This is the third and final installment in my FlexBody in the Digital Age series.

When I pulled my Hasselblad FlexBody out of storage for this project, it had been sitting there for the better part of ten years. It had not been completely forgotten. I had used it periodically over the years, including for one of my early attempts at digitizing film, but it had long since stopped being part of my regular workflow.

This time I wanted to give it a fair chance.

Rather than take it out for an afternoon, shoot a few frames, and draw conclusions from that, I decided to spend some real time with it. For about a month, I used the FlexBody in the studio with both film and a digital back. I photographed still lifes and products, worked with movements, and, most importantly, tried to use it as though it were once again an everyday studio camera.

At the end of that month, I came to a decision.

The FlexBody is staying.

But not for digital.

Throughout this article, I have included some of the photographs I made during that month, both digital and film. They became as much a part of the decision as the experience of using the camera itself.

A Little History

This was not my first attempt to bring the FlexBody into a digital workflow.

Around 2010, when many photographers were beginning to experiment with what we would now call camera scanning, I tried using the Phase One P45 to digitize film with my ALPA macro setup. I mounted the digital back, added the necessary extension tubes and my Hasselblad 120mm Makro Planar, and put the whole arrangement on my heavy duty copy stand.

It worked.

At the time, our choices were much more limited than they are today. We did not have 50 and 100 megapixel digital backs with excellent Live View, nor did we have relatively affordable 61 megapixel mirrorless cameras such as the Sony I use today. A flatbed or dedicated film scanner was still the obvious solution for most photographers.

The P45 had to be tethered to my MacBook Pro so I could focus on the computer screen. I used that setup periodically for a couple of years, usually in sessions lasting several hours.

And it was a lot of work.

Eventually I had to admit that scanning film on a flatbed was physically easier, but I persisted because of the resolution the P45 gave me. I kept at it until technology finally brought us something better.

Things changed dramatically when Hasselblad introduced the CFV 50c. I was an early adopter among my group of photographers and purchased mine from Japan before it became available in the US market. Suddenly I had a 50 megapixel digital back with Live View.

The screen did not articulate, but I decided to try the CFV 50c on the FlexBody for digitizing my film. Working from the copy stand still meant standing over the camera to see what I was doing. Now, however, I could magnify the image and focus directly on the sensor, while the 50 megapixel back provided a substantial increase in resolution. The improvement in sharpness, resolution, and overall workflow was tremendous.

As mirrorless cameras continued to improve, I eventually moved on to the equipment I use today, including a 61 megapixel Sony.

Somewhere along the way, the FlexBody went back into storage.

Studio Shooting

There is one practical issue I should mention, particularly since I seem to have forgotten it in the previous FlexBody articles: using the camera with studio strobes.

If you are triggering your lights with a sync cord, there should be no problem as long as the flash sync on the lens is working properly. But that is rather old school these days.

If, like me, you use a wireless transmitter and receiver system, the problem is not triggering the lights. The problem is figuring out where to put the transmitter.

The FlexBody has no accessory shoe and no particularly convenient place to mount one.

My solution is the Hasselblad Hood Attachment Flash Shoe 40258, which clips onto the lens hood and gives me a place to mount the transmitter. It is a small inconvenience, but one worth knowing about if you are planning to use a FlexBody with studio lighting.

There may be other clever ways to attach a transmitter, but this was what I already had available. Once again, the seemingly bottomless Hasselblad V system parts bin comes through.

Other than finding somewhere to park the transmitter, shooting the FlexBody with strobes in my studio works just like shooting with any other camera.

The Digital Problem

The first issue is inherent to using a modern digital back on the FlexBody: orientation.

With my CFV II 50C attached, I am essentially working horizontally. That alone is not a deal breaker. I can compose horizontally and mentally visualize a square crop. If I want a square photograph, that is perfectly manageable.

The bigger issue is what happens to the resolution when I crop.

Once I begin cropping a 50 megapixel file significantly, I am obviously no longer working with all 50 megapixels. Depending on the crop, I can end up somewhere in the mid 30 megapixel range.

For many photographers and many subjects, that is plenty.

For some of what I photograph, it isn’t what I want.

That left me with a choice. If the FlexBody was going to become my primary digital tabletop camera, one solution was to move to Hasselblad’s 100 megapixel back. I could crop as needed and still have plenty of resolution left.

There was just one problem.

I didn’t want a 100 megapixel back.

My present 50 megapixel back suits me very well, and my 61 megapixel Sony gives me all the resolution I normally need. Moving to 100 megapixels would mean larger files, more storage and greater demands on my computer. I tend to buy a powerful computer and keep it for several years, and even my current system occasionally lets me know it is doing a little overtime when I ingest a large batch of 61 megapixel Sony files into Lightroom.

