Hasselblad 1600F1948

History

Victor Hasselblad began designing cameras for the Swedish Air Force during World War II to reverse-engineer and improve upon captured German aerial reconnaissance cameras. By 1948, with the war over and manufacturing infrastructure in place, Hasselblad launched the 1600F through the newly formed Victor Hasselblad AB.

The design was modular from the outset: the film magazine detached for mid-roll changes or swapping between film stocks, lenses mounted on a bayonet system that allowed quick changes in the field, and the reflex mirror gave through-the-lens composition at waist level. These principles had no real precedent in medium-format SLR cameras at the time.

The focal-plane shutter was the 1600F's primary liability. Achieving 1/1600s with a rubberized cloth curtain in a 6x6 frame required curtain slit geometry and spring tension that pushed the material to its limits. Warm temperatures, age, and heavy use all contributed to curtain failures, pinholes, and inconsistent speeds. By 1952, Hasselblad's revision produced the 1000F with a lower maximum speed and a more robust curtain mechanism. The 1600F was quietly retired.

Why It Matters

The 1600F established the template for all Hasselblad V-system cameras that followed and, indirectly, for the broader professional medium-format SLR market. The modular magazine concept influenced Mamiya, Bronica, Rollei, and others who eventually adopted similar architectures.

For photography historians, the 1600F represents the moment when medium-format photography became genuinely flexible in the field. Before it, photographers using roll film in a studio context had few options for changing film mid-roll or swapping between colour and black-and-white without finishing a roll. The 1600F made that possible, however imperfectly.

The camera's rarity today - combined with its historical importance - gives it strong collector interest, but the mechanical fragility of surviving examples means the vast majority are display pieces.

Lenses & Accessories

Hasselblad F bayonet mount - not compatible with V-system lenses. The standard lens was the Carl Zeiss Tessar 80mm f/2.8; a Kodak Ektar 80mm f/2.8 was also available for the North American market. Additional F-mount options included the Sonnar 135mm f/3.5 and wider options. Film backs are interchangeable with the 1000F but not with any V-system magazine. The waist-level finder was standard equipment.

Sample Photographers / Notable Use

• Early Swedish press photographers and Scandinavian commercial studios were among the first adopters after 1948.
• The camera was marketed heavily to professional portrait and commercial photographers in Sweden and western Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

References

• Camera-Wiki: Hasselblad 1600F
• Wikipedia: Hasselblad early history