Focus on a special lens: Hasselblad Planar T* 3,5/100

[FloatingLens]

Me? When possible, I'll continue using the 100mm at long-infinite distances and the 80mm at short-mid ones.

Absolutely! I suppose, it also depends on the rendering you are after, if we are talking about casual use/non-critical work. Meaning, the 100mm is probably the most "objective" lens amongst all the other options in said range.

Thanks all for your feedback so far! Cheers.

 

[FloatingLens]

The 110mm /2 is also another option, especially for closer focus (portraits?).

True. As far as literature goes, one of the design goals of the F lenses was close range photography (i.e. compared to C series counterparts).

 

[f.hayek]

Guess that given the absence of a floating element for close-range correction, the 80, 100, 120 are very purpose built rather than flexible tools. The benefit of razor-sharp infinity images would have been nice on the 100. I passed up on a 100/3.5 CF because of the thread; unfortunately, it hasn't left me with that much clarity.

 

[anyone]

We are also discussing on a very high level. I wouldn’t hesitate to use my CF 100 in any situation, infinity or not, when I need that focal length.

 

[FloatingLens]

Guess that given the absence of a floating element for close-range correction, the 80, 100, 120 are very purpose built rather than flexible tools. The benefit of razor-sharp infinity images would have been nice on the 100. I passed up on a 100/3.5 CF because of the thread; unfortunately, it hasn't left me with that much clarity.

FWIW, the focus ring of the CFi is markedly less stiff than the CF, which could be rather decisive provided you are working lots in the close-up range.

We are also discussing on a very high level. I wouldn’t hesitate to use my CF 100 in any situation, infinity or not, when I need that focal length.

No doubt about that!

 

[f.hayek]

I'm hopelessly torn between (over)spending on a 100 CFI vs too much on a CF. A top condition 80 CF is now $1100+ so the difference is really on FL and application.

 

[FloatingLens]

I bought the CFi 100 (complete including box) last year for 1400,- EUR and I found that borderline.

 

[f.hayek]

It's selling for 2000,- EUR and up, nowadays

 

[jng]

Guess that given the absence of a floating element for close-range correction, the 80, 100, 120 are very purpose built rather than flexible tools. The benefit of razor-sharp infinity images would have been nice on the 100. I passed up on a 100/3.5 CF because of the thread; unfortunately, it hasn't left me with that much clarity.

Indeed, it's difficult to gain clarity when we each have different standards for what's acceptable image quality, not to mention different use cases. For example, what are we referring to when we say "close- to mid-distance," what size and type sensor are we using, etc., etc. In any case, I thought I'd do a quick and dirty test of my 3.5/100 CF (emphasis on *quick*) compared to my 5.6/120 S-Planar, the latter I believe to be a superb lens at close distances (here defined as magnifications of 1:5 or greater - I use this lens quite happily for all of my macro images).

The test: books on my bookshelf (pardon the dust)
Camera/sensor: Cambo WRS1250/IQ4 150, shifted 5mm vertically to include the shelf the books are sitting on
Exposure: 3s
Aperture: f/8
Focus distances: approx. 1m
Width of subject in frame: approx. 38 cm (I did my best to match this for the two lenses) - compare to sensor width of 54mm
Processing: (my) default settings in C1 v21; links to full sized jpegs below.
Caveats: there are many, not the least of which was my ability to focus and line up the sensor parallel to the bookshelf itself (I did my best by leveling the camera and then rotating it to bring the shelf parallel to the bottom of the frame).
My conclusions:
• The 3.5/100 CF Planar acquits itself pretty well. It's a bit less sharp overall compared to the 5.6/120 S-Planar, more noticeably so at the edges. How much of this is due to lens performance vs. my sloppiness with focus and alignment, I can't say. And how much this might matter, well, just depends on what you're looking to achieve. Note that these are humongous 150 Mp files that would print at 47" wide @ 300 ppi and would sharpen up nicely e.g. with Topaz Sharpen.
• With the 3.5/100 CF there's also a bit of chromatic aberration that cleans up nicely in C1 (what you're seeing is an uncorrected image), so I would consider this mostly a non-issue.
• I'm guessing that stopping down to f/11 would narrow the differences between these two lenses. Don't ask me why I didn't try this but the kit is stowed so we'll just need to speculate on this point.
• YMMV...

Here are the images. Click on the links and pixel-peep to your heart's content.

First, the 3.5/100 CF Planar:
Lens test: Zeiss 3.5/100 CF Planar by John Ngai, on Flickr

And the 5.6/120 S-Planar:
Lens test: Zeiss 5.6/120 S-Planar by John Ngai, on Flickr

Hope this helps!

John

 

[f.hayek]

Doesn’t seem much of a difference.

 

[cuida1991]

Eager to see its performance at the edge of its image circle

 

[jng]

Eager to see its performance at the edge of its image circle

Hah, well as it turns out...
Here's an image from a few years ago captured on the IQ3100, a flat stitch from two images with +/- 10mm horizontal shift and 10mm lens rise.
Morning in the valley by John Ngai, on Flickr

By my calculation the upper corners are touching a 95mm image circle. There's some remaining vignette in the last 300 pixels in the corners that the LCC in Capture One couldn't rescue (for reference, the final stitched image is ~16,000 pixels in the long dimension); if memory serves, I just cropped the darkened corners out of the final image. There's also a bit of purple fringing on high contrast features toward the edges, which you can't really see in this down-rezzed image.

While finding myself in this little rabbit hole, I decided to go back and reprocess the original images in Capture One to remove the fringing, re-did the stitching in Photoshop (this time removing the vignette in the corners using the spot healing tool in PS), and added just a tiny bit of sharpening using Topaz Sharpen (the latter was arguably gratuitous except for pixel-peeping purposes). The full size image can be viewed here. You can judge for yourself, but to my eye the old Zeiss 3.5/100 CF Planar holds up pretty well at the edge of its image circle - any flaws can be tamed using the tools we have at our disposal in C1 and/or PS/Lightroom.

John

 

[cuida1991]

Hah, well as it turns out...
Here's an image from a few years ago captured on the IQ3100, a flat stitch from two images with +/- 10mm horizontal shift and 10mm lens rise.
Morning in the valley by John Ngai, on Flickr

By my calculation the upper corners are touching a 95mm image circle. There's some remaining vignette in the last 300 pixels in the corners that the LCC in Capture One couldn't rescue (for reference, the final stitched image is ~16,000 pixels in the long dimension); if memory serves, I just cropped the darkened corners out of the final image. There's also a bit of purple fringing on high contrast features toward the edges, which you can't really see in this down-rezzed image.

While finding myself in this little rabbit hole, I decided to go back and reprocess the original images in Capture One to remove the fringing, re-did the stitching in Photoshop (this time removing the vignette in the corners using the spot healing tool in PS), and added just a tiny bit of sharpening using Topaz Sharpen (the latter was arguably gratuitous except for pixel-peeping purposes). The full size image can be viewed here. You can judge for yourself, but to my eye the old Zeiss 3.5/100 CF Planar holds up pretty well at the edge of its image circle - any flaws can be tamed using the tools we have at our disposal in C1 and/or PS/Lightroom.

John

Thanks John. I really like your picture and your explanation!