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The Hasselblad posture

The Hasselblad V-System was probably the high-point in analogue camera design. Hasselblad users will tell you about the ‘openness’ or 'connection’ between photographer and subject that can occur when you’re not staring down a viewfinder. Notice the faces in the photos above, visible and relaxed.

In the classic Hasselblad position, with the arms relaxed near the hips, the photographer will look down into a large ground glass plate atop the camera, rather than through a tiny viewfinder.

Without a chunk of plastic or metal, or a screen in front of the face, the photographer faces the world, paying attention to it, and only dipping into the screen when its necessary to think about something photographic, like framing or focus. Making an image is now about pressing a button, rather than swinging an arm up to the face. With the face open to the world, and the body relaxed, the photographer is part of the world, part of the scene, implicit in the social context, not hiding behind a barrier of technology.

While the Sony NEX series, The OM-D and the Canon Powershot N (to name a few) all have screens that can support a similar kind of hip-level shooting, their form is still rooted in traditional camera designs. I’m interested in why digital photography hasn’t generally taken up more experimental designs, and why design cues from the classic Hasselblad form aren’t more popular, but that is the subject of a future post.

Images above from Buenoa, stephcarter, HereNorth, Mary.Loo, Minato, Lafides, Cowe and lsear.

More in the ’People with Hasselblads’ pool on Flickr.