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How good are Hasselblad old lens for color film on difficult conditions?

A

Alessandro

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Mar 22, 2012
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14
I speak about CA, flare, etc.
I have take a quick look on the forum but from the image posted, the majority are bw and the few that post some color use a digital back.
 
Alessandro said:
I speak about CA, flare, etc.
I have take a quick look on the forum but from the image posted, the majority are bw and the few that post some color use a digital back.
Click to expand...

There's a reason why Hasselblads have always been considered the best and was the standard which all others were compared. Adverse conditions were like child's play with the lenses. I have a couple Hassy pictures that were taken at night. I forget if they were posted here on this website. Anyway, I shot the scene with a Nikon 85mm lens and a Hassy 120mm. The 85mm had a ton of reflections from the bright light. The 120mm displayed none. It was awesome.

If you can't find the picture in my gallery here then go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathantw/ there are pictures taken with film there. Look for my Hasselblad lens sets.
 
nathantw666 said:
There's a reason why Hasselblads have always been considered the best and was the standard which all others were compared. Adverse conditions were like child's play with the lenses. I have a couple Hassy pictures that were taken at night. I forget if they were posted here on this website. Anyway, I shot the scene with a Nikon 85mm lens and a Hassy 120mm. The 85mm had a ton of reflections from the bright light. The 120mm displayed none. It was awesome.

If you can't find the picture in my gallery here then go to http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathantw/ there are pictures taken with film there. Look for my Hasselblad lens sets.
Click to expand...

Here's the 60mm set:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathantw/sets/72157629239671378/

Here's the 120mm set:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/nathantw/sets/72157629604327793/

The CA on the lenses, if you have your nose pressed to the print (since you aren't talking digital), is pretty hard to see and frankly I never really thought about it until digital came along.

Now, if you're talking the silver, OLD Hasselblad lenses that weren't multi-coated, then I can't answer that. Ansel Adams actually liked them because they weren't coated.
 
One told me that very early lenses were coated too. The "T*" means that Zeiss improve coating with a new processing. Don't know how much it improve the result.
Later, war against reflection in lenses and bodies was improved with special painting in the 2003FCW and the Cfi lenses. However hard to say how much. Last month I got a 250mm/5.6 of 1957 / 80mm/2.8 of 1965 and use it with pro shade. The optic formula did not change till now. I use it with CFV-39. The result is excellent so I decided to continue and must recieve a 150mm/4 of 1960 this week.
BTW, old C lenses are really beautifull and the word "Classical" writen with false old style letters on new ZV Zeiss lens kills the charme.
Perhaps I will find a 60mm/5.6 of early time, and I know that this lens was realy a crap and was improved one time before the C-60mm/3.5
That's true that digital give special interest for old lenses as it's possible to improve contraste and accentuation in one click. Contrast and accentuation may kill the true human feeling in a portrait.
By the way the digital sensor are not …coated and that's why old way to use TTL flash does not works !
 
All Hasselblad / Zeiss lenses are coated. The T* are multi coated. I started using Hasselblad professionally around 1970. Then all the lenses were single coated. Single coatings never prevented us from making beautiful images for our commercial clients. Multi coating is only a big deal if you have light sources near the edge of the frame or in the frame. Even then they can flare but more likely you'll get reflections from inside the body. The anti reflective paint in the body isn't perfect. Newer bodies have flocked interiors improving this condition. Under most conditions there's no difference between the old and new images. Like any lens it's always a good idea to use a deep lens shade like the pro shade.

A direct answer to your question, you'l probably never see any difference between newer and old glass. Both make sharp, contrasty images with beautiful color.
 
CA have been improved in some of the newer lenses. The new 50mm FLE has a different design as does the 40mm FLE and IF FLE. The FLE improves close focus and in general these lenses are somewhat of an improvement over the old designs. The same is true of the 250 and 350mm Super Achromats vs the old designs. the problem with the SA lenses is price and availability. The non SA versions are reasonable but the SA versions are $3000+ for a 250 SA and around $9000+ for a 350 SA. In my bok it's not worth it. I'm perfectly happy with my 250 T* and 350 CF. Now that I shoot almost all digital Phocus can correct most of the CA problems in these lenses.

IMO the best performing reasonably priced lenses are the 50mm Distagon FLE, 100mm Planar, 120mm Macro Planar and the 180mm Sonnar. The 100 and 180 are as good as lenses can get in every way with the 120 very close. The 50 is excellent also and the newer 40 FLE being a very good lens too. I have no experience with the IF FLE 40 but they're very expensive.
 
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