Taking photos of my nephews with the Hasselblad 500 C/M Camera

I note the majority of my photos tend to be of still objects outdoors and I’ve recently been trying to push myself outside of my comfort zone and try other types of photography.

From a previous blog post, you’ll see I attempted to take some indoor photos of my cats which wasn’t very successful.

Next I thought I’d attempt to take some photos of my nephews using some black and white film.

So with my Hasselblad in tow, I headed to a local park with my sister and nephews.

I decided on a park setting as I thought this would be enjoyable for them and ideally, I wanted to capture some photos of them having fun.

I wasn’t sure how successful this photo session would be since my nephews are used to having photos of them taken digitally which is a very quick process.

Obviously, my film format Hasselblad camera was going to take longer.

I recently acquired a Hasselblad Lens Shade for my 80mm lens on the advice I had received from a professional photographer who used this exact model camera back in the 1970s/80s. It’s a lens shade made for the Planar C and F lenses (which mine is) and is provided with a bayonet mount. There is an alignment dot which helps facilitate attachment to the lens.

The reason I decided to use a lens shade was because it was a very bright, sunny day so I thought it would help reduce sun glare and reflections. It also helps protect exposed lens surfaces.

To my surprise, my nephews were really good at staying still and posing for the photos. They were absolutely fascinated by the camera and quite enjoyed the experience.

Here are some photos I took using the Ilford Delta 400 black and white film:

After I had used up the roll of film, my nephews wanted more photos taken of them which was really lovely. Thankfully I’d also packed some Kodak 400TX film so used this too. Here are some of the photos I took:

Overall I was really pleased with how the photos turned out as I didn’t know what to expect. I think it helped that they really enjoyed me taking photos of them and it was a fun environment to photograph in.