Glass Bodies a variant-level encyclopedia of vintage lenses and cameras by iwillpat

Hasselblad MKWE

Hasselblad Engineering AB · Fixed lens · 6×6 through a réseau plate at the film plane, in a magazine that does not come off the body (Leitz Auction: 'non-interchangeable magazine'). The film it takes is contested — 120 per Collectiblend, a 'dedicated 70 film back' that Japan Camera Hunter also calls 'Magazine A24D' (an A24 designation would mean 220) — see `disputed` · 1989

Also known as: Hasselblad MKWE · Hasselblad MKW/E · Hasselblad MKWE II · Hasselblad MK-WE · Hasselblad Metric Kamera Wide Electric · Hasselblad SWC metric camera · Hasselblad NASA SWC

Variants & identification

Variant Mount Years Serial ranges Production
MKWE — motorised Superwide with réseau plate and captive magazine Hasselblad V 1989 Body 547, réseau plate numbered to match — Japan Camera Hunter (2012)
Body 1322, lens 6888731, magazine 371671, plate matching the body — Leitz Auction lot AI-20220121-1128-41616
Camera no. 14369 with Leitz's serial-number field reading 439 — Leitz Auction 46 lot 348 (product number A01977), with Biogon 4.5/38 no.7553397 and magazine no.32EH13527, catalogued under manufacture year 1996; unsold against a €12,000–14,000 estimate
Leitz's serial-number field reads 318 on the camera it describes as no.1322 — Leitz Auction 42 lot 440; lens given there as Biogon 4.5/38 no.6888731A70
'Not more than 50 examples were produced from serial nos. 14400–14450' — Leitz Auction lot A01977 as summarised in search results; irreconcilable with bodies 547 and 1322, see `disputed` 		Not published. Leitz Auction's lot A01977 states not more than 50, from serials 14400–14450 (via search summary); Japan Camera Hunter says only that 'very few' exist. Bodies 547 and 1322 sit outside the quoted range, so either the range or the count is wrong
MKWE II Hasselblad V — — Unknown
  1. No serial list has been published for the MKWE. Hasselblad Historical carries no MKWE entry, and the only range ever quoted for it could not be found in the auction lot it is attributed to.
  2. The magazine number 32EH13527 carries the two-digit product prefix Hasselblad introduced in 1990 (Hasselblad Historical, dating page), which independently places that outfit no earlier than 1990.
  3. All dating in this entry is inferential: no primary Hasselblad Engineering document has been consulted. Year letters and SWC/M dates from Hasselblad Historical.
How to tell them apart (expand)
  • A Superwide with a motor: 38mm Biogon, optical finder in the shoe, electric winder beneath, captive numbered magazine, réseau grid visible on the film
  • The 'NASA Hasselblad' nickname attaches to this camera in dealer listings (Japan Camera Hunter; The Phoblographer); the cameras NASA flew are the HEC and HDC/HEDC, based on the 500EL, not on the Superwide — though an SWC did fly on Gemini and Apollo 9

MKWE — motorised Superwide with réseau plate and captive magazine:

  • A Superwide body — 38mm Biogon f/4.5, direct-view optical finder in the shoe — with an electric winder built in underneath, where no production SWC ever had one (Japan Camera Hunter: 'basically a motorized SWC (SWC/M)')
  • Magazine fixed to the body and separately numbered (Leitz Auction); the réseau plate carries the body's serial (Japan Camera Hunter; Leitz Auction)
  • Réseau grid of hairline crosses printed on every frame — the 'NASA' feature that gives the camera its nickname (Japan Camera Hunter)
  • 'MKWE' on the body; one dealer (Arsenal Photo) describes an example with yellow leather covering — not confirmed elsewhere

