that you will only do a flush and wipe job to a lens you don't really care about.

I second the use of Naptha to clean up almost anything mechanical on these vintage cameras. Be careful with the shutter blades though. You're better off either keeping them dry or removing them completely and cleaning them individually. Its usually not as much of a nightmare as it would seem to take the shutter down to that level. I would position the assembly so that a few drops of Naptha would run through the slow speed timer and then right out of the lens into a catch container. Letting it run all throughout the shutter blades is asking for a real significant clean up job. Sometimes depending on how much lube is already in the shutter, those blades will never look as clean as you really want them to be. And yes, you would be surprised at how "off" a perfectly operating shutter can be. Sometimes chasing perfection gets you into trouble. I too used Audacity before I got my shutter timer.

A couple dozen q-tips might make the clean up easier.