Hasselblad 1600F

Hasselblad · Hasselblad 1600F mount · 6×6cm (2¼×2¼″) on 120, 12 frames per roll in the roll-film magazine; 65×65mm Kodak sheet film in the single sheet-film holder · 1948

via machine translation — corrections welcome

Also known as: Hasselblad 1600 F · 1600F · 1600 F · Hasselblad 1600 · Hasselblad Camera (1949) · Hasselblad 1600F Ektar · Hasselblad 1600F Kodak Ektar 80mm · ハッセルブラッド 1600F

Variants & identification

Variant	Mount	Years	Serial ranges	Production
Series One (four-digit serials 0001–0308)	Hasselblad 1600F	1949–1950	0001–0308 (four digits, no letter prefix)	Nordin's Series One article gives 269 cameras actually assembled from the 308 numbers; his later boxes article and Japanese Wikipedia (citing ハッセルブラッドのすべて) say 273, with 35 numbers accounted for by semi-finished bodies used as training pieces. Of those, 153 came back to the factory for repair (Nordin) — a figure Hasselblad's own history and camera-wiki restate as 153 "withdrawn and scrapped" — and Japanese Wikipedia has 159 struck from the ledger by 1957. About 25 to 30 are known to survive.
Series Two (lettered serials CS 10501 – CP 13823)	Hasselblad 1600F	1950–1953	CS 10501 – CP 13823 (two-letter year code plus five digits, from October 1950)	3,221 cameras between CS 10501 and CP 13823 per Japanese Wikipedia (citing ハッセルブラッドのすべて), of which 476 were later struck from the ledger; English Wikipedia says "perhaps as many as 3300", Nordin and Chernoff reckon about 3,000 blue boxes, and Hasselblad's own history says roughly 3,000 cameras in total.

Model years from Hasselblad Historical's tabulated history (Heymann and de Bakker), which gives 1948/1949–1953 for the 1600F and 1953–1957 for the 1000F; variant years from Nordin's Series One article and the lettered serial codes.

How to tell them apart (expand)

Chrome-trimmed cube with a large combined wind and shutter-speed knob on the right, marked to 1600 — the 1000F knob stops at 1000, and neither body carries a model name
Universal accessory bracket on the left side taking the flash contact slide or the sports finder — the flash socket is on the slide, not the body
Lens mounted by a combined screw-and-bayonet fitting: push in with red dot to red dot, a third of a turn clockwise to lock; flange distance 82.1mm against 74.9mm for the V bayonet, so no C lens fits and no 1600F lens fits a 500C
Roll-film magazine with a pull-out roll holder, swing-out loading key and exposure counter on the side; a hinged name plate inside the film window for the owner's engraved name
Two tripod bushes, one English and one German thread (1949 brochure)
Listing trap: dealers routinely list any pre-1957 body as a 1600F; check the top figure on the knob

Series One (four-digit serials 0001–0308):

Polished, unpainted aluminium wind/shutter knob — every later Hasselblad has a black one; a few Series One bodies carry factory-fitted black knobs from later service
Shutter speeds engraved on the knob with the shorter times running counter-clockwise as seen from the right-hand side — the reverse of every Series Two 1600F and 1000F
Shutter release and lens-lock buttons engraved with three concentric rings; later bodies have a plain spherical dish (Japanese Wikipedia)
Body shell and chassis individually stamped with production numbers that match neither each other nor the serial — absent on Series Two
Earliest examples: a waist-level hood without struts or release button, with small lifting grips at the back and a magnifier that has to be plucked up by hand; a dark slide without a handle. Both were routinely replaced at service, so very few survive
Magazine insert carries no serial stamp; from the 1950 lettered cameras the insert is stamped with the magazine's serial

Series Two (lettered serials CS 10501 – CP 13823):

Black wind/shutter knob with the speeds engraved clockwise (shorter times clockwise as seen from the right)
Two-letter year code before the serial: CS = 1950, CV = 1951, CH = 1952, CP = 1953 (VHPICTURES)
Modified internal mechanism — different mechanism covers beside the mirror, a different mirror assembly and lens-catch mechanism from Series One (Nordin)
Shipped in the dark-blue, gold-embossed Type One presentation box from about mid-1950 to mid-1953; the last cameras and the 1000F used the grey-topped Type Two box (Nordin and Chernoff)
Listing trap: an early lettered body with Series One internals or covers is documented — a CS serial does not by itself prove the revised mechanism