Serial-range notes

The first two letters of the serial number — on Hasselblads that carry them
The rule for dating any Hasselblad, stated here because the MKWE is the exception that a reader will want explained. Every Hasselblad camera and film magazine normally carries a two- or three-letter code in front of, or built into, the serial number, and the first two letters give the year through the word VHPICTURES: V=1, H=2, P=3, I=4, C=5, T=6, U=7, R=8, E=9, S=0. The two digits are the decade and the year, so EH reads 92. A code from 50 to 99 takes the prefix 19; a code below 50 takes 20. A third letter marks the product, never the year, and from 1990 a two-digit number precedes the letters for the same purpose (Q.G. de Bakker, Hasselblad Historical). No located MKWE body carries any of this, so the camera must be dated from the objects around it.
Body 547, 1322
Plain numbers without the VHPICTURES year letters that date every production V-system body, so an MKWE cannot be dated from its serial. The réseau plate is engraved with the body number (Japan Camera Hunter; Leitz Auction) — a plate and body that do not match have been separated.
14400–14450
The range Leitz Auction gave for a 'not more than 50' production in lot A01977 (seen only in a search summary). Two known bodies, 547 and 1322, fall outside it. Either two numbering series exist — perhaps MKWE and MKWE II — or the range was quoted in error. Not resolved.
Lens 6888731 (Biogon 4.5/38)
Zeiss Oberkochen seven-digit serial; the red-ink date code inside the rear mount is unreachable on a fixed lens. Placing it against Nordin's serial-to-year tables would date the camera; those tables have not been consulted.
Magazine 371671
Six digits without year letters, unlike the A12/A24 magazines of the period, consistent with a purpose-built captive back.
Two numbers per camera — 318 with 1322, 439 with 14369
Leitz Auction records two different numbers for each MKWE, which is the likely source of the confusion in the notes above. Its catalogue field headed "serial number" holds a plain three-digit number — 318 on the 2022 lot, 439 on the later one — while the description names the camera separately: "The camera (no.1322)" and "The camera (no.14369)". Japan Camera Hunter's 547 is a number of the first kind. Neither series carries year letters, so neither dates the camera.
Magazine 32EH13527 — the one dated object in an MKWE outfit
The magazine on Leitz Auction 46 lot 348 can be read where the camera cannot. Under the rule above the leading 32 is the two-digit product code Hasselblad added from 1990, and the letters EH give 92, so the magazine was made in 1992. Leitz catalogues that camera, no. 14369, under a manufacture year of 1996. Two independent indications place this MKWE in the 1990s, which supports Collectiblend's 1989–2002 span and tells against reading the camera as an SWC/M-derived body of 1980–88. It bears on one outfit, not on the whole production.
14400–14450 — not found on the lot page
The claim that "not more than 50 examples were produced from serial nos. 14400–14450", attributed above to Leitz Auction lot A01977 through a search summary, does not appear in that lot's description as the page now stands: it is Leitz Auction 46 lot 348, and it gives the camera as no. 14369 with no production figure and no range. The number 14369 does sit just below the quoted range. The range is therefore recorded here as unverified rather than as published.

Specifications

Format
6×6 through a réseau plate at the film plane, in a magazine that does not come off the body (Leitz Auction: 'non-interchangeable magazine'). The film it takes is contested — 120 per Collectiblend, a 'dedicated 70 film back' that Japan Camera Hunter also calls 'Magazine A24D' (an A24 designation would mean 220) — see `disputed`
Finder
Direct-view optical finder in the accessory shoe, as on the SWC/M; Leitz Auction's lot includes 'viewfinder'. Whether it is the metal 52035 (spirit level on the body) or the 1985 plastic 52036 (level in the finder) is not stated · none — the SWC finder shows a slightly larger field than the lens at every distance (SWC/M instruction book) parallax correction · no rangefinder image
Shutter
none in body — a non-reflex camera; exposure by the leaf shutter in the fixed 38mm Biogon: Synchro-Compur on a C-barrel lens, Prontor CF on a CF-barrel lens. Which barrel the MKWE carries is not stated by any consulted source; the Leitz lens serial 6888731 is a Zeiss number of the mid-1980s and would point to CF · 1s–1/500, B (the SWC/M lens) · flash sync all speeds (leaf shutter)
Film advance
Built-in electric winder (the E of the name — Japan Camera Hunter: 'Metric Kamera, Wide angle, Electronic winder'); the SWC/M's fold-out crank is replaced. Power source and frame rate not published
Back
Captive magazine, separately numbered, not removable (Leitz Auction). Japan Camera Hunter calls it a 'dedicated 70 film back' and 'Magazine A24D'; Collectiblend says 120 film. The réseau plate sits at the film plane and carries the body's number
Meter
none
Motor drive
Compatible — Built in. The MKWE is the only motorised Superwide; no production SWC, SWC/M, 903 or 905 has a winder coupling
Country
Sweden (body, Hasselblad Engineering AB); lens made in West Germany by Carl Zeiss, Oberkochen
Accessories
Optical viewfinder (SWC type) — Leitz Auction · Réseau plate numbered to the body — Japan Camera Hunter; Leitz Auction · Captive magazine 371671 — Leitz Auction

Where sources disagree

Year
  • 1989–2002, base camera 903 SWC — Collectiblend
  • undated, base camera SWC/M (1980–88) — Japan Camera Hunter, Leitz Auction

No source names a launch. If the base is an SWC/M the camera predates 1989; if Collectiblend's 903 basis is right the SWC/M description is loose. The 1989 in `year` is the only published figure, not a finding.

Format
  • 120 film — Collectiblend
  • 'dedicated 70 film back' — Japan Camera Hunter
  • 'Magazine A24D' (an A24 designation = 220, 24 exposures) — Japan Camera Hunter, same article

The film type is left unset because the three statements cannot all be true. The MK70 sibling used dedicated 70mm magazines; a 220 back engraved D for 'data' is equally plausible for a captive magazine that never needed the A12/A24 interchangeability.

