Cityscape

A Simple Session On My Roof

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Traveling great distances for the sake of a photograph isn’t always possible, nor is it even always necessary. Take this session for example. All I had to do is travel up a flight of stairs to the roof of my building to find a great backdrop to work with.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford FP4 120 film.

Comparatively speaking to the buildings around my complex, my roof isn’t the tallest structure in the neighborhood. So I wanted to work quickly to keep too many prying eyes from nearby buildings from noticing what we were doing. All of these images were made when the COVID pandemic was in its early days though so most if not all of the office buildings that surrounded us were shuttered and closed. There wasn’t any traffic on the streets below us either at that time so quite frankly the entire scene and mood of that afternoon was a bit eerie. Nothing quite like existing out in a cityscape and being met with mostly silence.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford FP4 120 film.

All of these images are from a single roll of Ilford FP4 film that I later souped up in Rodinal. Stand development was 1:100 for about 45 minutes with a few inversions at the very beginning and a few more at the 20 minute mark. Despite the heavy cloud cover there were some bright patches of sun peaking through the sky at strange angles to the model and I figured stand development would help me pull out details even though the scene is semi backlit.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford FP4 120 film.

We probably could have gotten away with exposing more than one roll of film up on my roof, but I was feeling a little paranoid and wanted to get in and get out as quickly as possible. But hey, three images that I’m happy with on a single roll of medium format film isn’t bad!!

Using the Hasselblad SWC In Small Spaces

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I’ve mentioned before on this blog how much I really like using the Hasselblad SWC. The 38mm Biogon lens is an absolute marvel and I very much appreciate the almost point and shoot nature of working with the SWC. Set your focus distance, meter the scene, and you are good to go just pointing and clicking to your hearts content.

Photograph of a nude model made with a Hasselblad SWC and Ilford Pan F ISO 50 film.

I’ve noticed a lot of camera reviewers making hay about having to “guess” the focus distance with this camera but in real world use I have found this to be a complete non-issue. Even at a wide open aperture, the depth of field is so wide I never miss out on focus.

There is one scenario where the Hasselblad SWC can be a bit of a challenging tool - working in tight spaces. To be fair, I’m not sure the SWC was really meant for small rooms. This is a landscape camera through and through. However, I’ve never been one to be contend with using a camera purely in the situations it was designed for. I recently used the Hasselblad SWC on a balcony overlooking downtown Portland that was about four feet wide and only about three feet deep. It was tight quarters for sure, but I think the Hasselblad SWC is perhaps the only camera I own that could have pulled off some good images at all.

Photograph of a nude model made with a Hasselblad SWC and Ilford Pan F ISO 50 film.

The challenge to using the SWC in small spaces is the fact that the closer you get to your subject, the more the viewfinder on the top of the camera becomes “off”. The fancy term for this would be Parallax Error. In other words, what I’m framing with the viewfinder on the top of the camera isn’t the same thing the lens is seeing just below it. When your subject is far away, the difference is minuscule and practically undetectable. The closer one gets to the subject, the more dramatic the difference is. On a tiny balcony I was forced to be only a few feet from the model meaning I was guessing my adjustments big time.

Thankfully practice can make perfect. Or as perfect as visual art can be anyway.