Series One (four-digit serials 0001–0308): Hand-built, with parts individually fitted and modified to each body, which is why Nordin likens them to Leica's 1923 null series and why the repairer David Knapman reports 120 hours to overhaul one. The factory ledger has no. 0001 leaving for the American distributor on 20 May 1949 and no. 0308 leaving for a Swedish dealer on 15 June 1950 (Nordin's survivor table; Japanese Wikipedia gives the same two dates). Many were cannibalised for parts once Series Two production began, and some early Series Two bodies carry Series One parts or appear to be conversions.
Series Two (lettered serials CS 10501 – CP 13823): The revised camera that the factory actually sold in quantity. The serial sequence runs straight into the 1000F, whose numbers Japanese Wikipedia gives as 13,821–24,216, so the earliest 1000Fs were assembled alongside the last 1600Fs and the boundary is a shutter part, not a break in the line. From about 1952 Zeiss-Opton lenses joined and then replaced the Kodak Ektars, so a late Series Two outfit may have come with a Tessar 80mm f/2.8 rather than an Ektar.

Serial-range notes

0001–0308: Series One, four digits and no prefix, shipped May 1949 to June 1950. Not every number was built: 269 or 273 cameras from 308 numbers depending on the source. The factory ledger, quoted by Nordin, dates individual cameras to the day.
CS 10501 – CP 13823: Series Two, from October 1950. The two letters encode the year through VHPICTURES (V=1, H=2, P=3, I=4, C=5, T=6, U=7, R=8, E=9, S=0): CS = 1950, CV = 1951, CH = 1952, CP = 1953 (Q.G. de Bakker, Hasselblad Historical, illustrating the method with a 1600F coded CH). The 1000F continues the same five-digit sequence from 13,821 (Japanese Wikipedia), so the highest 1600F numbers and the lowest 1000F numbers overlap.
Kodak Ektar lens codes (ET, EY, EC…): The Ektars carry Kodak's own two-letter year code read through CAMEROSITY (C=1, A=2, M=3, E=4, R=5, O=6, S=7, I=8, T=9, Y=0): ET = 1949, EY = 1950, EC = 1951. Victor Hasselblad copied the idea for his own bodies (de Bakker). An encircled L means Lumenized, Kodak's single-layer coating.

