Well, I did it! After dreaming about one of these babies for ages, I finally bought my Hasselblad SWC!! It's the SWC/M that I asked about the other day; it turned out to not have fungus at all. It was only a little fogging and they cleaned it out. I said to the technician who did it, 'this is a lot of money for me. If this was you, would you buy it?' and without hesitation he exclaimed, 'YES!' And looking at prices on eBay (and elsewhere) I feel like I got a good deal as well. Of course, I will be taking it to the Hasselblad Service Center this week so they can CLA it and make sure everything is as it should be (I do that with any used equipment I buy). If it isn't, and it requires anything major, I can return it.
So I very excitedly took it out for a spin this morning. I went to the park and looked for some architecture to check out the straightness of it. Just playing to get the feel of it - getting used to using the spirit level. And being the idiot I am, and being used to mostly using SLRs, I was on frame 10 when I realized I'd had the lens cap on the whole time!! Using the SWC on the tripod I did get a bunch of stares from people, including some Japanese tourists who came right up to me to gawk at it from different angles then walk away. I thought they were all looking at my nifty new camera, but now I'm betting they were thinking, who's the idiot taking pictures with the lens cap on?!?!
Anyway, now I just wait to hear what the verdict is from the Hasselblad Service Center. Hopefully it gets a clean bill of health. Shooting with it will take a different way of thinking but I like the lightness of it and I think we are going to be very happy together.
Big thanks to Phil for all his coaching! Thanks to his advice I'd been looking for a Bessa Angle Finder as well as the camera. I already have the rights lens for it, and found the finder as well and am waiting for that to arrive.
