After World War Two, and building on his experience building the HK-7 aerial reconnaissance cameras for the Swedish Air Force, a Swedish businessman set about designing his dream camera: a waist-level SLR that made 6x6 photographs on 120 film. The Rossex.
By 1948, it was ready. It was a beautiful camera designed by Sixten Sason, who also designed the original Saab car. It was a modular system with interchangeable lenses, film backs, and viewfinders. It had a focal plane shutter of stainless steel foil, with speeds up to 1/1600 sec, an array of Kodak Ektar lenses and was now called the Hasselblad 1600F.
It was, in fact, the world’s first SLR for 120 film. Not to mention it was smaller and lighter than most medium format cameras of the day. It was so far ahead of its time that it stood alone for a decade, but its general design was later copied by Bronica, Mamiya, Rolleiflex and, eventually, Arsenal as well.
When the 1600F’s shutter proved not to be as reliable as hoped, Hasselblad reduced the top shutter speed to 1/1000 sec and, critically, redesigned the internal “gear stack” that controlled the shutter, creating the more reliable Hasselblad 1000F in 1952.
In Russia, the Soviets hated spending money on consumer goods if they didn’t have to. So in 1957, just as Hasselblad was swapping its improved (but still somewhat unreliable) focal plane shutter for the incredibly reliable Compur shutters of the 500C and later models, the Soviets brought out their own 6x6 SLR, produced at the Arsenal Factory in Kyiv, Ukraine: the Salyut.
This "Hasselbladski", as it became known, was very similar to Hasselblad’s 1600F, though not an exact copy. Rather than the Hassy’s stainless steel foil shutter, the Salyut’s shutter was made of beryllium copper in a series of connected links to make the travelling shutter curtains. This made the camera much noisier and did nothing to improve reliability.
Worse, they failed to copy Hasselblad’s improved shutter gear stack from the 1000F!
It came equipped with a 90mm f/2.8 Industar lens with a semi-automatic diaphragm and used a screw mount similar to, but incompatible with that of the Hasselblad.
(This mount is often described as a "bayonet-style screw mount" because it uses a coarse multi-start thread system that enables the lens to be inserted and twisted about 90° to lock, combining both a threaded and bayonet action. In many ways it is similar to the modified “M” lens mount of the Ilford Witness, of 1951.)
After the exposure, you pressed a lever to reset the lens to full aperture, and brighter and easier focusing.
Wanting to avoid being seen as copying, the Soviets claimed that the Hasselblad and the Salyut were both derived from a Nazi prototype. However, none of these supposed forerunners have ever been found, so this story is doubtful to say the least.
In 1972, the Salyut-S appeared. This was an updated version with a modified lens mount that added a plunger for fully automatic diaphragm control in the new 90mm f/2.8 Vega 12B lens.
The Salyuts were, to be blunt, poor. So much so that adoring fans (yes, there are some!) talk about the wonderful things that can be done with them “if you are actually able to coax one into working.” There is (or, at least, was) a website about the Salyuts that featured the headline “Welcome to the world’s best website about the world’s worst camera”!
The Salyut was primarily sold only in the USSR, mostly in Torgsin or Beriozka stores (chains that sell to high party officials and tourists, but only for hard currencies, not Rubles) and a few made their way out of the USSR with tourists.
The camera was sold as a kit (body, lens with two filters, a pair of 12-exposure backs and a waist-level finder with magnifier) for about $100 – or about 20 times the average Soviet worker's monthly salary in 1975.
Your scribe almost bought a Salyut-S in a Moscow Beriozka store, back in 1975. I tried their demo model but, thanks to a large and poorly damped mirror, it was the only camera I’ve ever seen that suffered recoil!
No Salyuts have been made since 1980, but about 30,000 units were produced before then. A few were exported under other names, such as the Kiev 88 and Zenit 80.
Since Arsenal failed in 2008, a small number of craftsmen have reworked (new) old stock Kiev cameras, made improvements where possible, to improve performance and reliability, and sold the improved versions under the Kiev, Arax and Hartblei brands. Thus, the Hasselbladski lives on – even today.
Find out more about photography's past in David Young's book, A Brief History of Photography.
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Take a look at the best film cameras you can buy today, and the best Sony cameras on sale now. You can also read other articles in David Young's Classic Cameras series.
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