It was a fairly normal day.

I continued to argue* with the good bad folks who host (sic) the photos on my website, whilst preparing some event coverage quotes for a couple of perspective clients

*apparently that my photos no longer display because they rolled out an improved service is somehow my problem (strongly agree) and not at all their problem to resolve (strongly disagree)

A Brief Respite

I decided to change the mood from them, them, them to me, me, me by sharing a selection of photos I’d recently taken with my new lens to the DS massive, and Pascal made a very Pascal comment.

Nice photos. Fancy writing a review of that lens for DS?

Hum. Frankly no.

Unwanted Serenade

I’d just wanted a little endorphin rush, the type you get by sharing pictures to folk, pictures you’ve taken with a new chunk of glass, you’re looking for a returns such as nice photos and wow, what a good lens for the cost, great catch Adam

What I didn’t want was ‘Adam how’d you like to do some writing on my site?’

But Pascal had a point, it was a long time since I’d written anything here… and besides, DS’s image hosting actually works

But I didn’t fancy doing a lens review. Nope. Between you, me and the gateposts – I hate doing that…

It’s a thankless task. People dispel your findings. You can’t really do a good job unless you have access to a lab, some rigs, probably some computer software and not to mention of course, your entire review is ultimately meaningless if you don’t happen to have X number of copies of the lens(es) you’re testing to rule out sample variation.

So what you tend to end up with, is some brick wall shots, some rhetoric and a closing off of and here’s some of my favs taken with this optic

Messing about by the River. Taken with my new lens, can you tell? No. So let’s move on

My last few articles here have all been about the Leica M9. A camera that needs no introduction, as it’ll be reaching it’s tenth anniversary next year.

Still that said, you can catch up on my previous DS M9 articles here and here

The most recent of these articles The M9 dream four months on spoke about adding some more M glass to my stable and using the antiquated, dense little brass lump as much as possible.

Lost and Found

Well it’s now been seven months since I met my hero so I thought it was time to share with you all whether or not the rose tinted spectacles had steamed up, fallen off or stopped working…

To begin with, the M was how you might describe as a sunny Sunday sports car. A tool for simple pleasures. It still is of course! But I have to say I’ve been using it more and more, to continue the car analogy, it now often gets asked to do the school run and the grocery shop

My Mum came to town for some grandchild quality time, normally that would be a modern camera job – the security of AF, Face detect, lots of ISO yada yada.

But this time I wanted a challenge, so I made myself shoot the whole week with the M and all of the three lenses.

Did I miss modern features when I was trying to shoot my five year old bouncing on a trampoline with a 90mm lens and a rangefinder? Hahaha hell yeah, what did you think? 

Men Wearing White Can’t Jump

Did I manage to get a shot? Yes. Did I feel a sense of reward because I got that shot using my brain rather than tracking AF mode 7? Hahaha hell yeah, what did you think? 

And it was during that week that I really came to realise something about the M.

Do you watch the orb or does the orb watch you?

It’s actually (IMO YMMV) a very humble product, made by probably one of the most pretentious camera brands around. The local Leica store has a sign in the window, something like come in and ask me about bokeh (I’m not making that up) – I’ve no clue what they’ll tell you about bokeh, but I promise you this, buy an M to chase bokeh and you’ll need to figure a few things out for yourself.

Alone at Last and Skipping in the Sand

And that’s what I’ve been doing with the M these past few months. Chasing pictures, figuring it out for myself and I have to say, rather enjoying the experience.

It a little bit reminds me of being back at college. The camera was all manual. It had a 50mm on it. I took it everywhere, even when I wasn’t at college, and was always eager to get into the darkroom in order to see what I’d been shooting.

These are MY Stairs

I’ve been living with the M very much like this. As Pascal mentioned in a recent post A quality viewfinder, a direct connection to the shutter and a way to capture an image and that folks is all you truly need…..

……of course I highly recommend that you aim higher than this! In much the same way that money can’t buy happiness, but it sure soothes the burn of being poor, having an all singing all dancing camera can’t guaranty all singing all dancing photographs, but it sure can take the burn out of trying to capture them.

Generations

But sometimes, I dunno… how to say…. it’s good to keep your hand in with the old ways, it’s good to go out in the field with the basic essentials rather than wrapping oneself in the cotton wool cocoon that modern cameras offer.

Perhaps you’re reading this and thinking uh-oh, he’s drunk the Kool-Aid… he’s about to say that less is more, he’s about to talk about the unparalleled joy of manual focus lenses, ground glass view finders and the phallic heft of a brass camera 

The Blue Pill (Nozzle): Happiness and blissful ignorance

Nope. I’m not.

Do you know what the difference is to the viewer between two good (or bad) photographs taken with two completely different camera systems. That would be sweet FA.

Do you know what the difference is to the photographer between a camera system that s/he enjoys shooting and enjoys the images s/he gets from it vs one s/he doesn’t?

It’s a lot.

An Open Door

Good photographs are within the grasp of pretty much any camera (but not necessarily every photographer of course). I think we’ve all known this for a while now. Sure you can make them with varying degrees of ease and computer-camera assistance. But nearly all cameras can do a good job in nearly all scenarios.

So why not shoot with a camera that you enjoy using? Why feel you can’t trust a camera if that camera demands that you trust yourself?

Air Dash – Rangefinder focusing, 50mm at F1.4, what can go wrong?

And if you truly feel you need a more automated camera (and no judgement here) then surely you should still trust yourself to be able to make it work?

Am I about to speak about rediscovering the joy of photography? Hum, no. Why? Well using a (largely) manual camera, focus traps, subject anticipation, etc isn’t joyful, it’s hard work. Hard but rewarding work, enjoyable but not joyful, like an exercise regime that has the desired result.

The Waiting Game

We all know that GAS isn’t photography, we all know that it’s us that makes the photo, so my missive here is simple:

Digital photography carries with it a colossally disproportionate equation between pressing the shutter and having an image that you’re happy with.

Feel free to read that again.

Disproportionate equation between pressing the shutter and having an image that you’re happy with

I got into photography when as a 15 year old, my father sent me on a week long trip to the middle east  and gave me three rolls of film.

Three. Rolls. Film. 108 frames. Maximum.

Watching the Flow

These days we can come home with more shots than that if we take our kids to the local park for half an hour!

So what does that mean? Disproportionate equation between pressing the shutter and having an image that you’re happy with.

It means that whatever digital camera you buy, you’re going to end up with one that delivers frames you consider mediocre waaaaaaaaay more than frames that you don’t.

Or put another way… You’d better buy a camera that you enjoy using, because you’re going to be spending an awful lot of time using it to shoot zilch.

An Idle View

And that’s how I’ve felt with the M9 these past few months. I enjoy the reward of shooting with it. Very much. Like I wrote before, in that very first review:

The Leica is literally a fixed point and I must pivot around it to get to where I need. This couldn’t be my only camera, but for many applications it is indeed a nice way to work

I’m enjoying the dance, I’m enjoying the challenge and when it (far less frequently than I’d like) all comes together, I feel a sense of satisfaction.

Three’s a Crowd

So, you’re looking at some of my shots…. are they going to be the best shots that you’ve ever seen? Will you race from your internet enabled device having read this and immediately need serious time in a sensory deprivation tank, so that you can gather your thoughts and re-discover what it means to be human?

Hahaha hell NO, what did you think? 

No. There is no relationship between the camera and the viewer’s reaction to an image. That camera-human relationship is a personal thing between you and your gear.

Less is more? No. More is less. We take more pictures because modern digital cameras compel us to do so, but we don’t necessarily get more acceptable photographs. By taking more photos we spend more time shooting, so we ought to try and find cameras that we enjoy spending time with and have less issues, quibbles and foibles with.

Stripes

The M9P has been my constant companion for the past months, only the most challenging of conditions has dissuaded me from using it.

So let’s be honest, if I’d said these are all taken with my Fujifilm or my Panasonic or my mate’s Sony, would you believe me? Of course! The camera used is not something that’s very relevant to the viewer of the photo (IMO – YMMV)

The Boy in the Boat

That I shot these all with a manual focus, antiquated M9 is not important to you. But it’s important to me, and the reason it’s important to me is that I enjoy using it, and when I enjoy using something, I tend to use it a lot, which is good – because digital photography seems to demand that we take a lot of photos to get a few that we like.

And that’s really the point of this article, the continuation of my M9 story isn’t about the camera at all. It’s about shooting pictures, feeling compelled to pick something up and use it, to look to yourself for the solutions to the challenges of the shot.

Decisions, Decisions

It’s not about less is more it’s not that all we ever need is a quality viewfinder, a direct connection to the shutter and a way to capture an image. It’s about being happy with a way of working, about pushing yourself for the end result.

Crazy talk? Could be….

…..But I’m enjoying the al fresco adventure that is Leica la la land very much.

Porto Al Fresco

All images shot with the Leica M9P using a combination of the 35/2.4 Summarit, the 50 Summicron, the 90/2.5 Summarit and the 7Artisans 50/1.1

Posted on DearSusan by Adam Bonn.

Some say our childhood centerfolds stick with us for the rest of our lives. Mine were the Mamiya 7 and the Rollei SL66. The Bret Sinclair and Danny Wilde of film photography, if you will, and a darn sight easier to explain to my parents than Anna Nicole, Pamela and their friends. Anyone that’s had to suffer one of my rants about modern photographic ergonomics will know I consider the Mamiya 7 the best camera every designed. Extraordinary lenses, even by Otus standards, robust build, stealthy-ish shooting, it had a lot going for it and two graced my home over the years. The lust never left me.

It’s karmically amusing, then, that two of the most high-end cameras amateurs can buy today feel eerily similar to these illustrious medium formats of old : the Hasselblad X1D and the Fuji GFX. Testing the former has been at the back of my mind for some time and, now, thanks to the kindness of Philip and Lea at Hasselblad central, it has just happened.Hurray and thank you.

Before we go any further, please note that the blog doesn’t do a great job of displaying the subtle colours produced by the camera and many on this page look like they were hand coloured with candy and the subtlety of tonal transitions is all but lost. Feel free to click the images to view 4000pix wide jpg versions that give you a far better sense of the camera’s potential.

Hasselblad X1D & XCD 3.5/30 lens – rose-tinted glasses ?

So, the Mamiya 7 was a stunning camera, but film and processing were expensive and implied a long and painful process for someone living a long way from a chemical lab. Digital came along and predictably stole film medium format’s thunder.  Somehow, though, it never really delivered on its promise. Easier and more convenient, yes. But, in some ways, it was a downhill experience for many years. Digital photography is just one example of the terrible sacrifices we are prepared to make for the sake of convenience.

Then, suddenly, the Hasselblad X1D looked like the mighty Mamiya 7 had awoken from its slumber in digital form. It looked like a very handsome product, one that couldn’t be used without a properly groomed 3-day stubble and that would not be chucked into a closet by my wife when left lying around. Heck, it might even enhance the interior. Most importantly, though, it looked designed by photographers for photographers with few concessions to the fads that have plagued the ergonomics of many modern digital cameras. The perfect digital camera for me? With a little introduction from a friend, I was soon in discussion with the super kind people in Göteborg to find out and the rest is … this review.

They say you should never meet your heroes. I’m glad I did. Let’s kill the suspense from the get go. The Hasselblad X1D is, by a safe margin, the best camera I have ever used. Not just technically but as a rewarding and thrilling camera to handle.

During the first hours, it felt heavy, clunky and slow. The AF seemed ponderous and relatively loud with my eye pressed to the EVF. Wake up time ? Telluric. The heft was a little intimidating. The lenses were larger than imagined.

Test conditions weren’t ideal either, as my car was destroyed in an accident the day before the arrival of the camera, leaving me stranded in a sleepy village with little else to photograph but my garden and my cats.

Still, I started actually using the X1D and a veil lifted to reveal what great photography used to feel like, as if a stone stuck inside my shoe for the past decade has suddenly been removed. Not everyone will agree with this assessment, of course. But the X1D wonderfully services a niche of deliberate photographers that has been neglected for far too long.

So let me try to describe not just the performance but what it’s actually like to use this camera on a shoot (spoiler: the answer is super relaxed).

Hasselblad X-1D, XCD 3.2/90, processed in Phocus

Packaging

First things first. Remember Men in Black? That’s how I felt when finding the large Pelicase on my doorstep. It looks and feels incredibly robust and badass. It could certainly withstand the sort of mishap that the person carrying it wouldn’t. Inside, a thick slab of dense foam houses a series of tight-fitting cutouts that hug the camera, lenses and several accessories, while a couple of extra sleeves are good for a large-ish laptop (16″?) and charger, plus battery charger, tethering cords, … Definitely not your average cardboard unboxing experience.

Out of its foamy bunker, the X1D looks like the centerpiece of a design museum. Over my 10-day tenure of the camera, it was seen and handled by many friends and relatives, mostly non photographers. And the reaction to this luxuriously machined billet of unobtanium was always one of awe, as if first time viewers refused to acknowledge what the protruding lens and general layout so insistently point to : this was indeed a camera, similar in nature to the black plastic heaps of buttons and more buttons usually seen elsewhere. That reaction was not always positive, as if the Hassy looked too bare and simple to be a serious piece of kit. That evident conflict between the admiration for the object and doubt, in the face of what japanese marketing has led us to believe to be serious cameras, is what I’ll most remember of these encounters.

Ergonomics

There are few good or bad cameras, taken out of context. But some are terrible and others are great for you. It’s not only a matter of subject of predilection (wildlife and sports do impose their specificities, for instance). You can tell the difference – for yourself – by how natural the flow is when using the camera. For instance, I was very much at one with my little Olympus EM-5, some years ago, but have always found it difficult to bond with my more recent Sony bodies.

We have two brain hemispheres, one handling analytic tasks and the other powering our creativity. It takes a special type of genius to use both at max power simultaneously. For most of us common mortals, using gear that relies heavily on the analytic half of our brain will hinder the abilities of the creative side. It’s OK to labour, huff and puff in a studio. But out on the street, if you have to get your eye out of the viewfinder or wind up your brain to find a button, your images will most likely suck.

After a couple of days, the X1D was a natural extension of myself.

A dance of joy for the Hasselblad X-1D, XCD 3.2/90 – look at those colours

Others might dislike it. It’s all good. What makes this camera so special is that it polarizes. Instead of trying to appeal to an overly broad population, it really pleases those it was designed for and will probably leave others cold or in utter disbelief.

So, what is it that makes the Hasselblad so special to me?

First, there’s the grip. It’s a heavy camera and I never use a strap. For my medium-sized (and larger) hands, this grip is a dream. It’s deep, well-shaped and extremely natural. Not once did leaning over high ledges worry me. The camera just sits perfectly well in hand and never feels tiresome (unlike my lighter Sony that needs a much tighter grip to feel secure).

Then there’s the button layout. And here, Hasselblad have made things logical and understandable (how retro a concept is that?) by using a mix of clearly labeled buttons (rather than C1, C2, C3 nonsense) and contextual functions triggered by these buttons. For instance, on the top face is an ISO button that lets you set your ISO number via the thumb wheel. OK. Next to it is a focus button that toggles between MF (manual focus) and AF. When in live view + AF mode, pressing this button lets you select the active AF zone). And so on. Rather than assign specific functions to nameless buttons randomly peppered over the body, named buttons trigger functions that are all of the same nature and only meaningful in a given situation. Use them once and you never forget.

As much as it costs me to admit it, AF was my goto mode most of the time. But there were situations when it was great to revert to manual at the press of a well placed button (more on that later).

The EVF is OK, but nothing exceptional. Compared to an A7r2 it feels like you’re looking at a slightly larger TV, but it’s still pretty much a TV and not one with particularly good colours, at that. Although I’ve never used the A7r3 or the Leica SL, my understanding is that the EVFs on those would wipe the floor with this one. Still, with one very notable exception (see gripes and negatives, below) the EVF is pleasant enough that you just forget about it in real life conditions.

Compared to the EVF, the rear screen is stellar. Super colours, sharp, bright enough for summer conditions by the Med, nothing but good news here. Next to it are 4 buttons and that’s pretty much all the clutter you’ll find on the back of the camera. The buttons let you review, delete and confirm deletion of photographs. The fourth launches the menu system. The rear screen is touch sensitive, letting you swipe through photographs, enlarge or reduce with two fingers, navigate the image folder … removing the need for more buttons, joysticks and all the other ergonomic monstrosities we have been told were good for us, in recent years. The menus are clear, intuitive and concise. Best UI ever.

The latches for the dual memory cards and various cables slide and rotate with a great feel. A lever under the rear face releases the battery. But it won’t fall out accidentally because it is held back by an invisible hook and you need to give it a small push back up to release it completely and let it slide through its tightly adjusted barrel and into your palm.

Those are all details that are irrelevant to image quality but, for the admirer of tactile quality, all of this is just pure pleasure and such a refreshing change from the cheap plastics that peel off your 3 grand camera after a year, the unfathomable design logic, the unpredictable reliability in various weather conditions … There’s no saying how many PR hands this camera has been through and, if the outside of the Pelicase is anything to judge by, a lot. But the camera could pass as brand new.

The shutter release, a big orange button, has a long throw that needs some getting used to. Half way gets the AF going, which produces more noise than I’d imagined and hoped but it’s a one pinky job to deactivate it when in silence-only situations. The noise is a high-pitched whirr reminiscent of some inkjet printers. Not really intrusive, but louder than the best 2018 DSLRs (the lenses are quite large and the glass is probably heavy, which is good as lenses designed with AF in mind so often compromise optical quality to keep the weight down and speed up).

The crowds lining up to see the X1D & XCD 3.5/30

The lack of stabilisation never is an issue, the camera is both heavy and very stable so it seems quite immune to vibrations. What did happen, though, is that I often found myself needing much higher speeds than with my FF system because of subject movement and the longer focal lengths of the X1D’s lenses. A kitten on steroids proved a perfect test for that sort of thing The AF (kind of) coped with it but, initially, my shutter speed was often too low for the 90mm lens.

Battery life is not so joyful. On a full charge, one battery would take me through one lazy day of 150+ photographs. But it’s easy to imagine a pro needing 4 or 5 of those super expensive items to get though a long session. And, as elegant as the charging system is (the lead from the charger plugs straight into the battery), a full charge takes a really long time (I’d guess over 6 hours), so said pro would need multiple chargers as well. Not ideal.

Speed. I mentioned the passing of an age that happens as you switch the camera on. Think of the camera as a laptop loading it’s OS, which is pretty much what the camera is doing. It takes a good 8 seconds to do that, not that much more than my A7r2 after a long sleep, but way too long for comfort. Mercifully, a very good workaround alleviates this in real life. Just behind the shutter release is the On/Off button. A long press will put the camera to sleep, with the long wakeup cycle to deal with. But a short press simply pauses the camera, switching off the screens but maintaining vigilance. Press that button, or the shutter release, again and the camera is operational far quicker than it takes to raise it to your eye. All good, then. The camera seems to switch from pause to Off after a long period of idleness. My battery life comments were made relative to using this pause mode most of the time.

IQ

Image Quality. That’s why you’re here, right?

Or is it?

It seems to me most reviews these days focus on Image Quantity. Pixel count, stabilisation stops, dynamic range, … You could argue that the quantitative approach gives you a standard comparison methodology that eliminates personal biases. Except it doesn’t. It really, really, doesn’t, because those numbers reveal so little of what actually allows you to digitally display or print a really impressive image. The X1D punches way above its quantitative ratings (or maybe other cameras punch way below theirs?)

