After using a Hasselblad 203FE and Zeiss Planar 110 f2.0 for about a year, I found myself wanting to improve the shooting experience. Though the 203FE is practically dwarfed by cameras like the Mamiya RZ67, I’ll acknowledge it’s still more of a studio camera than a street shooter. Despite that, I enjoy attaching a hand strap and taking it along for a photo walk. The trouble for me comes when I want to throw a filter on the front.
The Carl Zeiss Planar 110 f2.0 has a bayonet 70 filter mount. Purpose-made filters of this type are expensive, but the real problem is that useful filter variants are almost never available for purchase. Additionally, the aftermarket bay 70 adapters are not very good; they have bent metal springs that never catch properly, they rotate out of position, and they fall off the camera. The Cokin P series adapters work fine when on a tripod, but the corners of the oversized square frame catch on pockets and are generally a nuisance when walking around. If I wanted something to suit my needs, I’d have to make it myself.
I started measuring filters that I had for other cameras. I found that a Cokin A filter would just barely cover the front glass of the Planar lens. Those filters are square, so any adapter would still have protruding corners. I tried a 63mm series VIII filter from the Distagon 50mm lens, and it also seemed to be able to cover the lens opening. Based on the filters that I had available, I set about designing a slim drop-in style filter adapter for the Planar 110 lens.
Adapters for the inner bayonet connection require small protrusions. I was concerned that those would be a point of failure for 3D-printed parts. Instead, I designed the filter adapters to fit over the outside bayonet connection. This makes them slightly bulkier, but they are more robust.
While the filter adapters were printing, I designed another missing adapter. The camera controls for the Hasselblad 203FE are on the left side of the camera, so the accessory rail that is common to other System V cameras had to be removed. The 203FE has no place to connect accessories. I needed a place to mount my flash trigger so that I could ditch the extra-long flash sync cable that I had been using. So, I created a plate that would slide onto the tripod adapter on the bottom of the camera and provide a cold shoe location just over the lens release button.
I originally designed the cold shoe to be horizontally oriented. I thought that this would make it less likely for anything to slip out. However, in this configuration, the placement of my flash trigger was less than ideal. Most cold shoe accessories have a lock nut to hold themselves in place, so I made a revision and rotated the cold shoe.
The tripod plate to cold shoe adapter should work on any System V Hasselblad with a tripod plate, but I have only tested it on the 203FE with the Planar 110 lens. The designs are below; feel free to use and remix them for any non-commercial purpose.