Specifications

Format: 6×6cm (2¼×2¼″) on 120, 12 frames per roll in the roll-film magazine; 65×65mm Kodak sheet film in the single sheet-film holder
Finder: waist-level, interchangeable (prism and meter-prism finders available)
Shutter: Horizontal focal plane, corrugated Sandvik stainless-steel foil — 0.016mm per the 1949 brochure, 6/10,000 in per the instruction book, 14/1000mm per Japanese Wikipedia · 1, 1/2, 1/5, 1/10, 1/25, 1/50, 1/100, 1/200, 1/400, 1/800, 1/1600 and B — set by pulling out the wind knob, in either direction, before or after cocking · flash sync Built-in synchroniser for bulbs and electronic flash through a contact slide in the universal accessory bracket on the left side, with a 1–5 time-to-peak scale; no synchronising speed is given by the manual or the brochure · no self-timer
Film advance: One full turn of the right-hand knob cocks the shutter, lowers the mirror and advances the film; no instant-return mirror. Shutter and film indicators beside the knob show white when ready and red after exposure, and the magazine's indicator must match the body's before it is attached.
Back: interchangeable magazines — 12-exposure roll-film magazine for 120 with pull-out roll holder, loading key and counter; single sheet-film holder for 65×65mm Kodak sheet film; dark-slide interlock
Meter: None built in; a hand-held meter has its own compartment in the fitted combination cases
Motor drive: Not compatible — No winder coupling. A remote-release accessory firing the camera from up to 50 yards is listed in the 1953 accessory leaflet.
Designed by: Hasselblad Victor — conceived the camera and directed its development from the wartime Ross aerial cameras; the engineering staff who built it are not named by any source consulted · Sason Sixten — industrial design — credited outright by Swedish, German and Norwegian Wikipedia; Hasselblad's own history calls him part of the prototype design team; English Wikipedia describes an internal design competition in which he took part
Weight: 1300 g
Dimensions: 124 × 90 × 90 (body with roll-film magazine, without lens — 1949 factory brochure) mm
Country: Sweden
Original price: kr 1,850 in Sweden, 1949, for the camera with lumenized Kodak Ektar 80mm f/2.8, roll-film magazine and strap (factory brochure no. 5749; the scanned copy carries a hand-written correction to kr 2,150); Ektar 135mm f/3.5 kr 945, extra roll-film magazine kr 255, sheet-film holder kr 36. No American list price was found.
Accessories: Roll-film magazine 12 (120) and sheet-film holder for 65×65mm Kodak sheet film · Sports-type viewfinder for 80, 135 and 250mm with interchangeable blue Lucite masks, flash and strobe connections in its base · Contact shoe for the universal accessory bracket, two contact sets (flash and strobe), later also with PC contact · Cable releases with non-tapered thread, including a locking version for time exposures; an adapter for standard tapered releases · Remote-control release firing the camera from up to 50 yards (1953 leaflet) · Extension tubes 20 and 40; Hasselblad swivel head / revolving tripod top · Series VII filters for the 80 and 135 Ektars; Series IX retaining ring and Bernotar polarising screen for the 250mm Sonnar · Leather sheath, ever-ready and fitted combination cases, Swedish- and American-made

Folding hood with a spring-loaded magnifier, removable by sliding it backwards once the magazine is off. Under the ground glass sits a Kodak Ektalite Field Lens — a Fresnel — which the 1949 brochure and the instruction book credit with 250% more overall brightness and more than 1000% more in the corners. The finder is the one component that carries over to the 1957 V-system bodies (Hasselblad Historical); the later prism finders therefore fit.

Where sources disagree

Last

1953 — Hasselblad Historical's tabulated history (1948/1949–1953), English Wikipedia, camera-wiki; Japanese Wikipedia has the 1000F announced in 1952 and on sale in 1953
1952 — Hasselblad's own history page (roughly 3,000 cameras between 1948 and 1952), Swedish Wikipedia (1948–1952) and the German and Norwegian articles, which start the 1000F in 1952

Better supported: 1953

The two answers are the same event seen from either side: the 1000F was announced in 1952 and shipped in 1953, and the 1600F serial run ends in a CP (1953) block.

Series One production

269 cameras assembled from serials 0001–0308 — Nordin, Series One article on Hasselblad Historical
273 cameras, with 35 numbers used for semi-finished training bodies — Nordin and Chernoff's boxes article on Hasselblad Historical, and Japanese Wikipedia citing ハッセルブラッドのすべて

Both figures are Nordin's; the later one presumably supersedes the earlier, but neither article says so.

Series One cameras lost

153 of 269 returned to the factory for repair, many replaced with new cameras — Nordin
153 withdrawn and scrapped — Hasselblad's own history page and camera-wiki
159 removed from the ledger by 1957, leaving 114 on the books — Japanese Wikipedia

The 153 is one number told two ways; returned for repair and scrapped are not the same fate, and Nordin's survivor table shows repaired cameras that went back out.

Series Two production

3,221 (CS 10501 – CP 13823), 476 later struck from the ledger — Japanese Wikipedia citing ハッセルブラッドのすべて
perhaps as many as 3,300 — English Wikipedia
about 3,000 — Nordin and Chernoff's count of blue boxes; Hasselblad's own history gives roughly 3,000 for the whole model

Better supported: 3,221

Weight (grams)

1,300 g with standard lens and roll-film magazine — 1949 factory brochure
1,250 g — Vintage Technology Archive, configuration and source unstated
2 lb 15.9 oz (about 1,358 g) — Dan Cuny's example, configuration unstated

Better supported: 1,300 g

Shutter foil thickness

0.016 mm — 1949 factory brochure
6/10,000 in (0.015 mm) — English instruction book
14/1000 mm — Japanese Wikipedia

First shipment

June 1949 — Nordin's Series One text
20 May 1949 for no. 0001 — Nordin's own survivor table and Japanese Wikipedia

Better supported: 20 May 1949

Flash synchronising speed

1/90 s for the 1600F and 1000F together — Japanese Wikipedia
not stated — the instruction book and the 1949 brochure give only an adjustable time-to-peak scale

The same Japanese article gives 1/25 s for the 1000F a paragraph later, so the 1/90 figure should not be relied on.

