Two Hasselblad Portrait Lenses at Infinity - now with a Leica Lens and a Tree

[MGrayson]

Well, it's too late to stop now. Edges at infinity. Left to right, Leica 100/2, Hasselblad HC 100/2.2, Hasselblad Zeiss 110/2

Wide open - The Leica is pretty clean. The HC100 is a bit soft, reflecting its deliberately curved field, better for portraits. The Zeiss is, again, dreamy, and fringed - between S100 and HC100 in edge sharpness.


f/2.8 - HC100 sharpening, Z110 getting less fringe.


f/4 - fringing pretty much gone. A bit of softness in the HC100


f/5.6 - All sharp and ready for landscape/architecture.


Note: If you look back at the center crops, you can see that the HC100/2.2 was quite sharp there. This is not just a misfocused image.

Next up, the Tree or "Subjects that can hold a pose"

Matt.

 

[MGrayson]

Our friend Northern Red Oak agreed to sit for a portrait. Distance around 10 feet.


We'll go lens by lens here. First the Leica S 100/2. This crop extends from the center of the trunk far enough to see the sharpness falloff and a bit of the background bokeh.
f/2


f/2.8


f/4


f/5.6


f/8


f/11


Here are crops near left edge of the frame showing the bokeh of the background

f/2


f/2.8


f/4


f/5.6


f/8


f/11


Next up, the Hasselblad HC 100/2.2 ...

Matt

 

[MGrayson]

Hasselblad HC 100mm f/2.2

f/2.2


f/2.8 - suspiciously like wide open.


f/4


f/5.6


f/8


f/11



And the bokeh shots:

f/2.2


f/2.8 - The bokeh looks smoother, but the metadata insists that it's f/2.8


f/4


f/5.6


f/8


f/11


Next and last, the Zeiss 110mm f/2

Matt

 

[MGrayson]

Before our last set, let me say something about DoF. While it is true that, to first order, the DoF of, say, a head shot depends only on the f-stop and not on the focal length of the lens, (f-stop and magnification is another way of putting it) that is not at all true for the bokeh. Bokeh depends on the physical aperture. Focus on someone's face, and a distant light will appear as a disk the size of the physical aperture placed on the subjects shoulder. Is that enough to explain the bokeh of the 110/2? I dunno, but it's something.

Here's the Hasselblad/Zeiss 110mm f/2. You can see the 5 blade shutter quite clearly when stopped down, but wide open is insane.

f/2


f/2.8


f/4


f/5.6


f/8


f/11


Bokeh anyone?

f/2


f/2.8


f/4


f/5.6


f/8


f/11


I only regret that I can't show you what these wonderful lenses can really do. But something of their character comes through. I do know that I'd rather carry the Zeiss 110/2 than either of the others, even if they both have functioning AF. If I want sharp all the time, there is the S 120/2.5 - itself a great portrait lens.

This was all motivated by the X2D and a desire to see if it would be a good match for the 110/2. The X2D's lack of a non-electronic shutter may still make the Leica S3 a better match for it, but I'm hoping that the advantage of IBIS for focusing will outweigh that deficiency. Of course, the HC 100/2.2 gives both AF and leaf shutter on BOTH cameras. It's an excellent lens shown here against two of the best ~100mm lenses ever made. As I keep saying ... we'll see.

Matt

 

[sog1927]

I'm gobsmacked by how good the Planar is. The "new" FE design is 23 years old and it still holds up quite well.

 

[Paul Spinnler]

Thanks Matt!

Doesn't this show that - although for a high price - the S optics remain unmatched? Almost feels like the last step of the evolution with the highest degree of correction wide open (fringing, micro contrast, bokeh smoothness).

From the pics, it looks to me that especially the micro-contrast wide open of the S100 is a step above the rest and I also find the bokeh the most smooth visually although tastes may vary, ofc ... all lenses are very nice though, but I am a special fan of the wide open pop Leica glass has ... reinforces the feeling that I don't need another 100 lens!

 

[MGrayson]

Thanks Matt!

Doesn't this show that - although for a high price - the S optics remain unmatched? Almost feels like the last step of the evolution with the highest degree of correction wide open (fringing, micro contrast, bokeh smoothness).

From the pics, it looks to me that especially the micro-contrast wide open of the S100 is a step above the rest and I also find the bokeh the most smooth visually although tastes may vary, ofc ... all lenses are very nice though, but I am a special fan of the wide open pop Leica glass has ... reinforces the feeling that I don't need another 100 lens!

Paul,

Oh, the S 100/2 is a superb lens. By almost any measure the best of the three. But as all lens design is a compromise (much less of one now that distortion correction can be done in-camera), I was interested in how the lens designers of the past - recent and not so recent - chose their imperfections. An interesting comparison would be with newer optics like the SL2 and its 90mm f/2 or the M11 and the 75 Noctilux.

Matt

 

[MGrayson]

I'm gobsmacked by how good the Planar is. The "new" FE design is 23 years old and it still holds up quite well.