Most of the images on this page are made with the Hassleblad X1D, native XCD lenses and processed in Hasselblad’s Phocus software. The defining quality for that imaging chain is refinement. There’s no ISO certified test for that but it’s what sets this camera head and shoulders above others with similar quantitative measurements. So I’ll try to break things up into subjective assessments of a few evaluation criteria that should be meaningful to fine art photographers (the natural target for this camera) : tonal range and colour management.

Troll head – Hasselblad X1D & XCD 3.5/30

Compared to my habitual camera, the most striking difference is how natural colours look. Even in very dull scenes, as above, the images rarely beg for an increase in saturation. Out of the box, they feel natural and complete.

Which is a good thing, for several reasons :

• The time gained in PP with this camera, compared to my usual process, is huge. More time shooting, less time on the computer. Happy family.
• As unparalleled as they look, the X1D’s files somewhat lose that advantage the harder you process them. It’s not that they break up or can’t handle the abuse (on the contrary, they offer far more latitude than most) but that natural tonal elegance and refinement gets lost in severe processing, particularly if you are not using Phocus for that. You end up with a merely excellent 50Mpix file rather than something slightly magical and beyond specs.

Pot of gold – Hasselblad X1D & XCD 3.5/30

Luckily, all it takes to recreate your vision is most often (either nothing or) some minimal contrast enhancement, that brings out the colours without hurting the subtlety. In those conditions, the X1D is a naturalist photographer’s dream come true.

Many other cameras on the market have great colours, I suppose, but the X1D seems utterly unflappable whatever the lighting conditions, even at very high ISO (6400, below).

Hasselblad X1D & XCD 3.2/90 @ ISO 6400

While in other systems, changing white balance can throw some colours off kilter, the X1D’s files let you play but always remain realistic and refined. Even in extreme candy mode, as in the first pictures on this page and further below

The tonal subtlety is perhaps even harder to describe in objective terms than the colours. You can see with your own eyes whether the colours feel realistic and appeal to you or not. Tonal transitions are a matter of taste. What defines those of the X1D is silkiness.

Strait out of camera and slightly underexposed, this scene looks polished and serene. Organic and subtle. It’s like a true supermodel without makeup.

Even at ISO6400, that feeling is preserved. There is so much natural detail in the shadows that you don’t feel the need to push them and everything has that organic, fluid, feel that’s so easy to lose with noisy pixels and harsh post-processing. Look at the lady’s dress in the shadows and you’ll see plenty of quantifiable noise. But it’s not ugly chroma noise and it doesn’t harm how the image conveys the light of the moment. It’s pretty obvious the development team didn’t go for the lowest measurable noise characteristics but opted for the most natural-looking noise.

And the same can be said at the other end of the lighting spectrum, where very harsh summer conditions don’t throw the camera off its rails, preserving subtle shades and colours. The sky and sunlit leaves would be pure white in many systems that measure well.

Blend the two together and you get photographs that look utterly clean and charming in difficult conditions. Sunsets shot with lesser systems give you highlight that are either pure white or look like they were coloured in with crayon. Not here and scenes with crazy dynamic range can be tackled with no sweat.

ND filter? What ND filter? Hasselblad X1D and XCD 3.5/30 lens

And before you think those files can’t handle PP, here are a few samples that have been through various stages. They are still excellent. I just feel some small percentage of the SOOC magic is taken away by the software.

La vie en rose (extreme candy mode)

La vie en N&B

Shooting envelope

My very uneducated calculations indicate that the technical choices made by Hasseblad cost you about 3 EV of shooting envelope compared to the best Sony has to offer. Both cameras are really good up to ISO 6400. The X1D lenses with their leaf shutters, are good for exposures up to 3/f (eg 1/30s is easy on a 90mm) whereas my non stabilised Sony lenses require 1/2f. 6 times more. But IBIS gives them at least 4 stops of stabilisation, giving the Sony a real-life advantage of at least 1.5 stop (although, I’m not convinced stabilised shots look quite as naturally sharp as unshaken ones).

At the other end of the scale the 1/2000s limit is easy to reach (2 stops less than the 1/8000s of the Sony and more compared to electronic shutter shenanigans), but the lenses close down more before suffering from diffraction. Make that a 1 stop advantage for the Sony. Maybe the latest generation of sensors is a tad better at high ISO as well.

So, you’re basically trading shooting envelope for image quality, right ?

Hasselblad X-1D, XCD 3.5/30, 8s handheld

Well, not so fast.

After the war for megapixels was over (is it really, though?) the race to high ISO drove me nuts because one of the major losers in that battle was the low ISO setting that allowed for long exposures. Some cameras have their base ISO at 200. You now need filters to slow things down a little. And long exposures are actually not that easy to make happen on some modern cameras. On the Sony, it requires the addition of a special app (Silent Reflections, if memory serves me well) plus 2 PhDs in engineering and masochistic torture to set it up.

Hasselblad takes a radical approach to this. Try to follow, it’s surprising in today’s tech-driven world : the shutter can open from 1/2000s to 60 minutes. That’s it. Just aim and shoot and the camera will expose, however long that takes. No special wiring, no app, no bluetooth. Imagine that, a camera that can actually photograph at night, not just boast high ISO ratings for the punters to chew on.

Several minutes exposure. Look, no apps!

A word of explanation about this image. Three, in fact.

First of all, I take this reviewing so seriously that I bought a Volvo to replace my broken car (true story). Swedish-bounced photons imaged by Swedish camera. Second, it was very dark and here’s one caveat to my praise singing: it was utterly impossible to see anything in the EVF without shining a torch at the subject. So I had to take photographs and refine the focusing on the go, by chimping. Third, the car was lit by the headlights of other cars driving by, shining through vegetation, which is what produced the stripey lighting. This isn’t an artefact of the camera

Fourth (b-roll bonus): after this session I chickened out like a little girl because of some loud noises in the nearby bushes. Wild boar? Thugs? A basilisk? No idea and I didn’t wait to find out. Something tells me the Swede are probably better outdoorsmen than me

Pascal, in his Volvo, scared senseless by a cat

Anyhoo, shooting envelope is definitely displaced compared to most smaller-format digital cameras. But it’s certainly not inferior. In fact, the X1D feels like a tool you could take anywhere to tackle the toughest lighting situations. Add to that good weather sealing and a reassuring ruggedness … and you have yourself a very versatile friend.

Peripheral photography

So, smooth tonal transitions, incredible glass and superb colour management, hand in hand with a clever modern take on old-school shooting. The list of justifications for sending your children to work in a mine to finance the X1D is getting longer. And there’s one more that really matters.

They say that a great HiFi system shines not during the notes it plays but in-between them. The air, the damping, the quality of silence … all contribute to that you are there experience many are ready to pay fortunes for (a very different and more natural experience than the more spectacular and, ultimately, boring, they are here experience more often offered).

It’s a similar story with this camera. It boast excellent IQ in normal light, as show before. But it’s even more impressive in difficult light, when the transition between information and no information is critical for a natural look.

This very unremarkable photograph (one of my first, stranded at home and a little intimidated) shows how well the transition from OK to pure white is handled. And the same goes for blacks. In center-weighted mode, the exposure is exceptionally good. This would make a fantastic street photography tool as you can be sure the subject will be perfectly exposed while the rest of the frame is dismissed into whatever extremes are needed with great elegance. The same shot with my Sony tried to preserve the highlights, sending the main subject into noisy shadows.

As great as the camera is in normal conditions, it’s really when the going gets tough (and, therefore, interesting) that the X1D rises above the full frame hoi polloi. I was expecting the huge dynamic range to result in dull RAW files needing a lot of doctoring (the first Leica Monochrome got a bad rap for that, for example) but that couldn’t be less true. Out of the box, images feel full of life and give you a very real sense of the harsh lighting conditions. You can photograph a scorching sun and it will shine through to the final print.

And, in that lighting torture test in which the frame contains zones with very different lighting conditions (intensity or white balance), which can throw my Sony into a mustardy tantrum, all is again luxury, calm and voluptuousness with the X1D.

Gripes and negatives

Sure thing. The X1D is far from perfect.

Let’s begins with a benign rant: lenses without an aperture ring? Really? What can I say, a thumb wheel is one thing, an aperture ring is another, better, one. Much better. In a camera that does so much to free the photographer’s brain of trivial labour, this is a let down. Using the PASM wheel is easy enough, but I personally would be better off with aperture rings.

Then, there’s the ecosystem. It’s way too polite for its own good. It’s all very well to provide tools for professionals that behave perfectly predictably but not everyone is a product photographer desiring accuracy above all else. Brad Pitt is a pro, but he’ll belch with the best of them. Not every film is House of flying daggers. Fight club is great as well. But try as you may to make the Hasselblad imaging chain (lenses, X1D, Phocus) you’ll always be very polite. Not everyone will like that. Happily, a super simple export will send your TIFF files to Photoshop where you can pile on photographic misdemeanors. And there’s also the underground way of adapted lenses.

Hasselblad X1D, XCD 3.5/30, image processed in Phocus – about as bad boy as I could get.

Also troublesome to me is that the prophecy that great colour and tonal subtlety would inevitably guarantee great B&W photographs hasn’t been born out in reality for me. A system I can’t produce great B&W photographs with is a non-starter for me. As pleasant and excellent as Phocus is to use in colour, the monochrome mode is far too limited (3 colour sliders and 3 filter presets). Thankfully other software can be used for this and the files work excellently. Most of those on this page were processed in ubiquitous LightRoom. Stay tuned for more on how that turned out.

Then, there’s the issue of night use. Files made at night using long exposures are peerless in my (limited) experience. The lenses produce incredibly pinpoint stars right to the corners, the sensor’s amps are obviously super quiet, the signal processing seems very clean and non destructive, the battery doesn’t seem to be drained by super long exposures. Excellent all through.

But the camera … not so.

For one thing, the EVF is completely black, making it impossible to focus (as described above). And the PASM ring is unreadable (although you can get info in the EVF). Given how desirable the X1D would be for astrophotography, here are some suggestions : (1) provide a red mode for both the EVF and rear screen so as not to destroy night vision (2) amplify the life out of that signal so we can see something in the EVF, even if it is a ghastly pixelated mess (3) add a stop to the PASM wheel so we can count which position we are, (4) add an infinity stop (or some indication of infinity focus) to the lenses.

Bugs ? Hardly. Other reviews had led me to believe this camera was an unreliable mess. Definitely not so. I experience a quirk with the EVF that didn’t turn on, once or twice (just move the camera away and back again). And on a few occasions, my very pretty cheekbones moved the AF focus point on the rear screen. That’s it. Even when I was deliberately rude to the camera, switching it off before it had finished loading, inserting and removing cards while on …, not a single glitch. All very boring and normal

Summing up

If slow food brings positive associations to your mind, think of the X1D that way (if not, you must be pretty bored by now). Slow photography at its very best.

Dawn in the Sainte-Baume. Hasselblad X1D & XCD 3.5/30mm

When you press the shutter release, there is no lag. The camera isn’t slow in use, it’s instant and positive. And, in AF (provided you don’t shoot fast-moving targets) plus auto-ISO mode, it’s as set-and-forget as your average point and shoot. Wanna be lazy? No worries here.

So what do I mean by slow photography ?

Simply that it really rewards thinking and taking a deliberate approach towards photography. One in which you contemplate a subject and think about how you can best serve it, find the best settings to create an image that represents how you feel about the scene. It’s a camera for people who feel more than a camera for people who think. For people who get high on photography, not technology (EVF and rear-screen excepted, technology is hidden from view, this might as well be a film camera), there’s little to touch it.

Technically, its performance is impressive. Shoot in darkness from a dancing boat and nail the photo. Easy.

But it’s really much more than that because it lets you experiment with variations without the image ever breaking down whatever the lighting conditions or the flow ever getting in the way of your thought process. This either means a lot to you or makes your eyes glaze over. That’s how you know whether that camera is for you or not. To me, the exquisite image quality is just icing on the cake.

Price

Never discuss context. Price is all about context.

A Fuji X-H1 will cost you a third of the cost and deliver a similarly pleasing shooting experience with great results.

Every two years, I take a huge hit on my new Sony camera. Over 3 iterations, this amounts to the current discounted price of an X1D (which will probably keep its value much better).

A very complete Sony system covering sports, wildlife and plenty other subjects can be had for less than the X1D body alone costs.

The X1D delivers the same image quality (and is far simpler use) as an Alpa + Phase combo costing 3 times as much.

You only can decide whether this camera is cheap or expensive.

I believe it’s extremely well positioned for what it has to offer in terms of fulfilment to an amateur photographer (pros have their own ROI considerations that elude me). Your mileage may indicate otherwise.

Conclusion. Should you buy one?

My guess is … NO!

If you know what this camera is all about, love its value proposition –  but haven’t bought one yet, it’s probably because – like me – you can’t afford it, even as a long-term proposition. End of story.

If you know what this camera is all about and aren’t drawn to its value proposition, you won’t buy it either. End of story.

Hasselblad X-1D, XCD 3.5/30, processed in Phocus – under harsh summer sun in Provence. SOOC.

But …

If you’ve been sitting on the fence, drawn by the IQ promise but repulsed by the element of risk described elsewhere (bugs, costs ..), you really owe it to yourself to go and try this camera. It isn’t one you can get to know and love in a matter of minutes. If you’re in the target, however, chances are you will fall in love when you really start using it. You have been warned. At the moment, you can rent the camera and lenses and get a refund if you buy the camera within 14 days following the rental period. For us Europeans who can’t return gear after purchase, that’s a sweet deal.

If the proposition of a superbly built camera that delivers an addictive mix of tog-centric ergonomics and astounding image quality, while encouraging you to be deliberate and focused (ie a better photographer), appeals to you, look no further. You are home at last.

Maybe a better question would be “should you buy one now” ? Recent price drops have priced the X1D more in line with the most high-end 35mm DSLRs. That’s tempting. But that might also indicate that an new, improved, version is close on the horizon, a camera in line with rumoured new generation of small medium formats based on a more modern Sony sensor. Something with better battery life, a 100Mpix BSI sensor, DJI-infused stabilising technology, faster, onboard AF and (yes, the world seems to insist relentlessly on this pointless feature) better video. Who knows what else ?

Hasselblad X1D & XCD 3.5/30

As tempting as that is, there are several counter arguments.

First, in my limited experience, you don’t need stabilisation! Put the camera in Auto ISO and the shake-free leaf shutters make for a sharp and wonderfully fuss-free experience.

Second, some have reported that IBIS actually hurts IQ at certain speeds. A simpler camera is always a better camera. And avoiding a problem (shake) is better than fixing it.

Third, what makes this camera’s IQ isn’t its resolution but its smooth tones and accurate colours. Double the resolution and you’ll make Intel and Nvidia shares skyrocket. Will it make the camera a better image maker? It could, but it might not. This first generation X1D seems to have hit a sweet spot that isn’t lacking in resolution (Ming Thein has printed X1D files over 60 inches, that’s usually enough for most people) and has beauty and refinement in spades.

Fourth, one mouth-watering aspect of this camera is the ability, via adapters, to use vintage and third-party lenses with very interesting rendering. In particular my beloved Zeiss C-Sonnar 1.5/50 ZM and Otus 85, the lovely Leica Elmarit-R 2.8/90, the oldy-goldy Hasselblad Zeiss Sonnar CF 150/4 and many more. Chances are many of these lenses will struggle with the smaller pixels of the 100Mpix version and you’ll end up downresing.

Fifth is historical significance. Compare the original Countach to the revamped monstrosities Lamborghini released after it. All were better technically than the original but not as desirable. That’s not to say Hasselblad will add horrible spoilers everywhere (although horrible invasion of video is likely) but there’s always something special about “the original”. And this is it! This camera marks the first step of a legendary pro brand into a new world of amateur Nirvana. As it stands, the X1D is an exquisite gastronomic dish in a fast-food world. And that could be its undoing, because so many people chose convenience or shallow luxury over true quality, and the big money is in Instagram imagery. So it wouldn’t be all that surprising to see future versions err towards what the mass market has been taught to expect : more tech, more codecs, more buttons. If you’re in the market, grab one now.

Hasselblad X1D & XCD 3.2/90 (heavy crop and not very good focus)

At any rate, this is a wonderful camera. Compared to my usual gear, I shot far fewer photographs, with a higher keeper rate, felt more relaxed, and spent far less time in post-processing. A win-win-win.

Purely because they could, digital photography majors pushed cameras towards faster operations, faster focusing, faster shutter speeds … as if the technical performance in itself was an argument for buying them. Most did of course. And that is the difference between a chef smoking locally fished salmon with locally picked herbs and a carefully honed recipe in an Ontario forest and your local McDonald’s. Fast, fun and convenient has worldwide appeal. But real foodies will always tell the difference.

That being said, the X1D is certainly not for everyone. The wildlife photographer thriving at 20 fps with a 500/4 megalens at ISO 25600 might find the X1D lacking. The technophile more interested in specs than photography, well, probably hasn’t read this far. But the X1D won’t really work for him/her either. The X1D is a polarizing camera and it’s an utter shame that more aren’t. We want and need tools designed for a certain set of shooting scenarios, and bad at others. Instead, we are being served jack-of-all trade techno-messes that provide as little pleasure as driving today’s slew of a jack-of-all-trades car.

Some have criticised the X1D for that specialisation. For what are essentially failures on paper, such as the lethargic start-up time. The story has often been “great IQ, shame about the clunkiness”. Those guys obviously haven’t been out shooting with the camera, haven’t bonded with it or tried to understand its use case. To those guys, I’ll just reply, using the immortal words of Captain Malcolm Reynolds “my days of not taking you seriously have definitely come to a middle”.

Will I end up putting my money where my mouth is? Unfortunately not just yet, but that’s purely contextual. With another Swede company vacuuming my cash for a car, the September feeding of our government’s extravagant spending and payment of shockingly expensive British tuition for my daughter, all in rapid succession, my hobby budget is looking leaner than a Toyota factory line.

It’s not for lack of wanting, though. And it’s definitely more an au revoir than an adieu.

What’s next?

Fairy tales only happen in movies. The X1D is gone.

And the great guys at Novoflex did their very best to ship me a set of adapters to try out adapted lenses, but that couldn’t be arranged in time. Next time (hint hint, Hasselblad ? )

What’s that Philip? You want to send it to me again when I have the adapters available?

But two shorter articles are coming:

• One quick update about the two lenses used over this 10-day period.
• The other about using the Lightroom ecosystem in conjunction with Hasselblad’s Phocus.

So, stay tuned and thanks for reading. What are your thoughts so far ? I have tried to provide a range of topics, subjects, lighting conditions for you to examine but please shoot your questions below and I will do my best to answer them to the best of my limited knowledge.

Posted on DearSusan by pascaljappy.

A full SBH – the very thought made my iPhone wobble

I thought I’d done with zoom lenses some years ago, when the Sony NEX showed me just how many quality images I could shoot with manual prime lenses and a little more personal application. I’m convinced that this simple symbiosis had a radical impact on my photography and so, was determined to stay on the prime path permanently.