What reviewers say

Dan Cuny (blog) — A working 75-year-old example with the Ektar 80mm f/2.8 shot on FP4: the lens focuses fluidly, the pre-set aperture is simple to use, and the results are better than he expected; he gives the camera at 6.5×4.5×4 in and 2 lb 15.9 oz.
Jo Geier – Mint & Rare (video) — A dealer's case for the 1600F, 1000F and Super Wide as the collectable early Hasselblads, stressing that they must be serviced to be usable.
Houston Combat Photography (video) — A repair walk-through of a 1600F that would not transport film — useful mainly as a look at the magazine coupling and why these cameras are so often found not working.

History

Victor Hasselblad’s stated aim, repeated in Nordin’s Ross article on Hasselblad Historical and in the company’s own history, was a hand-holdable camera with a negative larger than 35mm and a shutter fast enough for birds. The first commercial prototype was drawn for 1/2000 s; the two working prototypes that followed settled on the 1/1600 s the production camera kept, and Hasselblad’s history dates the wood-and-metal mock-ups to 1943 and 1945/46. Japanese Wikipedia, citing ハッセルブラッドのすべて, records that the development name was Rossex — dropped because the name was taken abroad, whereupon the American agent suggested the founder’s own. The camera was introduced at a New York press conference on 6 October 1948 and shown by Willoughby’s at the Cleveland dealers’ convention the following week; both the company and Nordin agree that a prototype did the showing, and that production cameras only began leaving Göteborg in the spring of 1949. It was sold simply as the Hasselblad Camera. The name 1600F, after the top speed and the focal-plane shutter, came later, as English Wikipedia notes.

The shutter is the whole story. The 1949 Swedish brochure specifies a patented, climate-proof curtain shutter of corrugated Sandvik stainless-steel foil 0.016mm thick, running on ball-bearing shafts that turn at the equivalent of 6,000 rpm before the slit reaches the frame, and claims a test camera had passed 30,000 exposures; the English instruction book gives the foil as six ten-thousandths of an inch and warns that it can be damaged by rough handling. Speeds ran 1 s to 1/1600 in eleven steps plus B, set by pulling the wind knob. The rest of the camera — a 6×6 body 12.4 × 9 × 9 cm with its magazine, 1,300 g with the standard lens, a folding hood over a ground glass with a Kodak Ektalite Fresnel beneath it, a combined screw-and-bayonet lens fitting, a dark-slide interlock — is the layout every later Hasselblad kept. The lenses were Kodak’s: the lumenized Ektar 80mm f/2.8 as standard and the 135mm f/3.5, with a Wide Field Ektar 55mm f/6.3 and an Ektar 254mm f/5.6 announced in the same brochure but never sold beyond prototypes (English and Japanese Wikipedia). The brochure prices the outfit at kr 1,850; no American list price has been found.

Nordin divides production in two. Series One, serials 0001 to 0308, was hand-built with parts fitted to each body, and is identified by its polished aluminium wind knob and reversed speed engraving. Nordin gives 269 cameras assembled and 153 of them back at the factory for repair within a few years, often to be replaced outright; his later article with Chernoff, and Japanese Wikipedia, say 273 built, and the Japanese account has 159 struck from the ledger by 1957. The ledger dates are precise — no. 0001 shipped on 20 May 1949, no. 0308 on 15 June 1950 — and the repairer David Knapman is quoted at 120 hours to overhaul one. From October 1950 the serials gained a two-letter year prefix and a five-digit number, CS 10501 onward, with a revised mechanism and a black knob; Japanese Wikipedia counts 3,221 of these to CP 13823, against English Wikipedia’s “perhaps as many as 3300” and Nordin and Chernoff’s roughly 3,000 blue presentation boxes. Q.G. de Bakker’s dating page decodes the letters through VHPICTURES and illustrates it with a 1600F coded CH, 1952.