I was not expecting it to be that good, as it was renowned for "character".

 

[Paul Spinnler]

Paul,

Oh, the S 100/2 is a superb lens. By almost any measure the best of the three. But as all lens design is a compromise (much less of one now that distortion correction can be done in-camera), I was interested in how the lens designers of the past - recent and not so recent - chose their imperfections. An interesting comparison would be with newer optics like the SL2 and its 90mm f/2 or the M11 and the 75 Noctilux.

Matt

Incidentally I have all of these lenses as I am a big Leica fan - the SL90 is utter perfection verging onto clinical; that's the two-edged sword of the SL optics: they are so well corrected that you risk not liking them because there's no character one is so accustomed to from all the other prior lens generations. No vignetting, no aberration, etc. Also somehow the bokeh can be a hit harsher compared to the S or M lenses.

The Nocti 75 is a fantastic lens which marries modern and old - it is sharp wide open like no other Noctilux, but still retains a very nice Noctiluxesque rendering. Highly recommended.

The S100 and all S lenses always floor me - the S24, S35 and S100, S120 in particular ... and they all have their own look again

 

[sog1927]

Paul,

Oh, the S 100/2 is a superb lens. By almost any measure the best of the three. But as all lens design is a compromise (much less of one now that distortion correction can be done in-camera), I was interested in how the lens designers of the past - recent and not so recent - chose their imperfections. An interesting comparison would be with newer optics like the SL2 and its 90mm f/2 or the M11 and the 75 Noctilux.

Matt

At the risk of dragging my day job into this:
Don't forget the drastic drop in the cost of computation - especially for embarrassingly parallel problems like ray tracing. That fact has revolutionized lens design.

In 1999 (the year the "new" Planar was designed), the fastest computer in the world (ASCI Red at Sandia National Labs) could perform about 2.8 trillion floating point (64-bit) calculations per second. It cost $48 million (1999 dollars) and consumed 850 kW of power.

Today, you can get a single accelerator card from AMD that's almost 20 times faster, consumes 500 watts and costs thousands of times less.

Doing a trillion calculations a second today is about 20,000 times cheaper up front (more if you factor in 23 years of inflation) than it was in 1999 and uses about 1000 times less energy.

It's a lot easier and more economical to optimize a lens design today than when these older lenses were designed.

 

[sog1927]

I was not expecting it to be that good, as it was renowned for "character".

Yeah, I was expecting it to be kinda soft and "painterly" until about f/4 or f/5.6.

 

[MGrayson]

At the risk of dragging my day job into this:
Don't forget the drastic drop in the cost of computation - especially for embarrassingly parallel problems like ray tracing. That fact has revolutionized lens design.

In 1999 (the year the "new" Planar was designed), the fastest computer in the world (ASCI Red at Sandia National Labs) could perform about 2.8 trillion floating point (64-bit) calculations per second. It cost $48 million (1999 dollars) and consumed 850 kW of power.

Today, you can get a single accelerator card from AMD that's almost 20 times faster, consumes 500 watts and costs thousands of times less.

Doing a trillion calculations a second today is about 20,000 times cheaper up front (more if you factor in 23 years of inflation) than it was in 1999 and uses about 1000 times less energy.

It's a lot easier and more economical to optimize a lens design today than when these older lenses were designed.

And my phone is faster and has more RAM than the CRAY 2 I used to work with. No jet packs or flying cars, but it's definitely the future.

 

[MGrayson]

Incidentally I have all of these lenses as I am a big Leica fan - the SL90 is utter perfection verging onto clinical; that's the two-edged sword of the SL optics: they are so well corrected that you risk not liking them because there's no character one is so accustomed to from all the other prior lens generations. No vignetting, no aberration, etc. Also somehow the bokeh can be a hit harsher compared to the S or M lenses.

The Nocti 75 is a fantastic lens which marries modern and old - it is sharp wide open like no other Noctilux, but still retains a very nice Noctiluxesque rendering. Highly recommended.

The S100 and all S lenses always floor me - the S24, S35 and S100, S120 in particular ... and they all have their own look again

Yes, I like the S lenses best. The S24 is my "lives on the camera" lens, the S120 and S70 often come along. I could make do with just those three. (Once you get past the S180, I love the Zeiss Superachromats - different look, but as special - but I don't often carry them around!)

I don't shoot the SL or M any more, but I have a friend who does. He agrees 100% with you about the relative merits of S, SL, and M lenses.

 

[Photon42]

Yes, I like the S lenses best. The S24 is my "lives on the camera" lens, the S120 and S70 often come along. I could make do with just those three. (Once you get past the S180, I love the Zeiss Superachromats - different look, but as special - but I don't often carry them around!)

I don't shoot the SL or M any more, but I have a friend who does. He agrees 100% with you about the relative merits of S, SL, and M lenses.

When I still had the S 007 and lenses, these (24/70/120)were the three I had. No real desire for other ones.