I wasn’t particularly interested in reorganizing my computing life around 100 megapixel files simply to make the FlexBody fit a job it wasn’t quite fitting.

At some point I realized I might be solving the wrong problem.

So I began looking at another solution.

Enter the Cambo Actus

I had already been looking at modern mini view cameras, particularly the Cambo Actus DB2 and the Arca Swiss Pico.

One requirement immediately narrowed the field: I wanted to use my existing ALPA mounted lenses.

That matters to me. I have owned some of these lenses for around fifteen years. They are excellent lenses, they are part of my working toolbox, and I wasn’t interested in replacing them simply because I changed the camera sitting behind them.

Besides, I still use them with my ALPA cameras!

At the time I was looking, the Pico did not provide a way for me to use those ALPA mounted lenses. That effectively took it out of consideration.

The Actus did.

I eventually found a used Actus DB2 system in excellent condition. The kit included a Hasselblad digital back adapter, Hasselblad lens adapter and Copal 0 lens plate. I added the ALPA lens adapter, along with a used Phase One digital back plate, plus a new ground glass assembly and Cambo viewing loupe for those occasions when I want to use my P45.

The Hasselblad lens adapter probably will not see much use. I prefer the Hasselblad to ALPA adapter made by Litz Studio that I have used for years. It fits perfectly into the Actus ALPA lens adapter, and its cocking mechanism is superb.

Remember that last detail. We will be returning to it.

There is one thing I won’t be using with the Actus: film.

By the time I assembled the system the way I wanted it, I had spent less than it would have cost me to move from my 50 megapixel Hasselblad back to the 100 megapixel version.

More importantly, I had solved the actual problem instead of buying more resolution to work around it.

That is something I had already learned with camera scanning. I eventually moved from the Fujifilm X Pro3 to my 61 megapixel Sony because the additional resolution solved a specific problem for me. I had a reason for those extra megapixels.

Here, I didn’t.

The Actus gives me smooth, precise movements and lets me use lenses I already own and value. I can use my Hasselblad digital back or my P45, and the system leaves me with other options should my needs change later.

For digital tabletop work, it simply makes more sense for me.

So where does that leave the FlexBody?

Exactly where, I discovered, it belongs.

Back to 6×6 Film

When I am making photographs for myself, I am primarily a black and white film photographer. I have been shooting black and white film since my youth and began processing it myself not long afterward.

But before we get to processing film, there is a more fundamental question.

Why do I still shoot it?

I am not a Leica street photographer, although I certainly appreciate photographers who make excellent work that way. In another part of my life I was a portrait photographer, and I exposed plenty of square Hasselblad black and white frames photographing people and personalities.

I don’t do much of that anymore.

These days, one of my favorite ways of working begins with black and white film and ends with color.

I hand color my photographs.

I began doing this long before Photoshop existed. We worked directly on photographic prints with Marshall’s oils, inks and other materials. When the finished artwork was needed for reproduction, a copy negative or transparency had to be made from the hand colored print. Getting those colors to survive the reproduction process accurately could be an adventure of its own.

Today I do my hand coloring in Photoshop, but the basic idea has not changed very much. I still work by hand, using layers and choosing the colors myself. Sometimes I reproduce the original color of an object and sometimes I don’t. It is much closer to sitting down with a coloring book than asking software to decide what color something should be.

Perhaps that is one reason I enjoy it so much.

When I was a child, my mother would lie on the floor with me and color in coloring books. She was truly an artist, although with four children to raise on her own, nursing became her occupation. Eventually she added tracing paper to my coloring books and used it to help me develop my drawing skills.

I have always said that my mother was my greatest teacher.

What she taught me went well beyond drawing and coloring. She taught me the patience to keep working at something until I got it right.

That lesson became enormously important later. Art school brought critiques and reshoots. Commercial photography brought art directors, clients, and the pressure to deliver. School was where you learned that you could go back and do it again. Professionally, you might not get that chance.

My first full time job was at an advertising agency in Manhattan. I remember thinking that if I could make it in New York City, I could go anywhere from there. It was another kind of education, and once again, the important thing was to keep going.

I think those afternoons with my mother learning how to color taught me something about getting across the finish line long before I knew there would be one.

Color eventually became an important part of my professional photography. More than one art director told me that one reason they hired me for freelance assignments was because of the way I handled it.

Oddly enough, these days one of the ways I enjoy color most is by starting without it.

I specifically like beginning with black and white film. Film has a visual texture that I see differently from digital black and white. That does not mean one is better than the other. It simply means that when I intend to hand color a photograph, I want to begin with film.

And that brings me right back to the FlexBody.

With a 6×6 film magazine attached, I can use the entire square frame. I have the movements I want for tabletop work. I can use my Hasselblad lenses. There is no digital crop to consider and no reason to buy a higher resolution back.

