I looked into a 203 system when my mamiya gear was nicked, working on the Millenium stadium. I was hit over the head and everything was taken from me, plus the car was broken into. I had obviously been watched by the river opposite the stadium. Anyway, hasselbald let me have one for a few months together with a set of lenses, to try it out.
The build quality is simply wonderful. The depth of the chrome around the edges and everything is a fine tolrance as a Swiss watch. The backs go on with barely a click, just a "tick" as the catches drop home. Beautiful.
The zone system control is dead easy too. You can simply toggle up and down the exposure scale with the blue arrow shaped buttons. I can't remember it all, it was some years ago now. What attracted me to it or another 200 series, can't remember which one now, was the ability to have leaf shutter lenses OR use the focal plane shutter built in, so you had flash synch at all speeds on the diaphragm shutter lenses, or switch over and disable the leaf shutter and use the curtain shutter in the camera.
In the end, after using it for a few months, I found I couldn't geton with it. The build was unquestionable. The lenses were OK, but not all were as sharp as I would have liked. The modern ones were fine. BUT, even after using my RZ as a hand held camera quite a lot I found the blad fitted with anything over about a 140 to be like working with a shoebox with a telescope strapped to the front. The handling was simply aweful. It went all front heavy and was very difficult to use out in the field.
If I was shooting less moving subjects and didn't require the use of 250mm les quite often, then I would probably have stuck with it. For people and landscapes etc...first class. I actually went to the Contax 635 and lashed out over £20,000 for a system with them instead...then they went bust a few years later! The Zeiss lenses for the Contax 645 are incredible. They are all APO, even though not labelled as such - they were actually built for digital and it was the Phase One rep who put me off the blad and onto the Contax. He wouldn't demo his back on th eblad, because it was too soft - he used the Contax because ti was much, much sharper on digi capture.
The difference was the Contax lenses focussed all the spectrum to the same spot. Blad lenses didn't, but used with film this doesn't matter because there is thickness with film, one layer behind th eother, so provided the colours are focussed on their respective layer, it looks sharp.
Does that make sense? I know what I mean!
, bet it distorts badly as well
