Hasselblad (Ross) MK 80 m/43

The MK 80 is the odd one out among the Ross cameras: a land camera for the Swedish Army, not an aerial camera for the Air Force. Chernoff’s account on Hasselblad Historical has the Army asking for a surveillance camera with features useful on the ground — a short tripod about a third of a metre tall, supplied in the kit, and a periscope so that a photographer could work from behind a wall or round an obstruction without showing himself. The designation Markspaningskamera MK 80 m/43 translates roughly as land reconnaissance camera; the “m/43” is the Swedish forces’ model-year convention, so the type was adopted in 1943, and Chernoff runs production from 1943 to 1945. It was the third Ross design after the HK 7 and the SKa 4, and it borrows from both.

From the HK 7 it takes the lens mount — the same three-lobed bayonet, to the same dimensions, but rotated through 180 degrees, with the catch moved inside the mount and released by a push button at top left instead of the HK 7’s external pivot. Chernoff is careful about what this means for interchange: because every barrel was hand-tuned to one body and then engraved with that body’s serial, an MK 80 lens will not necessarily fit any given HK 7 or vice versa even though the design is identical. The standard lens was a Zeiss Jena Tessar 16.5cm f/4.5, uncoated, stopping to f/16, with Zeiss Tele-Tessars of 32cm f/6.3 and 60cm f/8 as telephotos, both most likely uncoated. The HK 7’s slide-in filters fit the MK 80’s barrel unchanged. Chernoff’s summary table on his introductory page lists the standard lens as f/2.8, against the f/4.5 and full aperture scale of his detailed specification; the specification is the better witness, and no f/2.8 Tessar of this focal length is otherwise recorded. From the SKa 4 it takes the interchangeable back, now on a hand camera and with an interlock — the shutter will not release while the dark slide is in the magazine, a safeguard Chernoff lists as an innovation and which every later Hasselblad magazine retained. Two backs came with each camera, stamped with the body serial and an “a” or “b”. Each has a spring-loaded pressure plate that lifts off the film during advance. The frame is 7×12cm on 80mm double-perforated film — several authors say 7×15, which Chernoff corrects from examined cameras — for 23 exposures daylight-loaded or 38 loaded in the dark. Advance is by turning the entire right-hand grip about 120 degrees clockwise and back, which also cocks the Ross four-leaf behind-the-lens shutter. Uniquely among the Ross cameras that shutter has slow speeds — T, 1/5, 1/10, 1/25, 1/50 and a top speed of only 1/150 — because, as Chernoff explains, the camera was used from a tripod or braced against a wall in poor light rather than from a fast aircraft.

The body is a truncated wedge of cast aluminium, wider at the magazine end, which Chernoff credits with saving size, weight and scarce wartime aluminium: 28.1cm long with lens and back, 16cm wide, 12.8cm high, and 5.7kg with the standard lens and a back. Medium-dark grey with black wooden handles, it carries a silver ROSS SWEDEN plate on top and has the model and serial painted rather than engraved. A 5×25 monocular finder with graduated cross-hairs fits the large accessory shoe and was recommended for the 60cm lens; every camera seems to have had the shoe, but the finder was probably issued only with that lens, along with an infrared filter.

Serials are the one point of real dispute. Afalter’s 1993 book gives 70 cameras numbered 1 to 70; Chernoff reports that every MK 80 he and Nordin have seen falls between 101 and 170, and concludes the run started at 101, which gives the same 70 — but he asks explicitly for any body under 101 to be reported. The camera is uncommon on the collector market. Chernoff records one piece of service history, equipment returning from duty in Finland, where Soviet troops were being observed, with bullet holes in the upper part of the periscope; he gives no source for it. Nothing is recorded about the Army units that used the camera, the aperture scales of the two telephotos beyond their maximum, or whether any MK 80 was made after the war ended.