Where the 1600F ends and the 1000F begins is not a clean line. Hasselblad Historical’s table, English Wikipedia and camera-wiki give 1953; Hasselblad’s own history, the Swedish, German and Norwegian articles give 1952, which is the 1000F’s announcement year. Japanese Wikipedia’s serials show why: the 1000F’s numbers begin at 13,821, inside the last 1600F block, and its account of the change is not the usual one. Rather than the shutter being impossible to calibrate, it reports the factory’s own explanation that supply of the 1/1600 shutter parts was holding up deliveries against a large order book, and that a more obtainable part happened to give 1/1000 — a claim that sits uneasily beside Nordin’s repair statistics and Hasselblad’s own admission that the interiors were very delicate. The plain fact is that the Ektars gave way to Zeiss-Opton lenses from about 1952, the 1600F gave way to the 1000F, and in 1957 the focal-plane shutter gave way to the Compur-shuttered 500C, which is why the 1600F/1000F bayonet, at 82.1mm flange distance against the V-system’s 74.9mm, is an orphan.

Open questions. No American list price for 1948–53 has been located, though Willoughby’s advertised the camera heavily. The 1949 brochure’s kr 1,850 carries a hand-written correction to kr 2,150 on the scanned copy, undated. No source gives a flash synchronising speed that can be trusted: Japanese Wikipedia offers 1/90 s for the pair of cameras and 1/25 s for the 1000F within the same article, and the factory documents give none. The 269-versus-273 count for Series One is two figures from the same author, unreconciled. Whether magazines as well as finders carry across to the V system is answered differently by Hasselblad Historical (finders only) and Japanese Wikipedia (finders and all but the earliest magazines, with early A12s drilled to clear the counter pin). And Sixten Sason’s exact contribution — the body’s styling, or membership of a prototype team — depends on which national Wikipedia is read; the Göteborg engineers who made the shutter work are not named anywhere consulted.

Expand Collapse

This history is AI-written, from the sources listed at the foot of the page. Where the record is silent it says so rather than filling the gap — but no human wrote these sentences.

Photographs

Hasselblad 1600F with the Kodak Ektar 80mm — Eugene Ilchenko, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

More sample photos elsewhere

These photographers keep all rights to their work — enjoy it at the source.

Live listings

Asking price, USD: a median of $1,500 across 4 fixed-price listings on 2026-09-08 (middle half $430–$2,300). Tracked since 2026-09-06, 2 days: unchanged from $1,500.

By day

Date	Median	Middle half	Listings
2026-09-08	$1,500	$430–$2,300	4
2026-09-06	$1,500	$430–$2,300	5

Asking prices from the listings scanned, not sales; junk-flagged rows and auction lots excluded; other currencies are not converted.

Early 12-Exp. Magazine for Hasselblad 1600F - First Batch — $430.00 · eBay
Hasselblad 1600F w. Sonnar 3.5/135mm NOTESTED — $1,520.43 · eBay
[Near MINT] Hasselblad 1600F Medium Format w/Kodak Ektar 80mm 2.8 + A12 Filmback — $2,299.99 · eBay
[MINT]Hasselblad 1600F Medium Format w/Kodak Ektar 80mm 2.8 + A12 Filmback JAPAN — $2,499.99 · eBay
Pentacon f. Hasselblad 1600F 500/5,6 / 14293,3 — €490.00 · eBay
Pentacon f. Hasselblad 1600F 500/5,6 / 14293,3 — €490.00 · eBay
Hasselblad 1600F w. Sonnar 3.5/135mm NOTTESTED — €1,199.00 · eBay
[Near MINT] Hasselblad 1600F Medium Format w/Kodak Ektar 80mm 2.8 + A12 Filmback — £1,685.72 · eBay
[MINT]Hasselblad 1600F Medium Format w/Kodak Ektar 80mm 2.8 + A12 Filmback JAPAN — £1,832.30 · eBay

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Listings updated 2026-09-08. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.