Hasselblad 500C/M Disassembly, Part 1
Transcript
Hello everyone, this is Jim from International Camera Techs.
Today we have a Hasselblad, a nice 500C/M. Customer wants me to go over it; it’s been a while since it’s been serviced. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, but we are going to strip it down, clean everything, re-lube it, and make this thing runs for another 20 to 30 odd years.
Put aside the lens and magazine
Okay so I’m not going do the lens today and I am not going to do the magazine. I’ll break this video into little videos, so we can, you can look at one part and then later look at another. We’ll go ahead and get the lens off. Put that aside, since we’re not working on it. Magazine doesn’t need to be there. Get that off and then we can go ahead and start disassembling.
Remove the finder and Fresnel
I’m going to go ahead and remove the finder and the prism. It’s got a weird prism — sorry, Fresnel. Get this Fresnel out of there. Oh I see; he’s got a grid screen on there. I’ll put that here; set it off where it’s safe. First of all, on a Hasselblad 500C/M [checks that shutter works] it seems to be working. It’s pretty much making Hasselblad sounds. I don’t really see anything too bad there. Pretty loud, they are.
Remove plates
So, we’re going to go ahead and start taking a few parts off.
I like to jam this open, let’s put it in lock right after I push in B. You can go in there and get this plate off, get that screw that’s down inside there. I have a nice little screwdriver, easy to reach. Get the screw out, plate done. Side one, you get off, here. They come off much easier and they go back on. I don’t know if you can see if it’s right there, okay, the plate fell off. Plate’s out, put it aside.
Okay now to release the mirror back down, boom. Go ahead and start taking this bottom off. There’s some type of film on this. I think he did it for protection, the customer did. It’s going to have to go. Left a bunch of junk behind. Can’t put that back on so it has to be thrown away.
Remove winding system
Alright, so before we start tackling that, let’s go ahead and get this winding system off. The button, rotate it, off it comes. We got a little screw right here, needs to come off. Not a big deal. Round nose pliers, strong round nose pliers. Take this off, the screw comes off, spacer underneath it. Dial comes off, there’s a spacer underneath, if it falls out. This always goes toward the front, these two. It’ll be in this section; it’s always going to go here. So that’s out.
Remove the bottom plate
Bottom screws can be tight, bear down on them. Alright, I don’t think this guy is loosened all the way. Alright, everybody comes out. If you’re wondering, they are nice long screws that hold everything together. Two more for this plate. It can be tight; it can be loose, or not too tight. Nothing’s really loose.
Alright plate comes up, there, key. Can’t go that way; it’s got to go that way, voilá. Got everything, push the body out. No big deal, there’s the housing.
We are left with the housing
Okay, so housing comes out. Release button tends to fall off at some point and this is the key, pushing the release lock, boom, boom. Nylon, don’t have to lube it but if you want to do, okay.
Review the current shape and lubing
I’m going to go ahead and take apart the rest of this, someone’s been into it, that’s not factory. It’s got a little excess oil on, but overall, it’s pretty clean. To me, I like a little more grease on mine, especially my wear areas like here, under here. Someone was very minimal with the grease; I like a little bit more.
Remove the side of the housing
Right, so I’m going go ahead and take that side off. First thing I like to do and because my fingers always catch this little guy right here, I don’t know if you can see them very well, fingers always catch that thing. They get bent over, you straighten it, it gets bent over again, next thing you know it breaks, so I just go ahead and just take it off.
So that’s that little screw, and it’s going to go with the release button so when I put all that stuff in I see that and I don’t forget to put it in. Nothing like putting it all together and you realize you left that out.
Alright so we’re going to go ahead and pull the plate off here and pull the mechanism out. We can pull this whole front out. So we’ll get it down, we clean it all up, put it all back together. Customer’s going to be nice and happy.
Alright so this bar, here, no other way to come out. Lift up slide over pops out. I’ll show you how to put it back in later. Okay, take spring off too, alright. So, I can go any direction really, so I’m going to go ahead and just take off this spring right here and I’m going to jump this spring up, there he’s out. That one’s off, goes to that post that wraps around there. Take the e-ring off, notice I’ve used two fingers. You don’t use two fingers, you’re going to be hunting for an e-ring. That comes out, it is actually a very nice-looking camera.
Remove the braking system
So go through, where we want to go next, I guess we could take him off, let’s take the braking system off. Can be tight, can be a pain sometimes the screw just doesn’t want to move. It all depends, if someone’s been in there or not like that. Oh no no no. Alright so I got a little bit in trouble here, see if I can rescue this, I don’t think so.