The Kogelberg at dawn

Edinburgh

Edinburgh

Silhouettes, Amsterdam

The Kogelberg at dawn

Until a recent trip to Eastern Europe, with two cameras and a collection of primes bumping against my back. Despite their individual neoprene foam mittens, the lenses were (truth to tell) a bloody nuisance, rattling around in my surprisingly heavy backpack.

Don’t.

I just know you’re about to ask why I simply don’t use a real camera bag. If you’ve read any of the InSight guides, you’ll already know the answer. I won’t walk the streets carrying a massive, balky and bulky bag advertising its contents to every neer-do-well within mugging distance. I want to be discreet. It also helps in not scaring off my subjects.

Anyway, that’s a discussion for another time. On this occasion, with several European countries on my itinerary for 2018, I took the plunge and bought Fuji’s 16-55 f2.8 zoom, intending to leave the four prime focal lengths it covers for me (16, 23, 35, 56), at home.

When I bought the 56mm f1.2, I was surprised at how big it was in comparison to the other primes I already owned. The 16-55 dwarfs it. It’s a real Standard British Handful (SBH), an appellation usually applied to something softer and in many respects considerably more enjoyable.

Anyway, the SBH is also heavy and while I was planning on this being a one body, one lens journey, I did have some second thoughts, but by then I was financially committed.

Edinburgh reflection

Scottish hedgerow

Scotland in the summer

Abandoned, Grantown-on-Spey

Abandoned, Grantown-on-Spey

Covering an equivalent range to Nikon’s wonderful 24-70, it’s definitely smaller and possibly lighter too. Performance-wise, it’s taken me a good couple of thousand frames to begin to feel at ease with it, especially becoming accustomed to it’s heft on the X-H1 body to which it’s generally mated.

The very tight zoom mechanism is easing and I’m finding the mental muscle memory to work with its focussing speed and slightly-more-than-prime depth of field. Actually, it’s quite demanding, which is good, because I really don’t want to backslide and lose the shot discipline I’ve built up in more recent times.

Issues? Very few. Like with their primes, Fuji’s petal lens hood for the 16-55 is ridiculously large and intrusive and if I were intent on using it more than occasionally, I’d definitely find something significantly less bonkers.

Initially, I shot in and around Amsterdam, London and Edinburgh and often found myself wanting to be wider than its widest at 16mm – curious, because I generally find the 16mm prime too wide for street shooting. At the other end, I occasionally hankered for the 90mm f2, but not enough to justify carrying another heavy prime.

After the rain

St Vincent’s Crescent, Glasgow

St Vincent’s Crescent, Glasgow

After the rain

St Vincent’s Crescent, Glasgow

Once back in South Africa, I’ve been able to spend time with the SBH in the landscape, where it really does perform well, especially with the X-H1’s IBIS.

Rendering-wise, the SBH is excellent. The level of detail in these dawn/sunrise shots is well up to par, even at higher ISOs – typically Fuji colour which makes me very happy.

Yup. It’s definitely a keeper. Maybe, I’ll write and ask Santa for bigger hands…

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St Vincent’s Crescent, Glasgow

Kogel Bay at sunrise

Posted on DearSusan by paulperton.

I thought it was high time that I continued my tale of Leica M9 ownership…

If I jumped from a bridge, would you follow?

It’s been nearly a year now (where has this expletive deleted year gone?!) since I took the plunge and ponied up Sony A7Rii money for something that in functionality terms was akin to my late father’s Pentax K1000 (which I’ve had since I was 15)

The Thousand Year Stare

However modern and advanced cameras have become, I personally try to remind myself that we’re not doing anything new with them, simply walking the path that has been walked before

My previous Dear Susan featured tales on my acquisition (with hopefully self explanatory titles), can be read on the following links

Never Meet Your Heroes?  ¦  The M9 Dream Four Months On  ¦  Further Adventures in La La Land

Then the fog rolled in from the sea..

To save me completely eroding your tolerance to foggy verbosity, or TL:DR (thanks Paul) before getting into this latest instalment, my most recent article ended with

And that’s really the point of this article, the continuation of my M9 story isn’t about the camera at all. It’s about shooting pictures, feeling compelled to pick something up and use it, to look to yourself for the solutions to the challenges of the shot.

I really love what you’ve done with the place, Ikea?

Great new cameras arrive each year, that doesn’t suddenly make ruins of the old ones

In many ways a year is a long time for a camera, one year after getting my first Fujiflim X-Pro1, I’d long since flipped it for an X-T1. A year after getting the X-Pro2, I supplemented it with another X-Pro1, because I missed the look of the files that the original X-Trans sensor produces…

…..if one’s pockets were bottomless, and one’s desire for new gear was completely avarice, then a new all singing, all dancing camera a year would be easily doable.

Could I interest sir in a newer car?

But I’ve more or less spent the entire year with the M9. Yes. I’m surprised too.

Out of the Darkness and Into the Light

Although I’ve had my face pressed up against the sweet Leica store window a few times (until the price of a 50mm ASPH Summilux comes a little too sharply into focus), I haven’t seriously considered adding glass or upgrading to the M10.

I’ve found myself  content with my choice of M9p, 50 ‘cron and 35 and 90 Summarits. If you recall… I also added a 7Artisans 50mm F1.1, which secondhand cost about as much as it does to fill the tank of a BMW two and a half times (according to google, I don’t own a car)

A Lazy Day

No, all I’ve really done with the Leica is take pictures with it… I haven’t found myself online bitching about it’s lack of second card slot, lack of 4k video or woeful auto focus    I haven’t been pounding the Facebook groups and forums demanding additional features via firmware or demanding lens configurations that don’t exist.

I’ve just been pointing it at things and pressing the shutter. Shame on me, I mean how lazy is that?

Youth and Opulence

The Class

For this past year, the M9 has basically just done it’s job of taking pictures, leaving me with nothing to worry about except focus, exposure and timing. This is good, those things keep my brain pretty busy without the need to occupy my time with the menu settings that automate those things for me.

Fear, Love and Loathing

On paper, the M9 is woeful. 8 stops of DR and manual focus only. Out in the field it’s actually quite surprising just how often that that’s enough.

Peace and Quiet

My cheap-ass Summarit lenses really do an admirable job and the ‘cron is a solid performer.

Many of the accolades that make an M an M are now shared by many other cameras… size, discretion and IQ, but this doesn’t suddenly mean that the M can’t do those things any more.

Cold and Happy

To put my money where my mouth was I took the M (and only the M) on holiday… The first vacation I’d ever been on with my 6 year old daughter I really wanted keeper snaps, I needed a camera I could take anywhere, in any light and come home with images…

…and you know what?

Happy in Solitude

The M9 managed it. I got what I wanted with it… sure MUCH care was taken with it on the beach, sure it was kept away from the inevitable rain shower, in either scenario only taken out for the shots I wanted. But still, there was no barrier to using it.

In fact I was reminded of childhood memories of my dear Dad and that K1000, which after all wasn’t weather sealed, yet got used in many places with the necessary care and attention.

Vigo Street Scenes

The Crass

For reasons that it’s not appropriate to go into here, I decided that a certain someone in the peripheral of my life need not have advertised to her that I owned a Leica (more none of her fucking business rather than any wish to be deceitful)

Vacation Destination

This came to head when on the holiday a friendly chap came up to us to comment hey nice Leica, which one is it?

I’ve since been asked is that the monochrom as well.

This never happened with the Fujis and I’m not sure I like it (ok I am sure and I don’t.)

City Horse

Fast Glass

Swing

The 7artisans has been a bit of a revelation to be honest… It stayed on the camera waaaaay longer than I thought it would, as FF and F1.1 is quite an addictive look after all those years shooting APSC Fujifilm. Sure Fujifilm’s XF56 is a far better optic, but 50mm on FF means you don’t have to cross the street to get the framing you want 

Impatience

The F1.1 lens is a big score for the M9 as it really helped remove the one true barrier to using the Leica as I would my modern cameras… nigh on two more stops than the ‘cron means that I can take the M9 to places and not have to employ 1950s era camera shutter speeds

…and into the Sea

I’m not sure I really want to recommend the 7artisans… if you’ve got the cash buy the Noctilux or the Summilux – sincerely go for it, to rich for you? Then buy one of the fast fifties from Zeiss or Voigtländer. My HUNCH is that any of these will give you nicer IQ…..

End of the Night

But I’m very much on a budget and the price I paid for my secondhand 7artisans was too low to pass over. It’s big, it’s heavy, it’s surprisingly well made with a well damped focus ring (makes the 35mm 2.4 Summarit feel like shit frankly) and a clucking annoying clickless aperture ring. The Blue Peter double sided sticky tape, stick on focus tab is a bit naff (it’s still there though) but at least it HAS a focus tab (I’m looking at you £1900 Summicron). The native barrel distortion could be worse (or indeed better if you’re a glass half empty sorta person) and it vignettes quite badly wide open.

End of the Day

The pièce de résistance of the 7artisans is that you can adjust the focus of the lens to be aligned with your rangefinder (Leica you need to copy this) which is a far better solution than shipping all of your stuff over to Wetzlar and waiting for ages to get it all back.

Flare is readily achievable (just like on the ‘cron), you can get colour shifts at the corners (which you won’t on a ‘cron) and the resultant images certainly do not have that bite that you’d normally expect with a CCD sensor camera and genuine Leica optic…. equally though it’s very fast, made with brass and brand new costs Fujifilm XF35 F2WR money… you pays your pennies, you makes your choices.

Yup, the Leica M9 journey: class, crass or fast glass, it’s not a free trip, but it’s one I’m continuing to enjoy. A lot. Eye of the beholder it may be… but there’s still something to be said for the look of a FF CCD image, compared to what I personally find to be a more ethereal look from most modern CMOS cameras.

Beach Life

I sincerely hope that those in internet land end up with the camera that they so desperately seem to need with the AF, the video, the size, the shape, the lens options, the touchscreen, the wifi, the quadruple SD card slots that aren’t XQD. I hope this camera is syndicated across all of the brands, so that all the Fuluminicanony folks are happy. I sincerely hope that those who know what they truly need and can separate that from what’s only nice to have, are able to make an informed purchase from the plethora of highly advanced options that are available to them.

Lost in Their Own Worlds

But for me… well contrary to Leica fanboi rhetoric – less is actually less, it really is. But being frugal can have its own rewards.

(Yes, it’s not lost on me that the M10P has wifi, a clip on EVF, a phone app and a touchscreen, so I really am living in all kinds of yesteryear here)

Close the Door and Step Outside

I’m sure sooner or later my M9 will have some sort of problem, and I’ll deeply lament the cost of fix or replacement….

….But let’s not jinx it, let’s enjoy the moment.

Peer Pressure

All images shot with the Leica M9P using a combination of the 35/2.4 Summarit, the 50 Summicron, the 90/2.5 Summarit and an awful lot of these are the 7Artisans 50/1.1

If you’ll pardon my indulgence and are inclined to do so, you can see more of my images on my instagram

Posted on DearSusan by Adam Bonn.

I must be getting rusty. As the time comes to write a review of the Zeiss Loxia 25 that co-author Philippe so kindly lent me for a 2-week trip to Japan, words fail me. The thing is, there isn’t a lot to say about this lens, if you stick to the conventional review process. It isn’t a lens you can dissect into technical aspects to get a good feel of its use, performance or significance. I’d rather take a different route here.

To me, the Loxia 25 is a brave attempt by Zeiss to make the photo world a better one. The hopeful cynic in me rather thinks that Zeiss are serving a niche that must be juicy enough to justify the effort. And the romantic in me finds that very reassuring, in a hobby so heavily dominated by technical specification and performance at the expense of beauty.

That I have so little to say about the Loxia 25, is largely because what makes this lens so essential is purely subjective. I’ll sum it up in a couple of sentences and a couple of photographs. Feel free to stick around for the slightly more technical rest, if that intro corresponds to your worldview

Over the years, my love/hate relationship with my Sony bodies has fueled a strong motivation to look elsewhere for my photographic toolkit. Great performance on the one side marred by ergonomic lunacy and subpar (to put it very politely) colour management, on the other. While the Loxia range as a whole does sprinkle a little ergonomic fairy dust on its Sony hosts, what sets this 25mm f/2.4 apart for me is the almost complete cure of the chromatic vagueries of those cameras. A significant feat in my book.

I know it isn’t the case, but it looks like the Loxia 25 not only peels off a layer of yellow-green gunk from the sensor, but also extends its gamut in multiple directions. How? No idea. But the fact is that some synergy between my Sony A7r2 and the Zeiss Loxia 25 has divided my post-processing time by a significant amount and delivered results I didn’t think possible with that body.

Truth be told, my other lenses are all adapted lenses. And I’m pretty sure that native lenses do a better job of matching the Sony’s signature. But, having owned, reviewed or casually used quite a few of these native lenses, I’ve yet to fall in love with any of them! What makes this Loxia so special to me is that it brings subjective beauty to objective matching.

In the rest of this review, I won’t go into my usual technical breakdown of performance. Mainly because this has become a pointless exercise, now that almost any new lens on the market will give you enough resolution to create indecently large prints. But also because I was having so much fun making real pics that I kind of forgot to take actual test shots … some reviewer, right

What I’ll do instead is try to break down the very high perceived quality of this lens into factual compartments with photographs to support each point. Ergonomics and build quality are usual Loxia, which is to say very nice, so I won’t go deeper into that aspect.

Colours

Let’s start with this lens’ most prominent asset.

Foliage is the usual downfall of the Sony with my other lenses. Greens very often take on a sickly yellow-orange cast, particularly in difficult light. No such problem here. And the subtlety of hues ranging from fresh green to elderly brown green is really very satisfying after years of mustardy landscapes that took ages to correct in PP.

Interestingly, many of the photographs on this page have had their saturation reduced in Capture One. Which is very rare for me. On some of these, I am finding the same level of beautiful neutrality as what the XCD 30mm offered on the Hasselblad X1D (complete review here).

That’s not to say the A7r2 is suddenly morphed into an X1D, but it does take a large leap in the right direction. And the good news remains true in varied light conditions and post-processing scenarios.

Sunstars

They look best at f/4 but work at other apertures. You get 10 spikes for your money. And they tend to be sharper and more beautiful on small sources of light than on very large ones. This is a lens that can turn specular reflections on water into a royal diamond necklace.

Transparency

If there’s an ISO standard for grading transparency, I’m not aware of it (which should come as no surprise to regular readers ) To me, transparency is the ability to faithfully recreate an atmosphere rather than impose a strong visual signature on it. This implies good resistance to flare, lack of chromatic and spherical aberrations, realistic 3D (including a linear shift from sharp to out of focus) and high colour and tone fidelity. All is usually well, even with mediocre lenses, when the sun is out and the scene is simple. But take your glass out during an overcast evening and make pictures of scenes with subtle shadings and you’ll soon sort out the men from the boys. It’s easy to produce a murky mess in those situations. Much harder to produce images with subtle hues and perfect 3D placement every little detail.

Here, the atmosphere is both beautiful and very true to life. The lens doesn’t appear artificially sharp, like some others in that focal range, nor does it feel mushy or overwhelmed by noise.

3D precision? You tell me As for chromatic aberration, it’s kept to an impressive minimum. While I don’t think Zeiss claim this to be an APO lens, it sure acts like one in most scenarios. In the scene below, shot at full aperture, only traces can be found around the wires cutting through the neon lights at top right.

Loxia 25 chromatic aberration at 100%

Contrast and sharpness

This may well be the most controversial aspect of this lens. While it is extremely sharp, it doesn’t look it. Rendering is soft and delicate by default. Compared to the much loved 55/1.8 (which I find overly aggressive) or the harsh Loxia 35, this is as mellow as port by the fireplace. To be honest, I’ve not had the time or inclination to test the lens extensively at multiple apertures. But I’m pretty sure that would be an exercise in futility with little bearing on the reality of making beautiful prints with this lens.

Here’s a full size jpg you can download to judge for yourself. It hasn’t been sharpened but I adjusted exposure. Please note that, for such a short focal length, the Loxia has a very shallow depth of field, even at f/5.6. The focus here is on the front buildings. So the background is actually out of focus, not unsharp

Output from the Loxia 25 simply looks refined. This level of refinement comes from an ability to resolve extremely fine detail. In MTF curves (measured, not calculated, as James Bond would require, were he a photo superhero) this is evident when the lower curve (that’s 40lp/mm, not 30) doesn’t fall down to the bottom of the graph. Most modern lenses bunch the first 3 curves (5 lp/mm, 10 lp/mm and 20 lp/mm) at the top. The 20 lp/mm struggles not to drift too far down the page and the 4th curve is really in the low figures. This gives a sharp look at lower magnifications but can’t convey the tiny details that create the subtle tones and 3D cues. As you can see from the (measured) Loxia 25 MTF curves, the worst case scenario (f/2.4 in the very corners) is above 40% contrast. The f/5.6 curve is in superlens territory. Also the curves are smooth with no sudden dips or deviations. Just looking at those tells you how well-behaved the lens will be in the field.

That the rendering is subtle and soft rather than aggressive and brash is a design choice that proves what niche Zeiss are targeting with the lens. And it certainly doesn’t mean photographs can’t be made to look super sharp in post processing, if that’s what you dig. But overall, this design is geared more towards atmosphere and ambiance than short term wow effect. To my eyes, it sits in between the Loxia 21 and the Loxia 85 (also a brilliant lens for colour subtlety but a tad more timid than the Loxia 25).

Bokeh

Bo-ke, the subjective quality of the unsharp areas of the photograph. Well, no 25mm f/2.4 lens is going to be a world leader in shallow depth of field, but the Loxia is remarkably shallow compared to, say, my Distagon 2/25 ZE.2 at equal apertures. So, how does this look in real life ?

Well, first of all, let’s keep it real. On any mid or long distance subject, the background is only going to look less sharp, not strongly out of focus. See above. It is only in situations where you are shooting at full aperture and close to minimal distance that you will throw the rest of the image into any significant measure of blur.

And, when you do, the background looks creamy smooth but remains very present. This is not a lens that makes out of focus areas vanish into a low contrast cappuccino. The background always sticks around to be a part of the story.

Negatives ?

A few, actually.

Mainly: I misfocused here and there.

• The automatic magnification of the view triggered by rotating the focusing ring is really pleasant, but it only enlarges 5x and you need to manually select the higher magnification setting to get best results systematically. You’d expect 5x to be perfect for such a short focal length but I’m not sure how accurate the focus assist tool is at that magnification, whereas it’s 100% reliable at 12,5x. That’s body related, but since this lens can’t be evaluated separately from the body, it’s worth noting.
• Even so, that speculative attack on the A7r2’s focus peaking accuracy isn’t enough to explain the various misses, as there is some very slight field curvature present so the focus and recompose technique may lead to misfocus due to the lens itself, not the body.
• Finally, I’m not 100% certain but feel the lens exhibits some minor focus shift, which makes it difficult to extract the very best performance out of it in low light.

All in all, not a biggie, but I did get a handful of duds out of roughly 1500 test shots.

Also, the lens cap is … well, really subpar. Sorry Zeiss. You should not have to scramble to attach the cap to the lens and, at that price level, the feel of the cap just isn’t on the same level as the rest of the lens (although it is a lot better on the Loxia range than on my ZM lenses). It’s a small thing, but small things are what matter in a luxury brand.

