Many of you may know already my feelings about owning the Hasselblad X system, which I have tried to explain here on those two other photo diaries:
and
I got this lens two weeks ago and I thought I would share my impressions with you once again.
Since I switched to Medium format, I often felt I was in need for a slightly longer reach and I was also looking to get more compression for some of my portrait work.
While my XCD 80mm is still my favorite all around lens, the 135mm allows me to get a slightly different look which I truly love.
Just like all other Hasselblad XCD lenses, the 135mm is extremely solid and well constructed. The weight is similar to the 80mm and hand held shooting is very manageable.
Auto focus is very accurate although sometimes it feels a little slow, nothing to worry about it but I presume that the next X camera will improve this aspect.
The quality of the plane separation is very special and the bokeh is smooth and truly beautiful.
Somehow It reminds me of the Zeiss 135mm 2.0 which I used to shoot a lot with my Canon DSLRs, the overall rendering is certainly very similar. Unlike the Zeiss, with this lens I don't have to deal with manual focus which I remember was a real pain and a source of great frustration.
This lens is a perfect tool for outdoor portrait, especially when you want to give depth and a 3D pop to your subject.
While I didn't purchase the kit with the 1.7 converter (I felt that I would rather wait for Hasselblad to produce a longer lens than deal with a converter and the equivalent loss of light), I find odd that Hasselblad at the moment doesn't allow you to buy the converter as a stand alone item.
Colors, micro contrast, fine details....all absolutely superb.
Thanks for reading and cheers to you all.
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