Production
  • not more than 50, serials 14400–14450 — Leitz Auction lot A01977 (via search summary)
  • 'very few' — Japan Camera Hunter
  • c. 50 units is repeated by dealers without a source

Bodies 547 and 1322 exist and are outside the quoted serial range, so the count of 50 and the range cannot both describe all MKWE bodies.

What reviewers say

History

The MKWE is a Superwide that was never in the Hasselblad catalogue: a motorised SWC with a réseau plate, built in small numbers by Hasselblad Engineering AB for land survey and close-range photogrammetry. Japan Camera Hunter, which handled one in Tokyo in 2012, spells the name out as “Metric Kamera, Wide angle, Electronic winder” and describes the camera as “basically a motorized SWC (SWC/M) with dedicated 70 film back”; Jo Geier’s listing renders it “Metric Kamera Super Wide Electric”. Leitz Auction, cataloguing another in 2022, calls it “the civilian variant of NASA’s HEC (Hasselblad Electric Camera)” and names the maker as a special division for “high-precision instruments for industrial and military applications”. The lens is the 38mm f/4.5 Biogon of every Superwide — “the same lens you would find on an SWC Hasselblad”, as Japan Camera Hunter puts it — which has its own entry.

Two things make it a metric camera. The first is the réseau plate, a glass plate at the film plane engraved with a grid of hairline crosses that print on every frame, so that the film’s dimensional changes can be measured out of the picture afterwards; Japan Camera Hunter notes that the plate was developed with NASA, which is the whole basis of the “NASA Hasselblad” nickname the camera carries in dealer copy, and that the plate is engraved with the body’s serial number. The second is the winder: no production Superwide — SWC, SWC/M, 903 or 905 — ever had a motor coupling, and the MKWE has one built in, so that a surveyor’s exposure sequence runs without the crank. The magazine does not come off — Leitz describes a “non-interchangeable magazine” with its own number, 371671 on that body — which follows from the plate: a réseau calibrated to one body has no reason to accept interchangeable backs.

The record consists of individual cameras. Japan Camera Hunter’s was body 547, plate to match, priced at ¥2,480,000. Leitz Auction’s 2022 lot was body 1322 with Biogon 6888731, magazine 371671 and finder, “everything in near-mint condition”, sold for €19,200 including premium against an estimate of €24,000–26,000. Arsenal Photo has asked €16,000 for one it describes as having yellow leather — a detail no other source repeats. Against these stands a statement in an earlier Leitz lot (A01977), seen here only through a search summary, that “not more than 50 examples were produced from serial nos. 14400–14450”. Bodies 547 and 1322 are outside that range, so the count and the range cannot both hold for the whole production; either the MKWE was numbered in more than one series — camera-wiki lists an “MKWE II” alongside it, with no other detail anywhere — or the range was misquoted. This entry records the dispute rather than choosing.

Dating is worse. MKWE bodies carry plain numbers rather than the two-letter VHPICTURES year code that dates every production V-system camera, so the serial says nothing. Collectiblend’s price guide gives 1989–2002 and calls the base a 903 SWC; Japan Camera Hunter and Leitz say SWC/M, a camera Hasselblad Historical dates 1980–88. The Zeiss serial on the Leitz body, 6888731, is a mid-1980s Oberkochen number and would fit a CF-barrel Biogon on an SWC/M-era body, but Nordin’s serial tables have not been consulted and this is inference. The 1989 in this entry’s year is the only published figure and is carried with that warning; the camera may well be five or more years older.

The “NASA” label is marketing shorthand — the cameras NASA flew were the HEC and the HDC/HEDC Data Cameras built from the 500EL, though a Superwide did fly on Gemini and Apollo 9 — and the MKWE is the terrestrial instrument that inherited the plate.

Open: the introduction and end years; the true production count and numbering; what film the captive magazine takes (120, 220 or 70mm — the sources say all three); whether the Biogon is a C or CF barrel; what the MKWE II changed; and whether Nordin’s Hasselblad Compendium (2011) or Hasselblad Engineering AB’s own literature documents the series. None of it has been 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.

Example photos

Sample photo wanted — shot with a Hasselblad MKWE? We'd love to feature it (with credit).

Live listings

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Listings updated 2026-09-05. Links go to the shop or marketplace that carries the item.

Related: Hasselblad MK70 · Hasselblad SWC/M · Hasselblad 903SWC

Lenses for this body: Biogon 38mm f/4.5

Sources (10)

Every page here is assembled from public sources, and the gaps are real ones. If you own this camera, know a serial number I'm missing, or can see where I have it wrong, tell me — corrections, serials and sample photos are all worth having.