When you think of the best Hasselblad cameras, you think of all-time classics like the Hasselblad 500CM or perhaps cutting-edge bodies like the Hasselblad X2D.
What you definitely don't think of is a Sony APS-C camera that was sheathed in wood, covered in fake jewels, had the Hasselblad logo slapped in the corner and sold with a $5,600 markup.
That's the story of the Hasselblad Lunar – a wretched relic of one of the darkest times in Hasselblad history, when a private equity firm bought the brand and almost destroyed it with this kind of ineptitude:
Yes, that's an actual thing on this camera: a fake ruby. And there's another one on the back, just for good measure. Because nothing says "Hasselblad" like a camera that looks like it's been vajazzled.
The Lunar was an act of such sheer photographic lunacy – to take a $1,400 enthusiast-level Sony NEX-7 and sell it as a $7,000 luxury camera – that the company actually had to tell the press "we're not robbing people".
So what kind of lunatic would buy such a camera? This one:
Honestly, it's no surprise that the man behind some of the most surreal, hallucinogenic and just plain bonkers TV and cinema – spanning everything from Eraserhead and The Elephant Man to Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive – would own a Hasselblad Lunar.
Lynch was clearly in on the joke, too, as he also owned a Sony NEX-5 – the sister model of the NEX-7 that was buried beneath $5,600 of needless gaudiness.
Both cameras – bizarrely bundled in a lot with a Pentax 645 – are up for auction in the David Lynch Collection at Julien's Auctions, which is handling the sale of items of note from his estate. Lynch passed away earlier this year, aged 78.
There are some true gems in the collection, which features everything from modern fare like the Sony A7R and A7S to a Linhof Master Technika Camera, a Leica R6.2, a snakeskin-covered Montana Luxus, an Impossible I-1… and even a proper Hassy, the Hasselblad H3D-39.
But the jewel – literally, the big red fake jewel – of the auction is the Hasselblad Lunar. There can be no greater testament to what an utter madman Lynch was than the fact that he owned this camera. And I love him all the more for it.
Every Lynch fan should take a look at the collection, which features all the ephemera you would imagine – coffee machines, a painting of Naomi Watts, a replica Black Lodge floor and curtain, the telephone from the production office of Dune, original Northwest Passage scripts and even a fragment of the Berlin Wall.
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If you want a weird and wonderful Hassy that's actually good, check out my Hasselblad 907X & CFV100C review. For another calamitous camera by a big brand, take a look at the worst camera I ever bought.