Optically, there’s not a lot to criticise. For some, the slightly soft default rendering could be an acquired taste but files respond well to sharpening and resolution is extremely high. This is a lens that preserves the data and lets you deal with it in PP rather than force a look upon the user.

If anything, and to be very picky, I’d cite distortion as a minor irk. It’s very minimal but never seems to correct perfectly well in Capture One. Is there a tiny wave there? I’m not sure. It’s invisible 99% of the time but for those exacting architectural shots, getting everything straight may be a smidgen more difficult than you’d hope for.

Conclusion

There’s a universal truth in marketing : it’s easier to sell pain killers than to sell fruit. Easier to sell the good people what they desperately think they want than to sell them what’s good for them. In recent years, the photographic market has turned into a display of technology and performance-on-paper in which the consumer has been educated to believe that more is better than good and crave technology over subjective optical quality. That getting the shot is more important than creating the shot.

f/1.4 is supposed to be better than f/2.4. AF is supposed to be better than manual focus. Fast AF is supposed to be better than slow AF. Cheaper is supposed to be better than expensive. Buttons everywhere are the new normal, regardless of the fact that 99.99% of the value of the lens is in its optical prowess and all of the above are largely detrimental to it.

The Loxia 25 is the sort of landmark anomaly that happens when you put aside the dominating market rules (a smart move, given how badly the market is performing as a whole) and just design for quality. Manual focus, easy to use, crisp, enjoyable and oh so lovely a photon bender. I’m not suggesting all lenses should be built on this model, other togs have different needs (heck, co-author Adam recently demonstrated what fabulous photographs can be made with a 7Artisans lens that is almost the antithesis of this Loxia 25), but I certainly am very grateful that it exists at all.

Compact, precise, exquisite, it is a light saber in an age of blasters.

Some years ago, Zeiss developed pivotal software that enabled them to simulate the rendering of a lens before building it, based on its optical formula. Ever since, the company has been pushing out winner after winner. In a market now dominated by the single metric of the MTF  (the photo equivalent of the 0-60 figures for a car) and often sterile looks, this provides a middle ground between the soulless modern trend and the flawed but yummy best lenses of old. It delivers photographs that look good straight out of the box and need very little or no post processing, but also respond well to personal interpretation thanks to the richness of their data contents.

A lot of this has to do with the high quality files the Sony body provides when the conditions are ideal and I think this lens’ greatest merit is that it bonds so perfectly with the Sony that said conditions are always shiny. Anyone familiar with HiFi will know how two great components can complement or fight one another. The A7r2 and Loxia 25 are one copacetic happy marriage that never disappoints.

As I understand it, the Loxia 25 can be declicked for video use. Now, I wouldn’t recognise a video camera if it bit me on the arse, but still feel very confident that video users would be extremely happy with the level of visual refinement on offer here!

That the lens does in fact produce the high levels of quantitative performance expected of today’s offerings, and more, merely seems to be an inconsequential side product of a search for a much deeper and much more meaningful perfection, not only in isolation but mated to its host camera.

Kudos Zeiss. The Loxia 25/2.4 sure is a keeper !!

Posted on DearSusan by pascaljappy.

Milvus 50/1.4

How things change in 12 months! I started writing this article in October 2017 and didn’t get around to finishing it. 2018 text is in italics.

Milvus 35/1.4

Whats in my Bag?

Well, that depends greatly on what I’m shooting, which pretty much goes for all of us I presume, I do know a few people who take every piece of gear to every shoot just in case!

Milvus 35/1.4

Milvus 21/2.8

If it’s a street walk the Nikon D4S is my choice. I just love the ergonomics of this camera which are outstanding and usually just one lens, the Zeiss Milvus 1.4/35. 

I find now that I notice the weight of gear I carry around more, getting older does have its drawbacks.  The D4s is still a favourite ergonomic’s are outstanding, however now my go to is the Nikon D850 and Zeiss Milvus 1.4/50 it saves about 1 kg.

Milvus 21/2.8

If versatility is required I will use the Nikon 2.8/24 -70. One body and one lens uses a smaller bag, a Lowepro Top Loader Pro 75 AW 11. This is the only bag I have been able to find that is compact and will accommodate a DSLR with battery grip or pro body with built-in grip. Surprisingly it will accommodate either the 2.8/ 70 – 200  or 4.5-5.6/80 – 400 on the body!

D4s with 80 – 400

The 2.8/24 -70 is being used less and less these days, I’ve been travelling since late July and have only used it on one occasion for 9 frames! Some will think this is sacrilege but I  find its IQ lacking when compared to the Zeiss primes.

Milvus 35/1.4

A full-blown Landscape/Seascape shoot, the Nikon D810 (with battery grip and Kirk Arco Swiss Bracket, Zeiss Milvus 2.8/21,  the Zeiss Milvus 1.4/35, Zeiss Milvus 1.4/50, Nikon 1.8/85 which I like to use if I do panoramas. Siru Tripod T2205X and Ball Head. NISI Filter kit which includes, Grad Filter (3 and 4 stops) ND 6 Stop and 10 Stop and Circular Polariser, Sunway Foto Pano Rail. Pixel Cordless remote release. All this gear fits nicely into a Lowepro Pro Runner BP 450 AW 11. This is also my bag of choice when I travel as it will also accommodate 15” laptop and Wacom Tablet Medium in addition to the aforementioned body and lens and associated cables, chargers and drives etc. All loaded, it does exceed airlines carry on weight limits! To date I’ve not been challenged. The tripod is light but sturdy it will handle the D4S and the 80-400, it folds down and can be placed in a carry on bag for airline travel.

The Milvus Family

Pano Milvus 135/2

Milvus 21/2.8

Milvus 50/1.4

The Nikon 810 has been replaced by the D850 if you are interested you can read #739. An Acute Attack of GAS – Sony A7R111/Nikon D850. The only other change is I have replaced the Nikon 1.8/85 with Milvus 2/135

Milvus 135/2

Milvus 135/2

Usually for a Landscape/Seascape shoot where I’ve been before I’ll only take  the 810 and 2 lens, focal lengths vary depending upon the place. Filters, Tripod and Trigger, these fit nicely into a “ Crumpler 7 Million Dollar Home”

Again the 810 is replaced by the 850.

Milvus 50/1.4

Milvus 35/1.4

Milvus 35/1.4

Camera straps. Now this will open up the discussion, I use a Peak Design wrist strap for street walks and general use. Black Rapid Sport is kept for when I attach a long lens which is either Nikon 4/70-200 or 4.5 5.6/80 – 400.

I finding I’m using the Sport more often just for a walk around as its very convenient and secure.

Milvus 35/1.4

As an aside I find I’m using the D4s less and less, firstly due to its bulk and secondly because the D850 is not that far behind it in tracking for fast action and you can shoot in crop mode and sill get a 25.6mp file Vs 16.4mp from the D4s. Low light the 4s is still king by a 1-2 stops in my tests. Bird photography which I don’t do seriously, the D4S still has a slight edge for tracking, but not by much.  

Well that’s my gear, more shots below.

Milvus 35/1.4

Milvus 50/1.4

Milvus 50/1.4

Posted on DearSusan by Dallas Thomas.

This could end up being a devastatingly short post. During my last trip (to Japan, as you might have guessed from the dominantly Japanese photographs of my recent posts …) all my (non smartphone) shots were made with one lens, the Zeiss Loxia 25. All 1400 of them, without a single exception.

This probably makes me the worst possible person to write a “what’s in my bag” post. But hey, that doesn’t disqualify me as a photographer, so let me speak in the name of all others out there who prefer simplicity (do I hear lazy bugger ?) to envelope. Also, I feel my bags will give you a better perspective on my photographic preferences than will the rest of my gear.

So, lets begins with my most used  bag.

I love it dearly, to bits. It’s a Crumpler 4 million dollar home (such as the one shown in the video above). It was a gift from my wife in 2008 and it feels almost as good as new. This is wonderful bag, that feels utterly indestructible. I’m pretty sure it is bullet proof and could be worn as tactical garnment. Over the years and many, many days of use, it’s velcro hasn’t worn off, not a single stitch has been torn, the fabric is grubby but as good a new, the buckle to close / open is as snappy as on day 1. The sling is super comfortable, even after ten hours of walking. Fabulous. Unfortunately, Crumpler has a separate line of bags for Europe and they are nowhere near as inconspicuous and interesting. Mine was bought in Perth, during one of our visits.

Inside, two separators define 3 spaces in the main compartment. I use this bag exclusively with my M-mount lenses. One goes on either side and the third fits in the middle compartment, fitted on the camera. The 3 lenses in question are the Distagon 35/1.4 ZM, the C-Sonnar 50/1.5 ZM and the Elmarit-M 90/2.8, a trio that nothing I’ve tested before or since can dislodge from my heart. The Loxia 25 was a tight squeeze in the middle compartment, but the 35/1.4 ZM fits perfectly.

A front pouch compartment is large enough to hold my wallet, some keys a pen …

A zipper compartment under the top flap is great for small items such as an SD card “wallet” and change.

On either side of the lenses, outside the padded main compartment but inside the exterior fabric, two narrow but deep extra ares are perfect for 4 batteries.

All filled up, the bags looks like me after an unlimited refill afternoon tea. Slightly bloated. And surprisingly heavy given the size of the package.

This Crumpler is no longer a bag. It’s a companion I really wouldn’t want to be without. It’s a real feel good item and possibly the only think in my kit I wouldn’t want to give up for something new !

When bigger lenses are in order, my Go To bag is a black Think Tank retrospective 7. And it is more or less the exact opposite of the Crumpler : instead of a bomb-proof shelter, it is an organiser that maximises available inside space through the use of thin walls and separators. It’s an elegant urban bag that can carry a lot (large DSLR + 2 lenses + iPad + notebook + a book to read + chargers + … See below, the smaller Retrospective 5, in the hands of Steve Huff.

It is also silent, giving you the option of velcro silencers so that you can open the bag quietly in a sensitive (churches, theater …) environment (although using the A7r2 makes that kinduv a moot point ).

The fabric of the bag is actually very sturdy and the stitches are still perfect after several years (although it gets nowhere near as much use as the Crumpler).

Where this Think Tank falls is on comfort. The strap, although large and padded, has buckles that somehow always end up on my shoulder and becomes painful after only a few hours. So the bag is great for an afternoon strool through a city but it will only come with me on holiday if there is the need to carry stuff in cabine luggage and the extra room is needed.

Inside the bag, you’d often find my Otus 85, Distagon 25/2 ZE.2 and (before I so stupidly sold it), Summicron-R 50/2, all in Nikon mount, therefore requiring the same adapter. Batteries and charger, a notepad, pens, paperwork and a paperback book to read. In that configuration, the weight is significant and the pain rapidly follows suit.

Another bugaboo is that the velcro wore out very rapidly and now serves as a vague reminder that I’m opening the bag, should my brain be on holiday while my hand is at work. Since the bag’s flat shape makes it uncomfortable for carrying on the side, it is more often flat on my back. And the thought of carrying precious kit, with a top flap that can be lifted without me noticing the pressure or noise, is unsettling. The Think Tank is getting less and less use.

Even further down my pareto curve of bag usage are two others. One is a lowepro backpack with a horizontal separation in the middle, a very sturdy and protective bottom and a very light and roomy top, with solid zippers that can hold passports and other precious items out of reach of even Linus Caldwell. It’s a really lovely bag that’s been with me for more than 20 years and looks like it’s fresh out of the shop. It’s been on hikes that ended the lives of Vibram soles and always feels comfortable and balanced. But the need for so much carrying space has vanished and it now functions more as a hamper than a photo companion. Oh, the humanity.

The final bag is a square old-school bunker also made by lowepro. I’m pretty sure I can safely live in it when Donald, Nigel and friends finally succeed in turning the planet into a global war zone. It’s large, solid beyond reason, and unlike my current photo process in every conceivable way.

It was a gift from colleagues and so remains a treasured possession but is such a remnant of my dark ages of photography (you know: that big, fat digital camera with big fat white zooms. That naive and ill-considered transition from the elegant and focused years of Mamiya 7 usage to the “I can do anything & tackle any subject” folly of (my) early digital depression) that it’s been gathering dust for the past 15 years. Inside are other traces of that hurtful transition, other items with vestigial tails and evidence of a thought process driven by technological evolution rather than personal introspection : ballheads that can handle gun turrets, plates, filters galore … you name it.

So, there you are. My gear is quite minimalist, though perhaps not yet minimalist enough. As such, it doesn’t make much of a conversation piece, let alone an interesting read. I basically own a camera with which I’ve had a love/hate relationship from day 1 and three main lenses, one of which (35/1.4 ZM) gets 90% of mout-time. Not pulitzer prize material. But I hope the description of my bags, items that better describe my attitute towards photography (and it’s evolution), has proven more interesting.

I’ll end with this : my bag for the future ?

Einstein’s definition of madness (repeating the same actions, hoping for different outcomes) paints me in a bad light. I’ve been burnt twice with kickstarters, but am still too close for comfort to falling a third time. This time for a Peak Design bag. They are expensive bag but seem very well thought out and appear to combine the ruggedness of my Crumpler with the elegant and configurable organisation of the Think Tank. One question remains : how comfortable is the strap. It honestly doesn’t look it in the photograph, but reviews are mostly super positive.

(c) Peak Designs

More important is what I’d like to put in it. And this will be a surprise to no one who’s read my ramblings on a regular basis.

Before it became a general “what’s in my bag” for DS contributors, this series was initially conceived as a “dual purpose photography” set of articles : it was meant to assess whether we use different gear for different end uses. Such as client work vs personal work. Travel vs static … For me, the equation is simple : I use my camera when I want to be creative and my phone for everything else (in particular documenting holidays and trips out). That’s because my camera has far greater potential but is far less pleasant to use than the phone (and it’s various underground processes for backup and PP).

One camera has changed this, offering both significantly better IQ and a far more pleasant interface than my Sony : the Hasselblad X1D.  So yeah, the future could look like this : A Peak Designs Messenger containing a Hassy X1D + 30/3.5 + 80/1.9 + C-Sonnar 50/1.5. It could. It probably won’t

Posted on DearSusan by pascaljappy.

So. I’m going out to wander the streets. I want to disappear, so as to be able to get the shots I want. Unlike many street photographers, I don’t want my subject(s) to see me. I think capturing a posed image is (in the main) not really the essence of the photography I want to make.

Being invisible isn’t easy, it takes patience and judgement. I try to avoid bright coloured or patterned clothing, preferring black or dark blue wherever possible. I carry very little and use a camera that few people take seriously.

My bag of choice for a decade or so has been “the soupandsalad” a black Crumpler messenger style bag, capable of hiding a Nikon D800 and 24-70 zoom lens, but rarely called upon to do so. It’s weatherproof, as tough as nails and sadly nearing retirement, as its integrity and shape become more and more an advertisement for its age.

There is no protective padding whatsoever. Inside is a large zippered pocket and a slash pocket closed with a small strip of Velcro. The flap is held closed with three large Velcro patches, my only initial reluctance as the noise of the flap being ripped open could easily set off nearby car alarms.

Hardly the kind of discreet presence one would want on the streets, but over time, not the problem I had initially anticipated.

I’ve recently decided to replace the soupandsalad and looked at Crumpler’s more recent offerings only to find little that might work. Today’s messenger bags are designed to be bright and very attractive, which they are, but not suitable for hanging around on street corners as it were.

The replacement is a Timbuk2 of similar dimension(s) and carrying capacity. It’s too new for me to have much of an opinion as to its suitability, but the jet black finish bodes well.

And inside the bag?

Almost exclusively, Fuji’s X100F and a spare battery which I almost never seem to need. This small faux-rangefinder, fixed lens camera has been exhaustively reviewed by almost any and every photographer who blogs the Internet and I don’t plan to join them. Suffice to say, when I want it, the X100 can even fit in a largish pocket, along with a spare battery and happily be the camera I want with me on the street 99.9% of the time.

The X100 delivers RAW and JPG files, the latter in user selectable film simulation, depending on your preference for Velvia, Provia or many other of Fuji’s renowned emulsion-alikes. The later X100F model also offers Acros black and white with colour filter options as well. I generally settle for Acros + Red as I really like the deep blacks and contrast it delivers.

Attached to the camera is an after market accessory; a wrist strap that I regard as an essential to guard against being dropped, or in SE Asia, the motor cycle snatcher(s). There’s no lens hood, ND filters or other photographer’s tchotchkes.

The images here were all taken with the X100F. Hopefully, I’ve not posted any of them on DS before.

Anything else? With such a carrying capacity, the soupandsalad can (and has) also held a rain jacket and/or fleece and a beanie. But most of the time , it’s just the neoprene mitt I carry to protect the camera. That way I get to enjoy the weightlessness as I wander.

Posted on DearSusan by paulperton.

My last bout of GAS was in May 2018, see #739. An Acute Attack of GAS – Sony A7R111/Nikon D850.

Whilst extremely happy with the D850, the release of the Zs did get my mind ticking over.

It wasn’t until September in Paris, when I finally got to shoot with a ML camera. For the record it was a Sony A7III. In actual fact, I think I took 2 frames. The EVF was a marvel. I took the plunge and bought a Nikon Z7 and FTZ adaptor. I picked it up on the Friday before Christmas.

DS co-author Philippe put the hard word on me on Christmas Eve to pen an article on a comparison between both the 850 and the Z7, my answer was: well of course I will, when I get a few frames up on the Z.

But I feared that if I started the article in a months time, some of my initial thoughts and reactions would be forgotten or left out. So I decided to write as I progressed on my journey with the Z.

As of today, the first day of the article, Christmas Day, I’ve only shot 105 frames after owning the Z for 5 days! The first afternoon was spent following a couple of You Tubes on how to set it up. I only read manuals as a last resort.

The main interest in the Z7 was the EVF/Focus Peaking and of course VR/IBIS as Zeiss lens don’t have VR. 

The Z’s ergonomics are very good, but not excellent if I’m to be picky. The smaller body has a lot to do with this issue. I’m sure after a few weeks I won’t notice it. The menu system is typical Nikon, but not having the buttons on the left makes you dive into the menu system via the ‘I’ button, or use many of the function buttons that are programmable for shortcuts.

I have one major gripe that I’m yet to read about in any review, I WONDER WHY!!! After importing my first small batch of shots into Lightroom, I noticed that the full EXIF data was not available. So it would appear Nikon in their infinite wisdom has decided to not port this information for third party lens. This now necessitates the input of the lens information for Lens Correction, into Lightroom, which adds another step to Post.

This aside, te FTZ adaptor works extremely well, the Zeiss & Nikon G Lens smoothly connect and work as if they’re on the D850.

The first thing that strikes you after using a D850/D4s for so long, is just how quiet the shutter is on the Z. I’m yet to try silent mode. Being able to scroll through the histogram and the level in the EVF is a major plus. Seeing the exposure change as you adjust the shutter/aperture/ISO is well worth the loss of the excellent ergonomics of the D850 back to just very good for the Z.

2 weeks in, I’m very glad I made the jump to the Z, the 850 hasn’t been out of the bag since the arrival of the Z. Philippe in his Last Post for 2018 nominated the mirrorless system (regardless of brand) as COTY, I would have to heartily agree with him.

