Why I Love the 903

At the outset I feel obligated to tell you that this should be my last post about cameras for a while. I plan on resuming my usual rambling next week, but I feel as though after my last post about cameras, I left the door open to talking about my newest camera - my 903SWC. I’ve run several rolls through this camera now, and have the results back (see the slideshow below!) to confirm my suspicions about the camera, as well as having used it enough to see if it’s “for me.”



I’ll spare you all the suspense and tell you that this is the best camera I have ever used (and I’ve used a few - read the previous post). I’ve been giving this statement a fair amount of thought, and I think I can distill all of the mental notes I have made about the 903 into a few (three) cogent points.



Honestly, the reason you buy a 903SWC is for the lens. It’s a Carl Zeiss Biogon CF 38mm f/4.5 T*, and mine says that it was made in West Germany - that certainly dates it, doesn’t it? This Biogon is among the most optically perfect ever produced - it shows absolutely no distortion, no vignetting, and no falloff - at any aperture. The story I have seen around the internet is that Victor Hasselblad basically went to Zeiss and designed a camera for use around this lens. Of course, this is significant for a couple of reasons - it makes the camera smaller, and the lenses are not interchangeable. The Biogon on the SWC is a “true” wide-angle lens, meaning that it must be mounted a specific distance from the film plane. This distance is not great enough to accommodate a mirror as in an SLR, and so the “body” of the camera is about half an inch thick. The lack of a mirror or rangefinder means you can’t focus the lens, but this is really not important, as the depth of field stopped down is immense - just use the hyperfocal distance scale on the lens. After much research, I came to the conclusion that out of all the superwide cameras to own, the 903 is “the” one to have - it has all of the improvements to the mechanics and coatings in the lens, but is sharper than the more recent 905SWC due to a change in the glass in the lenses.

Now, you’ve probably read that last paragraph and thought “sounds like a pain to use.” I totally disagree with you - the unusual construction of the camera (external viewfinder, no focus, no meter) has really been freeing to me. Honestly, it’s just effortless for me to use. I meter once with my tiny Gossen Digisix, set the hyperfocal distance, and shoot away. It’s something like the world’s highest-quality point and shoot. You do really need to know what you’re doing to pull this off (exposure wise, especially) but it’s just a dream. It is so light (compared to almost any other camera I have used) and small (compared to my F5, or 205FCC) that I want to take it everywhere. I’ve been trying to do that for a few weeks now, and that’s worked pretty well. I have not taken as many photos as I might have hoped, but it goes with me almost anywhere.

Finally, it uses my “golden format” square, medium-format film. For me, there is nothing that beats composing in a square, and shooting film. There are other, more technical advantages to shooting film, which you can read more about at this link describing the “Medium Format Advantage.”

I have just loved the results I have gotten from this camera, and I love using it. I think I might’ve found the camera for me, after far too many predecessors!