Hasselblad Tele-Apotessar 500mm vs Tele-Superachromat 350mm

[bindermuehle]

Hi Neil

The 350 SA would be the dream machine to own, but that's a little too rich for my blood at present.

There's a 500mm Apo Tessar on eBay, serial 707xxxx that focuses down to 5m. Then there's another one serial 714xxxx that focuses to 8.5m.

Where do you look up your lens age by serial number? The lookup on hasselblad historical.eu is broken.

 

[neil]

The 350mm SA and the 300 mm SA lens with matching converters are beyond my budget.
That leaves the 500mm or 350 FE F4 lens

The Hasselblad historical site gave me the lens date when I entered the lens serial number.

I managed to resolve my camera shake problem. Heavy tripod with no center column and no moving head, weighted down with a heavy weight.

The 350 mm FE F4 lens is spectacular for its strong points.

Far distance needs stopping down to F11 to produce very sharp image.
Near distance ( around 2 meters ) also needs stopping down to F11.
Also needs a bit of chromatic aberration removal by software.

But at near distance (1.9 meters) at F4 and F5,6 the 350 mm FE F4 lens has the most beautiful rendering of out of focus areas. Being able to focus on something only 1.9 meters away and open up to F4 gives a razor thin, in focus area with beautiful transition to out of focus areas. This is the strong point of this lens. Looks similar to Pson's image above. ( but of course not up to that level as that picture was taken with one of the best Zeiss lens ever made )

If your looking for the best contrast and sharpness ( on a reasonable money budget ) for long distance landscape I found the 500 mm is better than the 350mm FE and also works well with the tele converters.

I quite like the 350mm FE so will probably get that, as I am interested to explore the use at near distances. (The bokeh is the best of any lens that I ever used)