The question is, is the Z7 better than the D850 yes and no:

• IQ – No difference, well to my eyes anyway
• Ergonomy – No, the 850 is better
• Weight – Yes, only slightly but the smaller body is appreciated
• Focus – Yes, I use MF about 99% of the time and its much better with EVF and its one of the reasons I bought the Z . From the few times I’ve used the Z in  Auto Focus Mode it does the job.  / No, on fast moving subjects, I would use the D850, from having read other reviewers comments.
• Battery Life – Shoots, to date, have been limited to a maximum of about 100 frames. The battery life is these situations doesn’t appear to be much different from constantly using the D850 in Live View mode. I just carry an additional battery. 
• IBIS – Yes, as 850 does have it, overall I’m finding I can use lower shutter speeds, the best I’ve have achieved using a 135mm is 1/15sec.
• Build Quality – No, IMHO, the D850 has a slight edge its does feel more solid, though there isn’t much between them.

Would I buy another DSLR? The simple answer is no. I believe ML is the future.  The DLSR is not dead and will for sometime continue to be marketed alongside as an alternative. Until both Canon and Nikon have enough top shelf glass to meet buyers expectations, this could be some time away. The D850 is an excellent camera and will remain in my bag for when fast autofocus is required for animals and sporting events.

In summary after nearly 4 weeks of ownership and some 800 images, I now don’t notice the lesser ergonomics of the Z compared to the D850 any more. As I said early the smaller package is appreciated. The Z is well balanced in the hand even using a large heavy lens like the Zeiss Milvus 35/1.4 which weighs slightly over 1kg. 

I’M SOLD on ML!

All the images were taken with the Z and various Zeiss Milvus Lens.

Posted on DearSusan by Dallas Thomas.

Reviewing kit isn’t the same as owning it. During a review, you look for signs of grandeur, evidence of flaws, factual information to communicate in order to inform potential purchases. Living with a piece of gear is more about day to day coexistence and finding it a place in your ideal workflow. It’s about how it fits in with (and what it does for) your personal aspirations.

You’ll find the former here and this post is about the latter.

This post also marks the debut of a series of reviews related to the Hasselblad X1D, associated post processing software, accessories and lenses. I had hoped to discuss the two lenses sent to me for the initial review, but they are essentially perfect (from a technical point of view) and I didn’t have them long enough to find anything really meaningful to write about.

This time is different. The camera, lenses and accessories are mine so we have time to go deep. And I’m hoping Hasselblad will send me new stuff to present on DS as well. Stay tuned. But let’s start with the system. Everything written about the camera in the first review, good and bad, still holds. In this post, I’ll just add more strong points and negatives, as they come along. Every time some new finding surfaces, I’ll add it to this same page and will point it out in the following Monday Post.

Note that most photographs on this page are clickabe and link to a 4000px wide version for closer inspection.

So, what’s new? Mainly subjective findings.

XCD Lenses

Those lenses are technically staggering. There is a very consistent rendering between the 5 I have tested so far and throughout all aperture settings. Let me put it this way : take a shot with the 23mm and crop it to mimic the 30mm, 45mm, 90mm and 120mm angles of view, and you’d end up with photographs very similar (with lower res) than if shot with the other individual lenses. MTFs are insane. Distortion and vignetting are low (and automatically corrected in PP).

Resistance to flare is good, though not great (see coming reviews). The amount of flare is not that big, but it doesn’t look very nice. Glare is essentially non-existent.

3D is natural and realistic. It doesn’t have the same unreal feeling of falling into the photograph as a Zeiss Otus or Audrey (Zeiss Distagon 1.4/35 ZM) can produce, but feels more linear. Less romantic and beautiful. Initially, I found the XCD lenses a bit dry and clinical. Not any more. They take a rigorous approach to rendering that’s as far from a syrupy Mandler as you can imagine, but they bring unflinching consistency to every shot, whatever the conditions. Aperture controls depth of field, and that’s it. Image quality simply doesn’t enter the equation.

Speaking of which, depth of field is more of an issue than I had initially realised. It’s often very diffult to get a whole scene into sharp focus at polite apertures. f/13 and smaller are sometimes necessary to do that. In a photograph such as the one above (carts), shallow DoF adds to the scruffy mood. But in the one below, the obelisk being unsharp makes it look a bit like it has been Photoshopped into the frame rather than being part of the original scene. Definitely a case of “be careful what you wish for”

However good, good looking and well built they are, I still can find no valid explanation for removing the aperture ring from them. Yes, it’s possible, and easy, to use the two wheels in front of and behing the camera grip to operate +/- exposure and aperture (in A mode), but it just isn’t the same. That’s my main gripe.

Adapted lenses

So far, I’ve only used the Nikon-mount Otus 85. But I’ll soon try my Leica R lenses converted to Nikon mount via a Leitax surgery. Hopefully, an M-mount adapter will soon make its way to casa Mjölner (that’s my nickname for the X1D) to enable the test of Audrey (Zeiss Distagon 1.4/35 ZM, which doesn’t cover the whole frame but is said to produce delightful 30mmx30mm square frames), Cesar (Zeiss C-Sonnar 1.5/50 ZM) and my Leica Elmarit-M 90/2.8. I’m really hoping Cesar will be happy on the X1D.

Being able to use adapted lenses on the X1D was initially a strong selling point for me. Not so much, anymore. The XCD lenses are excellent and produce a rendering that suits my aspirations, even though it is less pretty than the Zeiss top end, as we’ve already covered. Also, adapted lenses require the use of the e-shutter, which is a brilliant contribution by Ming Thein to the camera, but one that comes with some caveats.

On the plus side, e-shutter is totally silent. Nothing new in the mirorless world, but eerie nonetheless when you use it for the first time. Also, it allows shutter speeds of up to 1/10 000s compared to the leaf shutter max of 1/2 000s. It’s super easy to switch on and off, thanks to the great UI (no silly menus, can you imagine?). And it lets you mount any lens you can find a mechanical adapter for. Brilliant.

On the flip-side, though, it’s also super easy to forget. And because the flushing of the whole sensor data takes up 0.3s, you cannot shoot moving subjects or *** more important *** you cannot move, yourself, during that period. Even using a native lens. Case in point …

Shooting envelope

This is a “low tech” camera (if that can be said of a 50Mp camera with e-shutter, HDMI, dual card slots, …, and near-perfect UI) that lacks most of the pampering features of more contemporary designs. Such as irrelevant for me 4K, 8K, whatever K is flavour of the month, video. And, far more relevant: IBIS. But before you tilt you head and whisper a compassionate “awww, poor Pascal”, let me show you this.

This was long after sunset and way too dark to read anything but Hasselblad on the camera. That short of shooting envelope is plenty for me!

I always get a kick from writing this, so please indulge me once more : digital has spent the last decade fixing problems it had created for itself. The X1D avoids several of the problems so it doesn’t have to sort them out in complex fashion. With a heavy body, a perfect grip, and a leaf shutter, IBIS often need only be a bird in the Egyptian fields. Now, many reviewers feel the oppositve way about this camera, which is weird. But I consistently get perfectly sharp photographs at 2/f speeds and often at 3/f. AF is a much more limiting factor of sharpness, in my experience …

My goto setting today is Auto ISO, with a top limit of 6400. This works very well and image quality at the most used settings is excellent. However, I feel the Auto ISO errs towards caution qui a bit and it’s not rare to find yourself at ISO 6400 1/180s with a 45mm lens, when ISO 1600 1/50 would have been just fine. And that’s a real shame as noise does creep in visibly at higher settings (see discussion below). Generally, there’s a weird bias – even from Hasselblad themselves – against longer exposures with this camera when it’s in fact one of the best suited to handle them …

Update 07 March 2019: My bad. It turns out a lot of the camera’s behaviours are configurable in a settings menu. The bottom speed had been set to a specific absolute value of 1/180, but other focal-lenght-related values can be used. I have now set this minimum shutter speed to 2/F, meaning the camera now uses 1/15s with a 30mm lens, instead of 1/180s, and keeps the ISO below 800 where it would have used 6400 previously. Neat!

At the other end of the luminance spectrum, I did run into the 1/2 000s limit a couple of times, when shooting at wide apertures. It’s not as bad as you’d think, since you often use slightly lower apertures, and there’s that e-shutter 1/10 000s extension bonus, should you need it. It’s actually weirdly cool to feel there is a mechanical limitation to the envelope But there is a limitation there and those who crave the greatest envelope possible will have to look elsewhere.

And some handheld shots did come out blurred in low light (the one of the boat, 3 pics above, certainly is, see the star “trails”). And there is a limit to how daft you can be without consequences (see immediately above, when pushing an almost black shadow in a ISO 12800 shot). In fact, I was surprised by the amount of noise visible in files at high ISO settings.

This is due to the fact that Hasselblad apply no noise reduction at all in camera. Which is not the case of other manufacturers who happily dodge the results for better measurements in lab-rat mode. Hassy’s approach preserves quality and puts you in charge of how you want to deal with the issue.

So, no, shooting envelope isn’t infinite or up to what the best FF cameras of today can offer. It’s plenty for me and I love that it forces me to be more diligent with my shooting, stance and breathing. But it’s not for everyone. If you favor results over process, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

Let me end this with a fun oddity. In no way a limitation, but an interesting evocation of film. In this photograph, the brutally over exposed sun has turned black, much as in Ansel Adam’s Black Sun and subsequent contemporary art projects.

EVF and focusing

There’s only one way to put it. If AF is a large part of your process, don’t even consider the X1D. It simply sucks in too many scenarios to be a contender.

First, there’s no eye detect, so the AF is just has happy focusing on a bush in the background than on the sparkling gaze of your beloved companion. I guess with a newer sensor, and some software work (Hasselblad are *excellent* with firmware updates), the X1D will eventually catch up. Right now, though, you may have to tell it where to focus. And frankly, it’s more pleasant to simply focus yourself. The focusing ring on the lenses is superb.

Then, there’s speed. And noise. Neither of which is good with long focal lengths. In low light, with long and heavy glass, it all sounds like you are blending juice in the 1970’s. And it takes about as long to eventually find focus, if it ever does. Whereas most other manufacturers sacrifice optical quality to obtain light lens groupings and fast AF, Hasselblad appear to have taken AF speed as a secondary consideration. That’s as it should be. Who would want to invest in and haul a system this expensive/large, if it was full of optical compromise? (and please don’t get the impression AF is sloooow, it’s just not as snappy as what the top dogs achieve today with minute lenses and off-sensor AF readings).

Mercifully, the EVF/screen zoom function (used to fine tune focus or when reviewing photographs) works beautifully. I have reassigned a white balance button located right next to the shutter button to that 100% zoom feature, for when manual focus is the best option. (Why Hassy, who undoubtedly produce the best WB out of the box and the worst AF, wouldn’t do that in the first place is a valid question).

Worse, far worse, though, the EVF is virtually unusable at night. What. Were. They. Thinking???? Hasselblad haven’t amplified the image so the EVF is pretty much as dark as the scene itself. It’s dark outside, it’s dark inside. That is my personal biggest objection to this camera. And I’d much rather see a V2 come with a better EVF than with a 100Mp sensor.

Finally, the EVF is super large. Which is what most people want and so desperately clamour for on forums. But, again, is a serious case of “be careful what you wish for”. A large viewfinder is great for inebriated pub bragging, and for srupulous inspection of the frame and perfect composition. It also takes ages to scan around so you can forget about quick composition on the run. Street photographers will know what I mean. You’ll often find me holding the X1D at arms length, shooting through the back screen for street. Not very dignified, but it’s smaller and far more intuitive than scanning that ginormous flat-screen TV of an EVF (which is great for less reflex, more constructed photography). It’s great to have the two options, though.

The EVF is not the best for colour reproduction (the rear screen is far better) and isn’t the highest resolution out there. You forget about either after a few minutes of use, but it’s really noticeable initially, if you’re coming from one of the recent cameras with top end EVFs such as the Leica SL, Sony A7r3, Nikon Z7 … I think there are complaints about blackout during shooting (??) and can honestly neither confirm nor disclaim from memory, after 2000 frames (and yes, I’m too lazy to go and check). So, that is yet another of those forum warrior gripes that the target user base may not even notice. Still, the EVF is the definite Achilles heel on this camera.

A final negative : the ability to swipe the rear screen with your eye on the EVF to alter the AF zone very intuitively is a nice touch. Unfortunately, it’s also twitchy and can be moved about with that cheekbone that makes you so handsome. Not good. X1D V2 really needs to address all these points.

Dynamic range

Is nuts.

In both those photographs, 90% of the SOOC file was black. The recovery on the latter is particularly stunning. As an added bonus, the transition from highlight to totally blown highlight is relatively smooth. Not as smooth as large format film, but waayyy smoother than on the very brutal A7r2. This means you can largely stop worrying about burning some areas of the frame and actually use pure white as a compositional tool rather than fear it like the boogeyman.

Post processing

After a few tests, subtle but visible differences in RAW processing between Lightroom and Phocus make me once again lament the fragmentation of the photo software world. Phocus produces pictures the feel that little bit more natural, with greater sparke and colour differentiation. If you’re spending the GDP of a small country on a camera for its superb tonal subtlety, it probably makes sense to extract the final percents of goodness by using the proper software, right? But Phocus lacks many useful features. Its adjustment layers only give you access to a very limited feature set (no contrast or clarity adjustement, for instance). Printing from Phocus isn’t that pleasant either. It’s very obviously designed for corrective rather than creative work.

Using a calibration file on Lightroom somewhat levels the IQ playing field. But LR still produces that artificial look that sets it apart (in a bad way) from CaptureOne and Phocus. Speaking of CaptureOne, it is possible to process X1D files but you have to convert them to TIFF and edit there EXIF first. Life. Too. Short.

For now, my process is as follows. All photos are imported into Hasselblad’s Phocus software. Phocus places the raw files in a single capture folder at whatever location you chose (for me, an external 2Tb SSD). I then import all the files into Lightroom, from that same folder. Lightroom doesn’t copy the files, but simply works from the originals.

This gives me the option to process most files in Phocus for a natural and subtle rendering, and go bonkers in LR (or stitch panoramas) when the compulsion arises. This feels like a very simple and best-of-both-worlds solution.

The reality, though, is that with the Sony A7r2 + CaptureOne + 35/1.4 ZM combo, I had arrived at a point where I really loved the rendering of the images. This is not yet completely the case with the X1D (hence some of the wild-ish experimentation you see on this page ), although great progress has been made since the hesitant first steps of a few weeks ago. At some point, I will probably go back to good ol’ Photoshop which provides far greater adjustment capabilities than either. Updates soon, if this works out.

Update 7 March 2019. A new release of Phocus has significantly moved the software in the right direction. Among the new features, layers now have access to a broader range of adjustment options. That is really cool, as is the local contrast management option named detail. Here’s hoping for more updates, particularly in relation to monochrome processing.

Accessories

So far, my list of accessories is short : a strap, a flash and a GPS unit. Oh, and a new old bag. I’ll report new findings if an when they occur.

The strap is the standard one provided in the kit. It is unbranded with a thick padding around the neck. It took several broken nails and inventive swearing to attach to the camera but certainly feels like my neck would snap before the strap in the event of a grab and run. Nuff said.

The flash (a-ah) is a Nikon SB700. The X1D is compatible with several flashes in the SB range but not all can be controled TTL. The SB700 is one of those that can. I’m essentially a flash virgin but it seems like a shame to buy a leaf shutter system and not dabble in open air flashing (insert silly grin).

The GPS unit is an elegant device that plugs into the flash hotshoe and basically adds precise time and location to the EXIF of your shots. Some will say that should be an in-camera feature, but it at least gives you the choice not to drain your batteries when it’s not needed without delving into a menu. Mine was given to me with the field kit by its previous owner and is an early version that’s not 100% stable. So it did freeze the camera a few times during use (remove battery, power up, and you’re good to go, but it’s frustrating if you miss a shot). It’s nice to have, efficient, but non essential.

My contribution to the DS what’s in my bag series mentioned a love bordering on lust for a tiny 4 million dollar home crumpler bag that securely houses my A7r2 and 3 small lenses. And an unsued Lowepro with equally bomb-proof qualities but unnecessarily large proportions for the Sony. Well, roles have just been swapped. I dusted the Lowepro and discovered a truly great bag.

It’s a messenger type bag that follows the heavy padding approach, with 3 sections in the main compartment. The middle one holds the X1D with the largest lens in my kit, the 120mm Marco. On one side is the Otus 85 with adapter (but with hood off). On the other is any other XCD lens. In the front, a zipped compartment has room for an extra adapter, a card wallet, extra batteries, cables and small bits and bobs. At the back is an interior zipped compartment large enough for my wallet, phone and small notebook + pen. At the rear is an extra external zipped compartment. It zips at the top and bottom, so you can use it for a tablet or book or you can use it to slide on the handle of a suitcase. There are side external pockets for small water bottles, brollies … Fully loaded, it weighs a ton, but the thick padding on the strap is supremely comfortable.

In Summary

With the exception of the EVF / AF issues described above, this is a marvelous camera. It slows me down, just the right amount, and makes me think harder about what it is I find interesting in front of me. I makes me want to set up images rather than grab them.

At one point during a recent visit to Egypt, I decided it was silly to use my smartphone so much with such a great camera in the bag and started using the X1D for moving shots, from a bus, from horse and camel back. Not only was this stressful, very few photos actually turned out to be interesting.

So I returned to phone grabbing mode and left the X1D in charge of more deliberate shots such as the one above. Compared to a top-end FF camera such as my Sony A7r2 (which is for sale, drop me a line if you want in on a cheap high end Sony), the X1D produces a lower yield but in a way that’s more pleasant to me (others would hate it) and that achieves even higher IQ.

The fact is – and my apologies if that sounds pompous – I feel more of an artist with that camera. Not because of its cost, size, pixel count or brand name. But because of the way it makes me think about what it is I want to capture, and how. An artist in the ethymologic sense, someone who assembles and builds stuff that looks and feels good (the stuff, not the artist). The X1D makes me feel like I’m the one doing the doing. That was my main reason for buying it. If the feeling continues, then mission accomplished

Posted on DearSusan by pascaljappy.

They are named Novoflex, but should really call themselves the match makers. When cameras and lenses have Romeo and Juliet upbringings and their parents refuse to see them wed, Novoflex swoop in and make the romance happen. This post is the story of an unlikely and forbidden love between my best camera ever and my best lens ever.

But does it have a happy ending?

It’s funny how you procrastinate when you’re affraid of learning the truth about something important to you. Ever since my X1D arrived, I delayed the purchase of an M-mount adapter, fearing my beloved C-Sonnar 1.5/50 ZM (a.k.a. Cesar) might not fare as well as in my dreams, on the Swedish newcomer. I actually had no hopes at all for the Distagon 1.4/35 ZM (a.k.a. Audrey), based on Internet wisdom.

But the adapter arrived and, after a couple of casual shots made to confirm the disqualification of Audrey, my ears perked up like my cat’s upon hearing the sound of biscuits in her plate. Could it be that … ?

It sure could! It sure could! So I’ll investigate and report on Cesar’s behaviour later.

So, to go beyond a few test shots at home, I took the opportunity of a bread run in the village to make a few photographs in real-life conditions, to evaluate how well an old(ish) Zeiss lens designed for full-frame might work on a new(ish) Hasselblad small MF (44×33) sensor. Just like I would if this was a new lens being tested.