Suddenly, everything that complicated the FlexBody for my digital work disappears.

The FlexBody becomes what it always was: a very clever little medium format view camera.

How I Work With It

The image above was one of my experiments during the month with the FlexBody. I wanted to see whether I could make something that resembled a fruit crate label from the 1930s.

I have looked at a great many agricultural crate labels from that period, and they are not pristine examples of commercial printing. Reproduction quality varied considerably. Registration could be off, photographs could be soft, and some surviving labels look every bit their age.

So I wasn’t trying to make a technically perfect photograph and then make it look old afterward. I deliberately used the FlexBody’s movements and depth of field to let some of the pears fall out of focus. I wanted some of that imperfection in the original photograph.

The question I was asking myself was simple: could I create what I was seeing in my head from behind the FlexBody?

There it is.

Black and white film, hand colored in Photoshop, with the typography and final label design created in Illustrator.

That kind of experimentation is also why I tend to give myself several exposures of a still life. When I know I am going to hand color an image, I generally make three exposures of each setup. With twelve exposures on a roll of 120 film, that usually gives me four setups per roll.

The exposures are not necessarily identical.

Sometimes I change the aperture because I deliberately allow parts of an image to fall out of focus. I want to see how a change in depth of field alters the visual emphasis. Other times I may be working with dramatic lighting and want to bracket the exposure.

That habit goes all the way back to my photographic training.

I was trained during the era when commercial photographers shot transparencies, or chromes, and we bracketed. Sometimes we bracketed by only one third of a stop because, with transparency film and depending upon the lighting, one third of a stop really could make or break the photograph.

With black and white film, I generally work in larger increments, often around a stop depending upon the subject, but the underlying habit remains.

Give yourself another frame. Try something slightly different. Don’t assume the first exposure is the one.

Film encourages me to work this way, and the FlexBody fits comfortably into that process.

There is, however, one part of the FlexBody that does not fit comfortably anywhere.

That Knob

Anyone who has spent much time with a FlexBody probably knows where I am going.

The cocking knob.

I complained about this thing years ago, and after spending a month seriously using the FlexBody again, I remember why.

During one week of testing, I used the camera for a couple of hours on several different days. After two of those sessions, my thumb and finger were sore enough that the following day I simply did not want to cock the camera again.

That is not acceptable in a working tool.

Years ago, before purchasing a Hasselblad lens to ALPA camera adapter from Litz Studio, I specifically asked about its cocking knob because I already knew how much I disliked the one on the FlexBody.

The maker knew exactly what I was talking about.

He told me that he had redesigned his knob and that the adapter I was purchasing used his second version. As you can see in the photograph above, it is considerably larger, with a deeply textured gripping surface that gives my fingers something substantial to hold onto.

I have used that adapter for years, and the difference is remarkable. I could work with the Litz Studio knob all day.

The FlexBody knob? Not so much.

I recently contacted Litz Studio again to ask whether I might purchase one of those knobs separately and, more importantly, whether it could be adapted to the FlexBody. So far I have not received a reply, so I don’t know whether that is possible.

One way or another, I would still like to solve it.

If you own a FlexBody and its cocking knob has never bothered you, I would genuinely like to hear from you. Perhaps yours has been modified or adjusted. And if you have found your own solution, please send me an email.

After spending a month putting the FlexBody back to work, that little knob remains the one thing I would change without hesitation.

The Decision

After a month with the FlexBody, my answer turned out to be simpler than I expected.

For film: yes.

The FlexBody stays. For 6×6 black and white film, particularly tabletop still life where I want modest movements, it gives me something my conventional Hasselblad V bodies do not. It fits naturally into the way I already work, and I enjoy using it.

For digital: no.

For my digital studio work, I have moved to the Actus DB2. It gives me the movements I need, lets me use the lenses I already own, works beautifully with both my Hasselblad and Phase One digital backs, and does not require me to move to 100 megapixels simply to compensate for cropping.

I don’t regret buying the Actus, and I am equally glad I didn’t sell the FlexBody.

Perhaps that is the part of this experiment I enjoyed most. I didn’t set out to prove that an older camera was still relevant, nor did I expect it to compete with a modern mini view camera. I simply wanted to put the FlexBody back to work long enough to find out whether it still had a place in the way I make photographs today.

It does.

The interesting thing is that I started this experiment by asking whether the FlexBody still made sense in the digital age.

My answer is yes.

Just not necessarily for digital.

And with that, my FlexBody in the Digital Age experiment comes to an end.

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P.S. If you wondered about all those For Sale photographs scattered throughout this article, there was another project going on during my month with the FlexBody. All of that gear has now been sold. But there is more coming. Downsizing the Gear Room while reinventing the Art Room has brought quite a bit of unused equipment to my attention.

I need the shelf space. 😉