What you don’t want is this spring to hop out and the spring has decided it wants to hop out on me. Thai spring hops out, which I think this one will. It’s such a pain to put these things back and I don’t know why it hopped out, which means that probably whoever is into it, probably bent the spring and it’s putting pressure as soon as I release the screw.
Well, we’re going to try and keep it in there for now and I’ll get that later. I don’t want to be fussing and farting with this system while I’m trying to show you how to take it apart. Yeah, I’m in trouble on that one. Okay, so yeah things don’t always go up when that can be a real pain to get back down correctly. I do not like this spring, so anyway just leave it.
Alright we’re going to go ahead and take this guy out. Let me get the mirror up here. Okay, so we got a bunch of wonderful stuff inside. I don’t know if we can really see that very well, with the lights, but we’ll see it here in a sec. See if we can get a little more light down in there.
The mirror cam system and curtain
So, you got the mirror cam system sitting up in there, you got a spring. Lots of wonderful stuff up in there. This through screw right here will go to the shaft on inside. Okay take that off, yeah that’s that spring right there. I don’t know if I can see, you see it. We’ll be seeing it in a second.
So let me do this. We’ll go ahead and release the tension on this curtain and I’m trying to get this guy going here. This guy has no more tension on it, a little bit see my spring, spring just popped out so I’m going to have to rewind that nice, I hate that. I need to figure out why it popped up in the first place. You never know what you’re going to find in Hasselblad.
Okay, spring comes off, standoff spacer, lever comes up. On the brake spring I really try not to have this pop out. It’s just yeah, one of the things I always look for, but I just didn’t do it on this one.
So we got that, got that, going to go ahead and now we have to drive the inside. Get all the levers, push that back down. Everything starts to fall and it’s loose enough so I can start taking everything else out. Alright, get all the levers push that back down, everything starts to fall and it’s loose enough so I can start taking everything else out.
Remove the front
Alright, now I’m going to go ahead and do is, let’s start this guy up in here.
So [the screw is] conical, so it sits flush. Again, corner this one with an L bracket on it. Go to the top. Okay, you know I’m getting close to that, so what I like to do is start taking this front out. I know this front’s coming out. You don’t have to take this mechanism with taking the front off. But it’s so much easier. Actually I think you do. I’ll take that remark back.
From the bottom. Doing that side on the bottom two, on the side two, on the top.
Tops are a little bit different. They are kind of a little flatter. They don’t have such a tall sized screw head on the top. Put that slightly off to the side so I don’t get them mixed up.
Mark where the gears line up
Ok, some people do, some people don’t. I like to put a little scribe mark where these two gears go together. It gets me in the ballpark. I don’t always use a scribe mark as 100 percent, but it definitely gets me in the ballpark. Okay, so I get my thumb tightly on this, gear I’m pulling out. I have to wiggle past the casing, and it comes out. And this guy will un-tension, three to four turns on this guy. So, there’s a lot of force on the spring.
This guy comes out, it’s actually got nice seals, but I tell you what, this thing’s actually in pretty good shape. Let’s get this screw out. That’s the long one there. These two here are long.
Okay, and I like to scribe just for fun. It’ll give you mark where this can line up. Just helps me. This makes things go quicker, don’t have to. Maybe it looks a little amateurish, if I do that, but just makes things go quicker. Alright, so the whole plate should be loose. It’s going to come up, things are going to fall out. It’s a lock system.
Loose barn doors are loose, voilá. Okay, system out. Yeah, mirror up spring sitting in here. Let’s get it out of the way. There you go. That’s a pain. Alright, that mirror up system is not a fun one. Not a fun spring. So we have a lot fun here today. Wow.
First impressions now that everything is apart
Okay, so first impression is that person was not really big on lubing everything up. There is no grease in here, at rub point, it comes off, oh my god, no grease on this collar. Looks like almost none on this system here. Wow. So whoever did this was very frugal with grease, maybe they have some really expensive grease, but wow! And this kind of how things used to be done way back when. Very minimum grease. I never did, but people always had that theory that if something breaks or wears out you can always replace it.
So I’m going to stop right at this moment and then we’ll get into this thing and we’ll take it all apart. Alright and I do that because my video may run out. Okay, we’ll stop and come back and get this mechanism apart. And we’ll loop things up and check everything else out. Alright thank you for watching. Please subscribe. Bye.
Thank you!