The Hasselblad Curse
I’ve written about this before, but as time goes on, I’m becoming aware of the universe telling me that I’m not supposed to own a Hasselblad camera. Today, I took a walk to my local pharmacy to collect a prescription item. It’s about 2.5 miles away, and the walk involves travelling alongside a lovely tidal estuary with a 12th century castle overlooking it. The winter light can give it an ethereal feel at times, so I decided to pop my Hasselblad X1D iic and 28mm lens into my small backpack just in case there were any opportunties enroute. I set it to shoot at the x-pan format of 65 x 24.
As I rounded a corner at the top of my street, some woman pensioner with her head looking directly behind her just ploughed into my path. If she’d managed to make contact, she would have come off way worse. I managed to take some sort of evasive action, and in doing so, tripped over myself and spectacularly fell into the main road with a sickening thump/crack. The thump was my elbow, and a metallic crack from within the rucksack. I picked myself up, and assured her that it wasn’t her fault (although it bloody was), and I continued on my way.
Upon reaching the estuary I stopped and hesitantly looked inside the bag. The metal lens hood was pushed into the very expensive lens, and had a dent where the impact had been. Later on I manged to remove it, and found the plastic mounting mechanism was snapped. Luckily, the lens and camera weren’t damaged. My knee and elbow were a bit bruised as well.
When I returned home, I took the opportunity to have a look at a replacement. I could only find it available at one retailer in the UK - for a mind-boggling £167!
It’s a metal ring with a bit of plastic. Balls to that. There are 3rd party Chinese dupes available for twenty notes, or I’ll do without. Pure ridiculousness.
I’ve never had so much misfortune with an individual camera brand, and given that the system (as I’ve said in the past) seems to be purely for social media wankers and landscape hobbyists with too much money, I think it’s time to abandon the Hasselblad project for good. Trouble is, I’ve just devalued the lens by hundreds of pounds because of this ding to the own-brand lens shade.
Sod-it.
