Hasselblad Hassle Again

My medium format gear has cost me dearly, made me nothing, and is now valueless.

When I first invested thousands of pounds in the original medium format camera and lenses, the H4D-40 body conked out within a few days so it was covered for a full refund - as were the lenses. In retrospect, I should have returned the whole lot straight away and rid myself of the burden of paying for it all. Unfortunately, I retained the lenses and bought a new X-system Hasselblad mirrorless body plus an adapter to fit them.

In the real world, the lenses are just way too big and heavy to use in my field of work. It took me a year to get round to selling them back to MPB, and when I tried, they gave me the following quote without any irony:

Why not just say “sorry - can’t take the stuff”?

When I queried it, they did tell me that they were running down their existing Hasselblad stock and wouldn’t be buying anything in the future. Fair enough. The original H4D-40 I returned is for sale on the website for £500 now - for spares and repairs.

Unfortunately, I now have to go down the Ebay route, which is always a winner when it comes to selling pro photo gear to utter clowns. “will it fit my Canon?”. Who are these people? I might just have to give it another few weeks before I put myself through all of that again.

In the meantime, I have a bunch of metal and glass sitting idly in my gear cupboard.