The results are unexpected. I’ve not had time to determine a best post-processing routine for this lens, obviously, and both Phocus and Lightroom were used to (hastily) process the images of the walk. So the aesthetics are somewhat … higgledy-piggledy

But this gives you and me an opportunity to determine whether there are some looks we like or not. Below are nearly all of the photographs from this 20-30 minute walk. I have only omitted some made by mistake (pressing the release button too hard while waking up the camera, eg) or that are close duplicates of those presented. Sometimes, two versions of a same file are shown, either because of different ideas for PP or to highlight the difference in rendering between Phocus and Lightroom (in general, I use Phocus for colour and Lightroom for B&W). Onwards.

My village takes pride in its fountains. If you drove through, you’d be forgiven for not even noticing them, but one close to my parking spot seemed like a great place to start, with the sun rays very oblique and grazing.

If there’s one thing Audrey is good for, it’s recreating an ambiance, with great tonal subtlety and very immersive 3D. The X1D being superb for preserving tiny little nuances of shades and hues, I had high hopes for that scene. And you can see the great variety of looks that can be obtained with this duo.

I’ll let the pictures do the tour-guiding and will focus instead on the experience and results.

In terms of feel, this is a match made in heaven. The adapter is perfect. Snug. Wider and thicker than on Sony mount, meaning the release button can be mounted on the front and is smoother to operate. There is no slack in any direction. Zero.

Using an old-style lens on what feels like an old-style (i.e. fuss free) camera is pure bliss. Everything is where it should be, perfectly designed and perfectly smooth. This is honestly the most pleasant shooting experience I’ve ever had. It makes me lament once again Hasselblad’s choice to lose the aperture ring on its XCD lenses. Sure it’s more modern and tetherable to have everything done in-camera. But it feels so unfair when the needs of mere thousands of professionals, whose livelihoods depend on it, are put ahead of my personal amateur desires. Ugh.

All is not perfect in the integration, however. This being a purely mechanical mating, there is no EXIF or – more importantly – Auto-ISO (my default setting and so very freeing) or in-camera correction of any aberrations. What Audrey sees is what you get. It’s nothing new to me, obviously, since I had never owned a native lens on a digital camera in the past (my film-era white Canon zooms on Canon 6D don’t count as truly native). No deal-breaker, but certainly a big point in favour of XCD lenses here.

What about image quality? You be the judge …

In the 2 doubles above, 2 photos are processed in Lightroom and the other 2 in Phocus. LR automatically applies quite significant contrast reduction compared to Phocus’ true to life approach. Lightroom is preserving shadow and highlights but I admire Hasselblad’s approach to respecting tone rather than dynamic range. Kudos! Phocus also has better subtlety and stronger colour.

As you can see from the two frontal shots of the first fountain (different crops) white balance isn’t identical either. Of course the two can be matched more than this but, to me, Phocus always has a slight edge on colour photographs. In b&w, Lightroom absolutely murders Phocus, however. And I’m tempted to purchase a new copy of Nik to add the glorious Silver Efex to Lightroom’s repertoire. I wonder whether LR has a module for dumbwits who forget about the readout time of their sensor in silent shutter mode. Yup, did it again …

Whatever the processing software, however, vignetting will always be a part of the equation with this unnatural couple. The diminutive Distagon was never designed to cover the surface of the X1D’s sensor, and it shows painfully. This is undoubtedly the yuckiest fly in the scrumptious ointment.

There are ways to cover it up, of course. Cropping to a 33×33 square, for example. And, as far as I’m concerned, there’s no hardship in that. Or accepting the vignetting. In Lightroom, it can be reduced more significantly than in Phocus (which has no profile for Zeiss full frame lenses). And I often add vignetting to my photographs.

But the optical vignetting has quite a hard edge and doesn’t look very nice. It also comes free of charge with an unpleasant magenta cast that’s a lot harder to cover up. Which leaves conversion to b&w as a “last resort”. So, monochrome squares, anyone?

I used to rant that 3:2 was not my fave format and that 4:3 is much cooler. Maybe I could snob my way of out this vignetting problem by declaring that 4:3 is passé and 6×7 is the new black?

One strong point in favour of the Hassy, however, is corner sharpness. Dunno what the specs are but it appears that the sensor stack is less thick than on the Sony A7r2, as corner performance is shockingly good right up to the edges and almost into the very corners, even without cropping. At all apertures! So cool!

If you can look past the vignetting issue, there’s a lot to look forward to. Colours are lovely. Not neutral, and curiously reminiscent of a Leica M9, but lovely nonetheless.

The hypnotic 3D of this lens is perfectly rendered in the Hassy’s files, even on totally flat subjects (see below, at full aperture).

And the files just look so alive …

At the end of the day, though, the tragedy needs its clash resolved. Audrey has to answer “Should I stay or should I go, now?”

Reasons to let Audrey go are :

• I kinda promised to sell it to Philippe …
• The XCD 30 is a superb lens (review coming up)
• I desperately need to sell stuff to pay back for the unexpected outlay (I hadn’t planned on buying so many lenses with the X1D) and selling that lens was always part of the plan. Particularly now that traiterous DS contributors have convinced me to re-invest in HiFi …
• Non-attachment practise. My soul needs my ego to be Teflon.
• The risk of becoming locked into a single photographic look.

Reasons to keep Audrey include :

• The greatest shooting experience of my life.
• The sexiest 28 f/1.1 lens mankind has ever seen. Even with a bit of cropping it’s even better than on the Sony due to corner sharpness.
• They said it couldn’t be done.
• Stealth. The lens feels a perfect fit for the camera and nobody takes any notice of the black combo.
• Manual focus lenses probably save battery life
• The search is over. If 30 minutes can produce this, think about 10 years. Heck, I might even sell a print …
• I wanna.

So, tuff kwestian, monn. If I compromise my ethics too much, it will become hard for me to continue heralding the systematic lambasting of all politicians. It won’t stop me, of course, but I’ll feel bad. If I compromise my financial integrity, how will I afford the gear to do justice to Mendelsson’s adaptation of Bach’s “Erbarme dich, mein Gott” aria in St. Matthew Passion which simultaneously blew my mind, socks off and concentration, on my car radio, last night? Kidding aside, when pairings produce a result greater than the sum of the parts, as was the case in that spine-tingling musical moment, should we not celebrate those small miracles for what they are?

Sleep on it, I must, as might have said our mighty green mentor. This has certainly been an unexpected turn of events.

And I could use your help. Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Or is this sudden elation only the product of my desire to not cut the umbilical cord with delightful Audrey? I do have 5 exquisite native XCD lenses to play with and absolutely no need for the complications of adapted lenses any more.

“Erbarme dich, mein Gott”?

Posted on DearSusan by pascaljappy.

It might surprise some readers that the Viking empire once streched further than the Roman empire. The Vikings being less interested in administration than in pillaging, their presence on conquered soil simply wasn’t as sticky as Rome’s. Represented through time on a map, their geographic domination would more ressemble a series of contrails than a flood.

However, you’ve not come here for a lecture in history, particularly from one who was arguably one of France’s worst students of the subject in school. And my reason for using this intro is even worse than my knowledge of the facts backing it up.

Ahem.

In this belaboured analogy, Mjölner (the Hasselblad X1D) represents Team Scandinavia and Cesar (the Zeiss C-Sonnar 1.5/50 ZM, named after Caesar because of its diminutive stature but great might and a rendering that I find more Italian than Germanic in vibe,) heads Team Rome. Only, in this game, the two are partners rather than blood-squirting rivals.

Their collaboration didn’t get off to a great start. When my M-mount Novoflex adapter arrived, my first test of the C-Sonnar consisted in pointing the camera at bench in my garden at full aperture. And … ouch. Corner. Performance. Atrocious.

As with many things in life, though, it turns out that not being a total plonk often yields better results and the thought entered my mind that there might be better ways of using a 1930’s full frame design on a 2016 (?) MF sensor …

Before examining the practical implications of this minor epiphany, let’s juste note that the corner issues with Cesar (C-Sonnar 1.5/50 ZM) are the opposite of those found on Audrey (Distagon 1.4/35 ZM, see previous article). Here, there is little vignetting to complain about. Which is amazing considering how tiny the lens is. Short of a pancake, I’ve never used anything smaller. It makes a Summilux 50 look like a sumo. Sharpness, however, is a huge problem and it would probably take more cropping to deal with Cesar’s blur than with Audrey’s vignetting.

At least at longer focusing distances. Close-up, these issues vanish almost completely and most of the frame can make use of the insanely shallow depth of field. (both images below, as bench above, at f/1.5)

Still, in most scenarios, closing down produces a much nicer image that retains a tad of that soft glow but isn’t dominated by it, or other abberrations. f/2 is already more usable in ordinary situations and f/2.8 is even better. f/2.8 and f/4 are the best general purposes apertures for street, in my mind. Close down more and the lens loses a bit of that dreamy character. That mid-aperture sweet spot gives you those gorgeous pastel colours, that the X1D does such a great job of passing on to the final file, and very few objectionable optical defects.

For anyone wondering why bother with such an old lens on a camera designed for ultimate fidelity, the two photographs above are the answer: this tiny and cheap lens gives you variable glow that’s quite difficult to replicate with as much subtlety in post. From memory f/2.8 (f/4 ?) at top and f/5.6 at bottom.

Also, XCD lenses have a very transparent and no-nonsense rendering and it’s nice to have the option to swap in a little charmer every now and then Particularly one that offers the opportunity to turn the aperture right up to f/1.5 in some situations. f/2.8 below.

When used close up, the lens can take more or less any aperture. The corners will never be perfect, but they don’t intrude in the composition either. And if you’re looking at corner sharpness in full aperture close ups, this lens reeaallly ain’t for you anyway … It’ll give you nightmares and you’ll need a lot of test chart therapy to find sleep again

What’s it like to use? Well, most of the points made in my previous post about the Distagon 1.4/35 ZM still apply. Great adapter, great fit, great build quality, great to have an aperture ring, great focusing smoothness. The only noteworthy niggle is size. Whereas Audrey is a perfect ergonomic match for the camera, this diminutive C-Sonnar actually feels a bit small. It’s a fantastic lens because its size means you can take it anywhere but it does look like the Hassy has a pimple on its nose rather than a lens mounted.

Fun fact about size. Thanks to those ZM lenses, my tiny Crumpler 4-million dollar home now easily carries a medium format camera with two lenses, 3 batteries, plenty of cards, my wallet (arguably very empty of bank notes, now, thanks to Sweden) It’s just crazy.

But the most important question you are asking yourself (please) is about b&w performance. Right? Right? Please? Can I talk about b&w performance?

You might expect a lens that paints scenes with a slightly cartoonish colour rendition to lack the ultimate finesse and transparency in b&w. And, although that’s not necessarily the case – you can make the lens look more modern, if you want – I’ll do nothing to dispell this a priori.

Because, honestly, why would I? The beauty of this lens is that it lends your photographs a deliciously vintage, but still very well-behaved look that – to my eyes – strikes a perfect balance between the clinical modern lenses that litter the market like dog turds on a French pavement, and more gimmicky stuff such as the fun but slightly overwhelming Jupiters and – dare I say it – Noctiluxes, of this world. A 400 € (used) lens that holds in your nostril and can make a take-no-prisoners sharpness-hungry Viking go retro like this, well, that’s priceless.

The photographs presented here (except for the 3 in my garden) were made in Aix en Provence, during a quick visit to view the Harry Callahan exhibition in Musée Granet. How that artist isn’t more famous is beyond me. If you get a chance to view some of his photographs, I’m sure you’ll find his very experimental and modern approach fascinating

His use of very strong contrasts and figure-ground light-patterns, to turn every day scenes into semi-abstract works of art, is amazing.

And while it would be ridiculous to attempt to match that level of lifetime proficiency in a short walk, some of the monochromes below and the Christ/branch-reflections colour photograph above were directly inspired by that exhibition. It’s serendipitous that the lens on my camera at that moment was probably quite similar to his … Imitating that sort of genius, on a great day in a great town with a great camera and a great lens … photography doesn’t get more pleasurable than this.

So, will I keep Cesar? Yup.

First of all, its selling price wouldn’t fill a very large portion of the hole dug out by my recent shopping spree. Then, it’s tiny. As in, you’d never think twice about taking it anywhere with you. And it’s very different from what the Swedish XCD-wonders produce, in terms of rendering. And it uses all the frame. How may squares do you see on this page? I have cropped some photographs slightly (and some would need a tighter crop for composition), but only to correct angles and not more so than with any native lens.

Negatives so far? None that come to mind. I’ve written it before in a review of that lens on the Sony A7r2: this is a hidden gem. One that’s been severely overlooked because of the age of its design and lackluster MTF performance. But if you enjoy creating pretty things more than gouging corneas, it’s an absolute treat. And now you know you can use it on your X1D or GFX as well (because of their larger pixels, at least in sensible 50Mp guise, it actually performs better)… For a Fuji user, this could be a 75mm on a X-Pro 2 and a 35mm on a GFX. It’s one heck of a fun lens for street photography, that’s for sure. Vintage digital medium format. In your pocket. Any takers ?

More samples, some cropped

Posted on DearSusan by pascaljappy.

This lens is responsible for 70% of my photographs with the Hasselblad X1D, so it seems like a good starting point for a review of that camera’s now rapidly growing lens system. It isn’t an easy review to write.

The lens is technically excellent and a systematic review of all technical aspects could lead to a dreary read. So I’ll let the pics speak for themselves, providing many large photographs for your inspection and insisting only on notable shortcomings. It’s not a very fair way to review a lens, that, highlighting only the niggles. But the lens can take it, believe me. And, to compensate for the much shorter review, I’ll add some other information along the way.

For instance, shutter noise. Throughout the lens range, the shutters aren’t systematically identical and don’t sounds exactly the same. Some sound quite loud and metallic whereas others, such as this XCD 3,5/30, sound quieter, with a short sharp snick sound. It’s not the utterly silent experience of some older lenses, but it’s really pleasant.

A word about rendering

While we’re dealing with subjective, let’s talk about rendering. Bear with me, this is a tricky question. One that is difficult to communicate efficiently, yet will largely determine whether you’ll be interested in this system or not. Here goes.

Generally speaking, I initially found the X1D system easy to use and glorious in colour, but very difficult in b&w. Coming from your average kit zoom or mtf-driven prime, Hasselblad XCD lenses will simply blow your mind. Poof. They are technically so much better than anything else I’ve used, there’s no need to dwell on that.

Coming from expressive glass, however, it’s a completely different story. My experience and comparison point is mainly higher-end Zeiss glass, but this may apply equally to other lenses from other quality stables.

Think about lenses as human beings. Some are so outrightly flattering and pompous they make you want to run away within minutes. To me, that’s mirrored in a trend of dishonest lenses that pretend to be something that would normally cost 10x the price. And I would oppose that to lenses such as Adam’s 7artisans which have a strong (beautiful) character and make no claims to being what they are not.

Then you have an “elite” of people (and lenses) who don’t tell the absolute truth either, but do so with such intelligence and grace you never want to hear or see the truth again. Mozart, Raphael, the Zeiss Distagon 1,4/35 ZM. Similarly exquisite lenses I have experience with include the Otus 85, Otus 28, Milvus 50, Milvus 85, Loxia 25 and Loxia 85.

Then you have Zen monks who tell the truth in ways that can hurt superficially and nourrish spiritually. The Hasselblad XCD 3,5/30mm is a Zen monk that will never make life easy for you or add a sprinkling of magic dust to render anything pretty. Coupled with a no-nonsense camera with huge DR, this can lead to flat-looking photographs.

Having lived with and dearly loved Audrey (Zeiss Distagon 1,4/35 ZM) for so long, switching to the XCD range came as a shock. For weeks, I asked myself “why, oh why, did I not take the blue pill?“ Not only does the camera do nothing SOOC to add artificial flavouring and pzazz to files (they don’t look particularly sharp at 100%, the vast dynamic range can look somewhat flat …) but the files doesn’t respond well to my past blend b&w post-processing, making everything look harsh and clinical. Uncivilised and lacking in elegance. Oh boy.

And, you may have guessed it, PP is key with this system. Files respond to sharpening like nothing I’ve ever seen. Push the slider and photos look like you’ve doubled resolution. And clarity, contrast, dehaze (in LR) – all tools that manipulate contrast at a local to global level – rapidly make a huge difference to the rendering and feeling of 3D, elegance or harshness.

Having finally understood this and finally seeing through the tears, I now realize how utterly magical the system is – ultra transparent, very predictable and neutral – with that lens in charge of the photon herding. There really is no going back for me. I could easily live with that lens alone and sell all the others (not that they are any less good, but this suits my shooting style and I love the simplicity of a single lens system).

Flare and glare

Magical? Yes. Perfect? No. And the greatest flaw can be found in the flare and glare department.

I’ve never tried this system in a studio, so can’t comment on flare resistance with flashes. But with a lighting system with a power of hundreds of yottawatts (trillions of trillions of watts) in the sky, there are a number of observations to make.

Generally speaking, keep the sun in the frame and you’re fine. The more you let it creep towards the edges and corners, the more flare and reflections you’ll notice (including yucky octagons). Glare is largely absent in these conditions.

With artificial lights, flare doesn’t seem to be a problem, though, again, I’ve never used the lens in a studio.

It’s when you let the sun just out of the frame that real issues can happen. That can get you into serious trouble.

This can be lowered using highlight recovery but, whenever possible, this lens needs to be used with its sunshade, which I had removed for those shots.

Sunstars and bokeh

Leaf shutters have many advantages over the more modern alternative : fewer vibration issues, lower noise (in theory), wear and tear spread out over many lenses … but they come in limited supply and not all benefit from the lovely 10 rounded blade irises found in modern lenses gunning for great looking out of focus areas (or, more often, trying to compensate for a sloppy optical design with rounded blades). So, is bokeh ugly on the Hasselblad XCD lenses?

To be honest, there isn’t that much blur to speak of in a 30mm (24mm eq focal length) f/3.5 lens using, unless you photograph something quite close up at a wide apertures. And when you do, the result is fairly uneventful as objects simply become less and less sharp as they get further away from the plane of focus. In my book, this gaussian-blur look is great. But others prefer more extravaganza or more creaminess. Changing aperture and the lens-subject to subject-background distance ratio only seems to affect the quantity of blur linearly, without altering its quality.

Sunstars are equally uneventful. These are some of my few photographs that show any (which has more to do with my shooting style than the lens, to be honest). They show a traditional 8-pointed star, which is now a thing of the past with 10 to 18 point starts becoming the norm. To me, 8 is nicer as it creates an easier patter to read. But that’s entirely a matter of taste.

Ergonomics

The lens is designed as a metal cylinder with a diagonally-grooved focusing grip. It’s a very elegant design and a has superb build quality. I can’t stress enough how much I miss an aperture ring but it’s impossible to live forever in yesterday. New lenses simply don’t have aperture rings and Hasselblad is now exception. It fits very tightly on the camera.

Focusing is fly-by-wire, which is to say not as nice as with a good manual focus lens. You can feel the micro-steps the focusing goes through as the grip is rotated. It’s best left in AF mode and, although not the fastest or quietest out there, AF is usually very accurate.

Optical quality (sharpness, chromatic aberration, distortion)

The MTF charts for this lens are ridiculously good. They make Otuses run to mamma. And, though it’s not clear to me whether those are theoretical or measured (the legend in the linked pdf suggests measurement), my photographs give me no reason to doubt them. The sensor is nowhere near the resolution limit of the lens, at any aperture at any point in the frame at any focusing distance (not that I’ve measured or care, mind you, but I’ve never see so much moiré in my photographs before). If something’s not sharp, blame focusing or shake.

