This is the story

of the Tanster at the crossroads. I really like film but it's too time consuming. I have a nice medium format camera (Hasselblad 503cx) that I barely ever use. Over the last few months I've acquired a lot of inexpensive pentax lenses on ebay. They have exceptional optics. I was wondering if I could put them on the hasselblad. This entails putting small lenses in front of a big negative. Would the lens project an image that filled the negative plane? Would the quality be very good? I spent a lot of time thinking about these questions . . .

I found someone on the internet who made such an adapter with a body cap for some other medium format camera. Can't remember which one. Then I started talking to Ukrainians. I see them as the portal to the shady adapter world. Was I right! I had two horrible deals on ebay where Ukrainian people sold me adapters for the Kiev 88 calling the Kiev 88 a Hasselblad. Though the Kiev 88 looks like a Hasselblad it has a totally different mount. I wasted a lot of money and time learning that lesson. I almost gave up again. (If you look at the archives there's more about the pursuit of this adapter)

Finally, I shelled out ten more dollars to buy a real Hasselblad body cap. When it came I got to work. The pictures below reveal what the job looked like.

The results: I tried lenses from 16mm to 200mm (small format M42)

16mm: wouldn't focus at all.

28mm: extreme close up

35mm: extreme close up

55mm: close up

135mm: normal but I believe a tripod is needed

200mm: normal but I believe a tripod is needed

For the range of the 135mm and the 200mm I'd just use the Hasselblad 80mm anyway.

My negatives were covered with the entire image from outside the lens.

So I learned a few things. I think the hasselblad really needs a tripod and cable release whenever I use it. The great thing about that camera is its sharpness and I lose that everytime I go hand held. It's not worth it.