Hasselblad 202FA

For forty years a Hasselblad meant a leaf shutter buried in the lens and a square negative that synced flash at every speed. The 202FA threw that out. It runs a focal-plane shutter in the body, which means no V-system lens can fire its own leaf shutter here. CF, CFE, F, and FE lenses all run on the body shutter in F-setting; the older C and CB glass is not supported at all, because their leaf shutter trips before the focal-plane curtain ever moves. The body tops out at 1/2000, two stops past the roughly 1/500 ceiling of the leaf-shutter Zeiss it replaced. Real gain, but the reason the camera exists is elsewhere.

That reason is the fast F-series glass. The 110mm f/2 FE opens a full stop and more past anything a leaf-shutter Zeiss could manage, and on a 6x6 frame it renders backgrounds with a softness no 80mm Planar will give you. The 80mm f/2.8 FE matches the leaf-shutter Planar's speed, so the headline really is the 110. That lens is why these bodies still change hands, and why the people who own one tend to keep it.

Using one feels nothing like a clockwork 'blad. There is a real meter inside, selective-area centre-spot TTL read off the film plane, with aperture-priority auto. You set the aperture, the body picks the shutter speed. The viewfinder is the same big waist-level square, ground glass you focus by feel, bright enough that the f/2 lenses snap in and out of focus with obvious authority. Build is solid V-system metal, heavier than it looks, the kind of weight that steadies a slow shutter. Film loads through the usual A12 back. If you have run rolls through a Hasselblad before, your hands already know the insert.

The honest weakness is the electronics. The 202FA is battery-dependent in a way the mechanical Hasselblads never were, and dead cells mean a dead camera with no mechanical backup speed. Service is the other tax. Few technicians still touch the FA electronics, a proper repair is expensive when you can find someone, and a flaky body is a paperweight. You are buying into a small, aging support pool.

Where it sits now is odd. It is rarer than the 500-series, and most people who want a Hasselblad want the classic leaf-shutter look, so the 202FA lives in a strange middle. Cheaper than a 203FE, more capable than people expect, cross-shopped against a Pentax 67 by anyone who wants fast medium-format glass and a built-in meter in one box. The following is mostly portrait shooters who fell for the 110 f/2.

A metering note for backlit and high-contrast work. The internal meter reads a central zone off the film plane, so aim it deliberately. Let a bright window fall in that central patch and it will still underexpose the face. Take a spot or incident reading with the Zone Light Meter app, place the shadow on the zone you want, and set that aperture by hand. The body's meter is fine for even light. For the scenes that matter, meter for the shadows yourself.