I don’t think Hasselblad sell this as an APO lens but haven’t seen in-focus chromatic aberration so far. You’ll find traces in out of focus zones in violent light, as at the top of the background columns, above. That’s about it.

Distortion is corrected automatically via the lens profile and I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret : I sometimes dial the correction back to bring back some “flaw” into the frame, to make it look more “human”. Uncorrected distortion is actually fairly high, at over 2% (still 6 times less than the Leica Q2, but more than other lenses in the XCD range). Other than that, there’s not a lot to comment on.

In conclusion

This is a great lens to use but a boring, boring one to describe Technically, there’s not much to write about.

Decoratively, it’s as useless as a … on your elbow. When you’ve been pampered by lenses that render gorgeously for years, that will make you question your photographic abilities for some time (ahem, does this feel like real-life experience? ’cause it is!) This lens doesn’t lie any more than Joey shares food.

And I love it dearly for it.

Every bland photo is a kick in the nuts and every good one becomes a personal success. Those are fewer and further between than before but I’m getting the hang of it and find the lens incredibly rewarding when used properly.

Deciding whether to keep this lens or not should be a no-brainer. Except it’s a 30mm lens. That focal length pitches it against my favourite lens of all time, the Zeiss Distagon 1.4/35 ZM, a.k.a. Audrey, which turned out to be a much better performer on the X1D than I had envisionned. #F1rstWorldProblems, right? Financially, yes. Emotionally, not so sure. Any thoughts or preferences between the two?

Posted on DearSusan by pascaljappy.

Late to the party (but always nice to be invited) it’s high time I shared with you the contents of my bag!

The obvious choice for me was the Billingham Hadley small. To me this bag has everything I need. The ability to cram in more stuff that anything that size has any physical right to hold, it has no zips or Velcro (these things have a habit of breaking and/or wearing out) and I find it comfortable to wear and carry.

Best of all it was about half price in a department store sale and that was all the Bag Acquisition incentive I needed! Fours years on and it has red wine and cafe food stains because at times I can be a clumsy fuck (and I like to keep it on-the-lap close to me in cafes), the colour’s rubbed off a bit on one edge where the bag rubs against my hip, but most of all the quality of the bag has rubbed off on me! (If you’re reading this Billingham, I can provide ad copy for a small fee)

If the worst happened and it somehow died I wouldn’t really hesitate to replace it with another…. I probably wouldn’t score a half price one again though and would have to console myself with having a colour choice. Not that Khaki is terrible… but it’s no black.

If I’m taking everything, it’s usually this – Leica M9P 50 summicron 35 and 90 summarits and the 7Artisans (mounted) as you can see from the cork, the M isn’t a big bit of kit!

I also keep in the Billingham:
A spare SD card, spare batteries (not pictured)
A cleaning cloth (not pictured)
A White Balance Card, a lanyard to attach the WB card to things (like me)
A lens cleaning pen
ND filters
Hayfever tablets
A plastic bag for wet/dusty environment lens changes
A nicotine vaporiser (for nicotine is addictive yet cigarettes are bad and Adam is only able to live without the latter if he still has the former!)
 
The Billingham serves as my ‘I simply have to take all my stuff with me’ bag. This is a rare occurrence… as usually I’ve a reasonable idea of what kit I want to shoot so there’s no point dragging it all along with me.

For the most part I don’t want to take all my stuff with me…

Which leads me to my Case Logic small DSLR bag. This bag will happily fit one Leica M (or Fuji X-Pro) with a lens mounted and another lens loose in the main compartment. I’ve had this bag nearly a decade and my only recollection is seeing it in a store, baulking at the price, then scoring it on eBay for about 60% less. Between them, the two side pockets can fit a spare battery (or two for an X-Pro – it’s not that the Fuji batteries are smaller, just that it might be worth having two spares!) and some filters, WB card, door keys. After all these years the only issue is that one of the rubber mouldings that encases the zip puller has snapped off, but there’s still ample left to tug on the zip.

My third bag is another decade old one, a Golla something or other I mainly use this as a hand luggage bag, as it’ll take three lenses, then this little bag can go in my big (but still small enough to fit under the plane seat ) rucksack that I travel with.

Occasionally I take both the Case Logic and Golla bag out with me, on that rare (like count on the fingers of one hand number of times) that I want all the lenses, but don’t want to bring the Billingham with me.

Of course gear’s great, but what does all this get used for?

Well a variety of things!

As you might know, I’m english but I’ve been living in Portugal for the past five years and I never get tired of how different the world looks here!

Portugal also offers me many different opportunities for street photography!

I quite often use the 7Artisans 50mm F1.1 with my M9. The DS massive is a little split as to whether it’s a good lens or not… I won’t tell tales on who thinks what…

But I’d be the first to admit that better IQ is available with native M glass (and no doubt Zeiss and almost certainly modern Voigtländer glass)

I hope that you enjoyed this little peek into the murky world of my bag…. The short answer to the question (what’s in my bag) is basically one camera and 35mm and 50mm lenses, which I do find covers off so, so much of what I like to take pictures of.

I usually just take the Case Logic bag with these two primes… But often in the summer months, I just pick a lens for the day, sling the camera round my neck and head on out with nothing more than a spare battery (or two) in a jeans pocket. Rolling back home some hours later as golden hour fades, perhaps a little sun burnt, usually full of cafe food and very occasionally with an image or two that I’m quite happy with

All images shot with the M9P, 50 summicron, 35 and 90 summarits and the 7artisans 50mm F1.1

Posted on DearSusan by Adam Bonn.

The Voigländer 40mm f:1.2 for Sony mirrorless (FE mount) is designed and made by the Japanese firm Cosina, who bought the rights to the name of a prestigious German optics pioneer. Hence its alternate designation of CV (Cosina-Voigtländer). Do not expect this to be a full technical review, I have neither competence nor lust for it, and, because it is not a new lens, there are quite a few out there that do it well.

Interestingly, Cosina are also the manufacturers for Zeiss’ manual lenses (classics, ZM, Milvus, Loxia). For years it seemed that CV avoided competing head-on with their large German client, but now no more. They have issued a number of very good FE-mount lenses that are targeted at Zeiss-type customers: manual lenses of premium price and performance. While there is, to date, no direct match between a Zeiss and CV lens (CV for example have released 2 excellent macro lenses for FE, a 65mm f:2.0 and a 110mm f:2.5, whereas Zeiss have yet to play the macro card for Sony bodies), the 40mm f:1.2 has proven very popular, and certainly cost Zeiss some sales. It has spawned a 50mm f:1.2 sibling which seems to share the same optical construction.

As can be expected from Cosina, makers of Zeiss MF lenses, the CV 40 is a all-metal construction that feels like a quality item and inspires confidence. Learning about this lens, a question arises: how can Cosina design a lens which is relatively compact, not too heavy (315g, 52mm filter size), not hugely expensive (1000€ give or take), and delivers f:1.2 performance when one might have expected f:2.0?

From my point of view, present-day top lenses fall into one of 5 categories:

• Top technical performance in every respect, and “some” character to boot (think Zeiss Otus, Leica APO Summicron). They cost a bomb, and neither is f:1.2. Otus are f:1.4, Leica APO Summicron are f:2.0.
• Top technical performance (with MTF that are “calculated”, not measured), but character-and-soul-less, usually at premium but not luxo prices. Think Sony-Zeiss 55mm f:1.8, just like many other AF prime lenses.
• Character lenses that are not technically perfect. Think older designs, like the Mandler lenses for Leica, or the Zeiss ZM 50 f:1.5. They have obvious flaws (sharpness wide open is a joke, many aberrations), but, when you stay away from trouble areas, they can produce awesome images, full of character and free of bugaboos, matching or even more pleasant than those of überlenses, for a lot less money.
• Very fast lenses. Think Leica Noctilux; Nikon Noct-Nikkor, Voigtländer Nocticron, Canon 50mm f:1.2L and 85mm f:1.2L, and now much cheaper Chinese offerings( Mitakon, 7Artisans). Mostly, they are made to be used wide open, where they are far from flawless but very interesting, and nowhere else. Noctilux or Canon f:1.2 shots are fantastic for their intended use, but no-one sensible should use them as landscape lenses.
• Slow lenses that are really, really good. Think Leica Elmar or Super Elmar 18, 21, 24, or Zeiss Loxia 21, 25, 85. Technically absolutely excellent, brilliant, super-clean-but-far-from-sterile images. Just, you have to put up with slow maximum aperture, meaning a less-than-full shooting envelope, while the price is full.

So, which category does our CV 40 fit into? Essentially; CV have tried to kill 2 birds with one stone. An überfast lens, and a character lens outside the wide open useage area. meaning, yes, it has less-than-perfect performance, in parts, but it can offer more of a shooting envelope than either single types.

The question is, have they achieved this? No point beating about the bush or using linguistic convolutions, my answer is: again, in parts. To make it simple, the very fast(est) part is of limited value, as wide open shots lack any discernible sharpness, and there are other problems (not very elegant bokeh, focus shift). And, for the second goal, does it have character? In spades! In its shooting envelope, the CV can produce shots that are as impressive and apppealing as those of the best lenses.

Above is the full image of which I have selected a crop to do an aperture series that helps understand how the rendering changes with aperture

Basically, until f:2.0, the CV is a soft, problematic lens. But if the softness doesn’t deter you, or even appeals to you for a “specialised” look, or very-low-light useage, you should be more than satisfied. Between f:2.0 and f:2.8, you have a first window of excellence. Images are by now technically clean and sharp, and full of character. Strong 3D, nice colours and contrast. If this is your “thing”, Wow! shots will come thick and fast, and you will be one happy camper.

Close down some more, and the shots get even cleaner unutil they peak at f:5.6, the other sweet spot. Great sharpness, tremendous 3D and detail, high contrast, the lens can do most things remarkably well at that aperture, from close up to infinity, free from problems, yet retaining character. By f:8.0, the pictures are still super-clean but flatten out. And why bother with a super-fast lens, and the issues it brings, if shooting frequently closed down that much is your intent?

So, in a nutshell, here is what CV have to offer. A superfast lens? With severe limitations. A character lens? YES!!! With two sweet spots and two renderings, depending on aperture. A do-it-all lens? Mostly, but not quite. A lens that produces übershots? Yes, definitely, but only within its shooting envelope, which is far from full.

Many manufacturers try to offer products that are, within their price points, all things to all people. Voigtländer have taken another approach. Not everyone will like the CV 40. People like me, who like to open wide to place the focus point, and then stop down, will be frustrated by the focus shift, for example. But, for people who know how to use it, it will deliver shots that are best-in-class, or very, very close. And, for that money and physical package, that is mighty impressive!

Let me show you one shot I really like, and how I failed to get it right.

I like everything about it. Colours, contrast, 3D, rendering… Except one thing: I opened wide to place the point of focus very carefully on the edge of the horizontal bar, and then stopped down to, I think, f:2.8. I even did this twice and shot twice to make sure I got this lovely (for me) image just right. And failed twice. Because closing down from f:1.2 to f: 2.8 shifts the point of focus. Arrgh!

So, for some, this lens will be the bees’ knees. But not for me. Focus shift makes my usual workflow too difficult. Besides, just a week later, Pascal showed up with Audrey. Yes it has issues on a stock Sony body, and it is not good at all at f:1.2; because it is a f:1.4 lens. And I messed up a shot that I would have really liked because I forgot to manually adjust the IBIS, which is automatic with the CV but not on a adapted lenses, and so it is not quite sharp. But I fell in love all over again. Here is a very deep crop…

So why do I call this lens the un-Otus? Using the Otus as a yardstick for “doing everything at the highest level of performance – weight and cost no object-“, there are many lenses that are called by their loving fans “mini-Otus”. Which is by and large a joke. Full Otus performance is just not easily reachable at all, and it is self-deception or lack experience to think that a lens costing and weighing a fraction is just-as-good-for-all-intents-and-purposes-in-the-real-world in every respect.

Voigtländer have not fallen, or caused trusting clients to fall, into that trap. Rather than trying to hit every performance measure, but on a much lower budget than Otus, the CV 40 cleverly picks its fights. And, where it is designed to perform, it performs remarkably well for the money, with a combination of modern performance and golden-oldie character. Just, you have to know if this floats your boat. Besides, for Sony FE, there is a glaring absence of near-perfect all-purpose 35mm premium offering. The Loxia 35 is not as good a more recent Loxias, and thus is also a “specialised” lens. The Sony-Zeiss 35 f:1.4 is AF, much larger and heavier, not everyone likes its rendering, and it is prone, it seems, to some QA issues. The Zeiss Batis 40mm f:2.0 is a more universal offering than the CV, with AF, but don’t expect it to match the CV where the CV shines, plus it is “only” f:2.0. So, is this Voigtländer 40 for you? Can you resist the siren song of f:1.2? Only you can answer that…

Posted on DearSusan by philberphoto.

Here is a second Hasselblad X1D lens reviews. My intention isn’t to bore anyone but to provide some sort of repository for the information I wish I’d had access to before deciding to jump in.

Also, in those reviews, I mostly try to give you a feel of what the lens is like to live with and what the photographs look like, rather than bore you with irrelevant technical detail. While the XCD range has a very consistent look and rendering, there are some subtle differences that justify the multiple reviews for someone wanting to decide which lens will best suit needs.

And on that, let me sum up what I feel the XCD 45 is like to use. In a sentence, it’s a tad softer than the XCD 30. Not any less sharp, as those crazy good MTF curves show, but it does render a tad more gently, as if a tiny amount of residual spherical aberration rounded off the angles (which I am sure is NOT the case ). It feels a tiny bit more rounded and warmer.

Coupled with a longer focal length, this makes for an easy going lens that never gets you into trouble in hard light or stark compositions. It always remains crystal transparent and super clean but never strays towards the clinical. With the XCD 30, I’m always tempted to dial down the automatic lens corrections performed by Phocus or Lightroom. With this lens, the balance seems perfect.

Sharpness

The MTF curves are here. And below is a full size jpg that will let you see just how well this lens captures detail and atmosphere. There is some loss in the jpg export but it’s still pretty good. There’s not much more I can add, except that this was made at f/6.3 but there’s very little, if any, difference in performance between f/3.5 and f/8, even at 100%. Those lenses are not fast and they are not cheap. And this is why.

Flare and glare

Just as on the XCD30, strong lights just outside the frame create very visible flare and the sunshade is advisable when shooting in those conditions. However, the effects seem less ugly than on the XCD30. In fact, this can soften the image and produce a lovely glow that fits some subjects very well. For others, just block out the light with your hand or the shade.

Bokeh

Bokeh is superb on this lens. The lens has a fairly short focal length and a fairly small maximum aperture so the amount of blur is only big if you are photographing close up. But when you do, it really is beautiful. Particularly noteworthy is the shape of out of focus lights. Those are morphed into soft balls with soft edges, which is quite rare. No onion rings, no hard edge, just a flat, colourful disk of light with gentle fading at the edges. Nice.

Sunstars

As on the CXD30, 8 branches for a traditional look. Not much more to report here

Chromatic aberration

In focus, everything largely seems under control. Closed-down, as below, there isn’t a trace of chromatic aberration to be found in the frame, even on those violent specular highlights where the sun reflects on the water.

At full aperture, I was able to find a trace of purple friging on a very slightly out of focus black-white edge (see against singer’s skirt, at right).

In out of focus highlights, you can find some green fringing if you’re looking for it. See the light bulb at top-center in the photograph below, at f/3.5. That’s about as far as it goes in my experience.

3D pop

I’ll go out on a limb here and say that this XCD 45 feels extremely realistic, rather than full of pop. Unlike some lenses, which play geometric jedi mind tricks (probably) through a variation in rendering of in-focus and out-of-focus areas, this maintains an extremely consistent look throughout the frame and depth of the field.

In the photograph above, you wouldn’t say the fountain stands out spectacularly from the background, for example. But the whole photograph, through very accurate rendering of colour and tone, screams of realistic 3D. The fountain is well separated, but no more, the balcony railings are clearly separated from the walls, and the various chimneys and extensions on the roofs display a very clear 3D pattern. If anything is spectacular in this photograph, it’s the absence of anything flawed or gimmicky that would destroy the sense of space. But I don’t feel the XCD is a spectacukar 3D pop master other than in its realism.

So whenever there’s (no) good light, there’s (no) good 3D, even for flat subjects. Of the 5 next photographs, made at various apertures, the first is the least impressive, probably because of the very flat light (though it is much better if you click on it and view it without all of the wordpress compression).

Black and white

Love it, love it love it From very basic greyscale conversions to much more extreme ‘interpretations’, this lens has a clarity always makes it shine in the sort of contrasty b&w photographs I like best.

So that’s it. A superb lens that adds to its impressive list of qualities a small size (by Hasselblad standards) and a very lovely shutter noise. This is definitely a keeper for my style of shooting. It will complement the C-Sonnar 1.5/50 ZM very nicely, and vice versa. What do you think ?

Posted on DearSusan by pascaljappy.

This is the widest lens in the Hasselblad X1D’s current native range. And it’s keeper. Unfortunately.

My finance plan for acquiring an “augmented” 5-lens X1D field kit was to sell 2 or 3 immediately, plus my Sony gear and lenses. This has not been going entirely according to plan and this very wide angle gem, the first on my to sell list, isn’t helping at all

Regular readers might recall I tested the Zeiss Distagon 15 about 3 years ago. While a solid performer, that lens was one of the few Zeiss had sent to me for review that I hadn’t felt like keeping or bought immediately.

The reason is simple: I’m not good with very wide angle lenses. I just don’t know what to do to fill the frame intelligently. And the resulting images, even when composed properly, often seem artificially spectacular, not my cup of tea. Case in point :

I just don’t see the world like that and don’t want that sort of extreme perspective hanging on my walls. This is obviously very personal, entirely a matter of taste.

To make matters worse, from a reviewing perspective, there’s a lot to write about when you have a fast long-ish lens in your hand. Bokeh quality, vignetting, ease of focusing, handling, sharpness at various apertures. This, on the other hand, is sharp – very sharp – from the tip of your nose to Pōwehi. And from corner to corner. And there’s no blur to speak of. And distortion and vignetting are corrected ‘in camera’. And it’s a black featureless cylinder. And it has a leaf shutter, with all advantages and drawbacks, just like all other XCD lenses. I’m not really sure what to write about. It’s very expensive, very excellent and quite large. Review done.

So, what I did instead, is shoot the lens constantly for 3 days in Paris, on various types of subjects and in various conditions, trying out different post-processing renderings, to let you decide or not whether this lens is for you. Not that you have much of a choice, if you’re looking for that wide a lens for the mirrorless Hassy

My verdict on this lens is simple. I’ve chosen to sell other stuff, stuff I really loved, in order to keep it. That’s me, scared of anything wider than your 24-105 kit zoom … ’nuff said ? Onwards.

Onwards, but let me at least try to group the photographs into meaningful clumps, to make your evaluation more intuitive. In this first clump, you can see sunstars around highlights. To my eyes, they look very nice, particularly on the new lamps made of led arrays, but you may be more accustomed to and have a preference for the more modern variants that exhibit many more spikes than the 8 presented here around each specular highlight. Sunstar definition is not tack sharp, it is more gentle than on some other lenses, without being blurry.

In my reviews of other XCD lenses, I found flare from just-out-of-frame-sunlight to be a real problem that needs to be dealt with actively. Flare could be both strong and very ugly. Glare on the other hand was really minimal.

This has not been as much of an issue on this lens. Weirdly, for such a wide one. Granted, my experience with is is limited and granted, April in Paris ain’t Death Valley in July, sun-wise. But sill, it is significant that not one of my 300+ photographs exhibits any kind of issue related to very strong and localised highlights.

Chromatic correction, on the other hand, doesn’t seem quite as exemplary as on XCD siblings. In-focus areas are still perfectly corrected, but out of focus and towards the corners, you can see the lens/internal correction beginning to struggle a little. Nothing too severe and easily corrected in PP, but noteworthy at this price point and relatively modest f/4 aperture.

This might well be the only niggle with this fabulous lens. To compensate for this, I think one of its strongest points is the clarity of its rendering. All XCD lenses display a neutrality and objectivity that lacks charm, but the positive flip side of this is an ability to convey meaning in ways that can get lost with more quirky designs.

I find that particularly true in the mannequin pictures above and below, as well as in many low-light or low-contrast situations that could come out all mirky and unclear with a different design.

This clarity of message is also helped by two other facets of the XCD 4/21’s rendering. First of all, the 3D layering is quite good. Better than the 30mm version, in my mind. Even in dark and difficult conditions such as below.

Secondly, the geometric rectitude helps create legible patterns in which the intent is always clear.

All this put together makes for a lens that’s a real joy to compose with. I had a lot of fun trying to assemble complex patterns into a legible whole, even putting some scenes slightly off kilter but perfectly balanced. With a lens creating so much convergence, I often found that shooting upwards or downwards while balancing the act with a play on visual weights was tremendous fun.

This is a very contrasty lens. Or maybe it covers so much visual area that it’s bound to always capture elements of very different luminosity. And while this is a lot of fun in semi-abstract photographs, it is much less pleasant to deal with in photographs that are meant to look natural. This is not a quality or fault of the lens but some may one a slightly more gentle tool to handle extreme lighting.

Anyhoo, it’s a brilliant, brilliant lens that can paint huge swabs of the world in very stark graphical strokes or in a more gentle way and with an abundance of detail that lets you create the sort of atmosphere you want.

By default, files are quite strongly opinionated, but they respond really well to all manner of post processing and can produce images ranging from naturalistic to totally abstract with equal ease. What the lens lacks in natural charm, it more than makes up for in versatility. That’s may main reason for keeping it.

Let me leave you with some more samples displaying a range of atmospheres. Note that all (I think) were processed in Phocus and that many more styles could be produced using Lightroom, Photoshop or Nik.

Thoughts?

Posted on DearSusan by pascaljappy.

Let me spoil you the end right away. This lens is ridiculously good, even by Hasselblad standards. While I will go into details further down this page, just know I couldn’t find fault with this extraordinary design.

It’s not all good news, however. Ergonomics unfortunately lag far behind optics. At least for most people. Let’s start with that before we can get to the good stuff.

So, what’s wrong with the XCD 3.5/120?

For one thing, it’s real big. The XCD30, XCD90 and XCD45 are large but balance very nicely on the body. However, the XCD 120 is much larger. Add the sunshade, and it feels like a model bazooka.

Secondly, autofocus is woefully slow. Extremely accurate, but slow. For low-contrast moving subject, I found that focusing manually close to the exact point and letting AF finish the job was the fastest procedure. If that scares you, you are not the target customer for what is without the shadow of a doubt the sharpest lens I have ever used. Sharp enough to trim Wolverine’s toe nails, sharp enough to split leptons for breakfast.

This is a specialized lens. Try to use it for action photography and it will drive you insane. Use it for macro and still subjects and you will discover the most extraordinary and satisfying tool.

Better still, what separates this from a soulless scientific razor blade is its gentle rendering. Far from the aggressive look of some other macro lenses, this XCD 3.5/120 shows tremendous finesse and delicacy.

In other words, anything you photograph just looks drop dead gorgeous. If you own an X1D and don’t want to spend big money, stop reading right here

With an f/3.5 maximum aperture, it cannot create the same razor thin focus plane as an Otus. But it’s rendering is every bit as elegant and subtle. Surprisingly, the same can’t be said of some of its non-macro sublings (all share a common aesthetic and come close, but they aren’t quite there).

The way every subtle shade and colour nuance is depticted without having to touch saturation is fabtastic and makes for a vibrant but very natural atmosphere, even on dull subjects in flat lighting.

Another direct consequence of this subtle rendering is a natural depiction of 3D that mixes a very palpable layering with the slight compression offered by a short telephoto lens (120mm, roughly 90mm equivalent on full frame). Very complex scenes are dealt with with a nonchalent “wha’ever” dismissal and everything falls in its natural place.

For me, the standout feature are the colours. Strong but mainly … true. Even in brutal light. This is a trademark of the host camera, but it seems this lens gets the very best out of the X1D.

Bokeh is also good. Getting close up and personal at full aperture will produce oodles of capuccino, but even distant scenes at more moderate f/ratios will send the background into an elegant blur. Essentially perfect, here.

In fact, Hasselblad could sell this as a portrait lens. It excels at that exercise, even without IBIS (smug grin, check).

Black and white “performance” ? Well, given how gorgeous the colours are, I didn’t bother much with b&w in my short experimenting. But everything points to a very delicate look.

Chromatic aberration ? Nope. Couldn’t find any. Not wide open, not in focus, not closed down, not out of focus. Maybe it’s there (is that a trace around the boxes above the left shoulder? It may be but I don’t think it is), but it didn’t show up in any significant way during my day of experimenting. This is a stunning, stunning, lens.

Here are some more random shots taken during my walk with the lens, to let you judge the rendering style for yourself.

So who is this expensive, slow, ponderous and optically magnificent lens for ? What’s my final verdict ?

Well, my take is simple. Before moving to the X1D system, all my lenses had been manual focus. Why? Simply because AF lenses are optical compromises. The optical formula is chosen not just for visual goodness but also for lightness, so as to allow the AF motors to be snappy. Manual focus lenses don’t have to make that compromise and often turn out to be more subtle and more elegant.

This Hasselblad XCD 3.5/120 Macro appears to be an autofocus lens that makes no compromise to autofocus. It offers all the the visual beauty I’ve come to expect of an Otus, and then some, and happens to also focus automatically. This puts it at the other end of the AF spectrum from sports-oriented lenses that will primarily guarantee great subject tracking and also offer the best optical quality that first condition allows. If you think about it as a manual focus überlens that happens to have AF, it begins to make a lot of sense. In fact – and this is going to make many scream in rage – this lens reminds me of another gentle giant favourite of mine : the Milvus 85, one of the most underrated recent masterpieces in optical design. Bold, powerful, but infinitely lovely. Only the Hassy trades aperture for even more quality, subtlety, and AF.

And one of the words that have popped up most frequently in this (kind of) review is “natural”. This is the lens of a naturalist. I honestly cannot think of anything better for that sort of application. I wish it had been with me during the supermoon. And that some sort of astonomical guiding system was still accessible to me to photograph the Milky Way with this heavenly combo.

If John-James Audubon was around, this is what he’d be using. Of course, he’d be somewhere exotic, not at the local zoo, but that lens and camera would be there with him to document the animal world with that mix of absolute scientific exactitude and artistic flair for gentle beauty.

I sure wish I was a naturalist adventurer.

Anyone who’s seen me shoot knows that I walk a lot, and often run when with family or alone, trying to encounter as many subjects as possible rather than stick around. Even though, it’s been absolute love at first sight, and the lens is being used far more than I anticipated, because zoos aren’t my natural habital and I don’t usually have the time to go out and explore the outdoors, observe, plan, or be meticulous.

I don’t care, I’ll deny ever suggesting it, but the lens deserves better than me, in that respect, don’t you think?

Posted on DearSusan by pascaljappy.

A weird shift has happened during my evaluation of the 5 Hasselblad XCD lenses at my disposal. Having been mesmerized by Hans Strand’s first sample photos with the XCD 30, that lens was the one I requested for my initial review and the first one I wanted to go in my own bag. And the XCD 21 and XCD 120 also found their way there simply because they were part of an interesting deal, my firm intention being to sell them very quickly. But those became favourites as soon as their review was over. And now that I’m testing my final lens, the XCD90 (which has stayed asleep in the pelicase for 3 months), I wonder whether that isn’t the best of the bunch …

This is getting embarassing. At every new review, my conclusion seems to be “oh, this is the best of the set, so far”. Some reviewer, right ? But let me explain.

All of these lenses are extraordinarily sharp and well corrected. They are also close in rendering. The whole range (that I know of) shows high consistency in ergonomics and looks. However, now that my familiarity with these 5 lenses has grown significantly, it’s possible to identify a few heads sticking out in various directions.

The XCD 120 Macro is slower and larger than the rest. Its autofocus is very very accurate and it’s rendering is very gentle and transparent.

The XCD 45 is probably not quite as sharp as the others (while still being very sharp) and has the softest, most gentle rendering. It could be my only lens and I wouldn’t feel sad for a moment.

The XCD 30 is super sharp but also a little wee bit harsher. Ergonomically, it’s not quite as nice as the XCD 45, with a louder, crunchier autofocus and larger size. Still an absolute peach and a serious contender for my desert island lens.

The CXD 21 is a razor blade and also a little stark. It got me to love wide angle lenses and that’s saying a lot. It’s large but a joy to use and very clever optically. If there’s a better lens for architecure, I’d love to meet it.

My impression is that (roughly speaking) the longer the focal length, the more gentle the aesthetics. And the shorter the focal length, the starker the look (with some variation, as I feel the XCD 30 is maybe even a tad more severe than the XCD 21).

And the XCD 90, well, that’s just Goldilocks.

While it doesn’t quite play the same Jedi mind tricks with 3D rendering as my former Distagon 1.4/35 ZM or an Otus, it still offers a very beautiful sense of depth with a very gentle transition from sharp to unsharp and great smoothness of bokeh.

In fact, this feels like a very natural lens, just lke the remarquable XCD 120 reviewed recently. In my early tenure of these XCD lenses, the relative lack of “pop” compared to Zeiss’ finest frustrated me and I wrote to Ming Thein to get his opinion about it. His surprised answer was “Even the 90?”. Now I understand why.

In use, this is as close to a perfect lens as I’ve ever seen. The AF is snappy (for this range and camera), shutter noise is very slightly more metallic that the super gentle XCD 45 but still very pleasant, the optical quality is – once again – insanely high. It is short-ish, not heavy, and perfectly balanced in the hand and on the camera. The 21 and (even more so) the 120 feel very cumbersome in comparison. This, is an absolute corker.

3D pop (vs Otus 85)

How does it compare to an Otus 85 ? The promised comparison in the title wasn’t just clickbait For me, this question is important as I only can / want to keep one of the two.

Comparing the two might be meaningless because the Otus goes almost 3 stops more open, is manual focus, requires an adapter and silent shutter. It vignettes quite heavily, not the XCD … apple to oranges. My only interest here is in rendering. Both are sublime lenses. But which is more to my tastes? Or yours?

Let’s get sharpness out of the way. But are much sharper than the sensor can resolve (on most of the surface, in the Otus’ case).

The Otus (here at f/4, 3 stops in) is very slightly better at the center and the XCD 90 (at its f/3.2 full aperture) beats it from 15mm and outwards.

More interesting are bokeh and pop. If you compare the Otus 85 photograph above to the cat photo further above or the tree below (you can click both to open larger files in separate tabs) the Otus feels like it has more depth, even in the out of focus zones. The XCD 90 seems both a tad more nervous and a bit flatter. Leaving aside the vignetting, which is easy to correct at mid and short distances, the sense of volume on the tree trunk is a tad better than the sense of volume on the cat’s head. Audrey (Distagon 1.4/35 ZM) and Otus lenses are extraordinary at that 3D game. To be fair to the Hassy, the oak tree below is “flatter”, relative to its distance, than the walnut above. But still, I think the Otus does a slightly better job of recreating the volume of the trunk and of depicting its integration in the scene. The oak looks slightly more cut-out, as in Japanese tunnel books. But the Hassy picture looks more … natural (a word that comes up regularly).

So, the Otus is a bit more charming and the XCD a lot more practical and a bit more neutral … thinking cap on for now. End of comparison (for now) but I’ll get into more thorough tests soon. In the mean time, any lens that can do that sort of 3D is good enough for me :

Flare and glare

This will be quick. To see any measure of those, you’ll need pretty extreme conditions.

In real life, none of my photographs have been affected by flare or glare with this lens.

The cloud test

This is as unscientific as it gets. But I find that clouds are never well rendered by poor lenses. They look flaky and artificial. And this is only made worse by aggressive post processing. So here are a few clouds with all manner of PP for a very subjective evaluation.

Bokeh. To swirl or not to swirl?

Until this photo popped up in my test files import, there had been no indication of swirly bokeh anywhere in any conditions. But here, at ful f/3.2 aperture and about 4m to the main subject, it does seem like the very edges are starting to dance about slightly (also, you can see chromatic aberration in the out of focus zones, at the junction between the hills and the sky). And here it is again, close up and at ful aperture. It seems that the closer and more open you are using the lens, the more it will swirl about the background. That’s new to me in this range and probably indicates some field curvature at close distances.

In most situations, however, bokeh is very simple and creamy, within the limits of what a lens limited to f/3.2 can achieve.

Operational considerations

Along with the 45, this has the most pleasant and fastest autofocus. It’s not able to transform the X1D into a Sony A7S3, but it’s fast enough to focus on stuff that moves. Also the AF noise is far better than on the XCD 30 or the XCD 120, both noisy blighters.

All XCD lenses have big, heavy glass elements and aren’t designed for fast autofocus. Optical quality is the name of the game, focusing speed comes a very distant second. But The XCD 45 and XCD 90 will let you deal with family / pet / some sports conditions if you’re willing to put some effort into it rather than rely exclusively on a machine to tell you where your kid’s eyes are located.

Truthfully, though, this system is much more about accuracy than speed and I very much hope it always remains that way. It’s great to know the Swedes have provided us with a way to escape the tyranny of speed and numbers. Keep it up guys, and thank you. Now if Sony would consider ISO 25 sensors, it would be bliss all over

Chromatic aberration

None whatsoever in focus but you will find some in out of focus zones, as illustrated by the first photograph in the bokeh section, above.

In B&W

Judging a lens by the look of the monochrome photographs it produces is also rather subjective, given the amount of PP that goes into those, but revealing nonetheless. When we judge the look of a lens, we tend to evaluate potential colour casts and chromatic aberration as well as geometric rendering. Not only does a b&w conversion eliminate the colour component from the mix (freeing your mind to judge only the latter aspects) it also helps you see the sort of look the lens draws you towards. Or, if you have a personal style, whether the lens suits it well or not.

And, boy, is this a lovely system for monochrome imagery!

The XCD 90 feels very transparent with excellent in-focus 3D and good bokeh 3D that creates a look better served by global contrast manipulation than by small scale contrast wizardry (clarity). It doesn’t have that etched look that many beginners confuse with sharpness and results are better served by maintaining that natural quality than by trying to add artificial brittleness. I particularly enjoy the separation of objects deep in the shadows (such as the hand at bottom right, above) that makes it easy to plunge large parts of the frame into darkness while retaining a lot of life. And, given the camera’s natural abilities with highlights (see the horse behind the youg girl at center, three pics above), the combo is absolutely wonderful for fine art monochrome photography.

In closing

I’ll leave you with a few more photographs, many made in Arles on a “Guardian” (literally cowboys, in Camargue) day, where the colour of the stone and the festive garnments gave the Swede combo sweet emotions.

What strikes me most with this lens is the sense of freedom it gives me. Its snappy(-ish) autofocus makes it great for decisive moment photography (if HCB got a dime every time someone misused that term, right?) But that’s not all. Compared to others, in particular the XCD 120 Macro, it’s fairly obvious Hasselblad have let some correction go to the wind. It’s still an impeccably noble lens, but there are traces chromatic aberration in the out of focus zones, and there can be some swirl in the bokeh. I believe the positive flip side of this is that sense of breathing and freedom that is very rarely found in modern lenses. In many ways, this XCD 90 reminds me of a better behaved Audrey (Distagon 1.4/35 ZM).

This post marks the end my series of reviews of the Hasselblad X1D system (so far). So it’s fitting to conclude it with a DearSusan signature photograph of a bicycle, right? Seriously, though, this photographs says a lot about the system. It is one that doesn’t attempt to do all things but does them remarkably well:

• Yes, you have autofocus and will be able to track passing horses, but the system is happiest with slow moving subjects.
• Colours are out of this world.
• The great transparency and lovely rendering are well suited to a naturalist approach. Maybe you can slap on great presets and obtain gorgeous photographs. But this isn’t spicy curry, it’s the best sashimi in the world and it is best enjoyed au naturel.
• The system is an absolute joy in black and white as well, although it did take me a lot of readjusting. Files don’t respond all that elegantly to harsh treatment and great mood swings of the clarity slider (which was one of the most pleasing tricks with the A7r2 and Audrey). They feel far more traditional in that they far prefer local burning and dodging, a la film days. This may have to do with Phocus more than with the camera, but I’m judging the system as a whole.
• The least pleasurable aspects of the camera are the dust magnet sensor, a major pain that also takes me back to the film days – a sensor booty shake sure would be nice – and a certain proneness to crashing whenever I try to hurry it rather than wait for operations to complete naturally.
• The most pleasurable aspects of the camera are its understated looks and build, absolutely intuitive ergonomics and fabulous image quality. Hasselblad – unlike anyone else in the field – don’t seem to care about specifications. I’m regularly shooting at ISO 1600 when others are at 200 thanks to IBIS. There is no noise reduction cheating. There is no fancy top speed, buffer rate … And none of this matters, ever. It is just such a relaxing camera.

It takes time to get to know and appreciate a system. What I now realise and admire is the design logic behind these Hasselblad XCD lenses. Initially, after years of using adapted old lenses on a Sony camera, the XCD range felt a little bit clinical and soulless. Nothing could be further from the truth.

What Hasselblad have designed is a set of lenses each optimised for a special application. The 21 has the rigourous geometry and slightly hard rendering that suits architecture. The 30, with its slightly hard edge, is astonishing in low light and the sort of configuration you’ll find in landscape photography. The 45 is small, fast, tolerant and ideal for street. The 90 is snappy, accurate, breathy and probably the most beautiful of the lot. It feels perfect for portraits and fashion. The 120 is slow, incredibly sharp, natural and accurate. It is the perfect naturalist lens. All have mind blowing MTF (and a price tag to match) but that’s only the basis on which each individuality has been built. It’s a fabulous system and I can’t wait to try out the newer lenses and the new cameras.

Posted on DearSusan by pascaljappy.

Dear Susan’s contributors have varied photographic interests, taken with varied equipment, but often with a unifying aim to avoid the obvious, and often taking an independent path to interesting photography.  A couple of years ago, Dear Susan founder Pascal wrote about the concept of “undestination photography“, to eschew the cliched and instagrammed spots over-run with […]

Posted on DearSusan by Adrian.