Hasselblad Sonnar CFE 4/180 lens review

Introduction

I often felt that the Tessar CB 4.8/160 was a bit on the short side for outdoor photography (especially during my trip to Bashang). The extra 20mm of focal length that the Sonnar CFE 4/180 adds might seem like not much at first but as it turned out it was precisely the gap that I needed to fill to arrive at the perfect focal length in the telephoto range for the types of photography that I do.

Visit here to see the lens' technical specifications and MTF graphs; if necessary, you can find simple explanations of the terms below here.

Handling

The Sonnar CFE 4/180 is quite heavy (1075g) yet the weight does not exceed the limit whereupon it would become a considerable burden on long trips and hikes. Its length (128mm) is also just under the line where the lens can be stored vertically in an average backpack camera bag (when the bag is in horizontal position) thus not taking up more space than shorter Hasselblad lenses. And of course, quality of construction as well as smoothness of aperture, shutter speed and focus ring operation are consistent with any other CFE/CFi lens—meaning first rate. The only gripe that I have is that the CFE 4/180 is front–heavy and, when mounted on the camera, makes it "nose–dive", thus making hand–holding quite strained. This is very obvious if you handle the lens for a few minutes and really gets to you when you use it extensively in the field. This is not to say that the CFE 4/180 is not suitable for hand–held photography—I am sure that one can get used to it.

Light fall–off

"Technically, there is light fall–off; aesthetically, there is no light fall–off"—I have to quote myself as this is what I have been saying about every Hasselblad lens that I have used so far. At f/4 unevenness of illumination is very mild and gradual, i.e. unnoticeable in real–world photographs; in many situations (e.g., a centre–positioned subject with out–of–focus background) it might actually help to emphasize the main subject. At f/5.6 the aberration would still be slightly visible in a shot of an evenly lit surface but is entirely insignificant for real–life applications; light fall–off is virtually gone from f/6.7 on.

Sharpness

This lens is phenomenal. You might have already read elsewhere that it is among the sharpest lenses in Hasselblad history but what is mentioned less often is that at magnifications of up to 10X the difference in sharpness is almost indistinguishable centre–to–corner and at all apertures (including at close distances). Knowing, however, that there has to be a difference between, say, f/4 and f/11, I pulled out a 15X loupe to further examine test slides. As expected, there is noticeable softness at f/22 and f/32 (caused by diffraction) and in the corners at f/4 (here in the corners only, though). Softness in the corners at f/4, however, is mostly inconsequential as one normally shoots at this aperture either hand–holding the camera (thus degrading image quality quite beyond the loss of sharpness at this aperture) and/or where shallow DOF (depth of field) is needed (and, consequently, sharpness in the corners is unimportant). Also keep in mind that this difference would only be noticeable in very big prints at close examination. At 15X magnification my sample of the lens seems sharpest at f/11.

Distortion

The lens exhibits a very slight pincushion distortion that would only be noticeable to an experienced eye in a photograph with a perfectly straight line running along and very closely to one of the sides of a picture. Indeed, given the focal length of the lens and its intended fields of application, one really has to go out of his way to make the distortion that the lens produces noticeable.

Bokeh

Appearance of out–of–focus areas is great right from f/4 on, which, in my experience, is quite rare. This means that one can shoot portraits with very nice blurred background even wide–open without having to stop the lens down; this also goes hand–in–hand with the very gradual light fall–off at this aperture. Bokeh example shots can be found in the article mentioned at the end of the review.

Conclusions

I normally test lenses to know how they behave at different apertures in terms of the aberrations mentioned above so as to avoid possible image quality degradation. As far as the Sonnar CFE 4/180 is concerned, I only need to remember one thing—that I can forget about all the test details, freely photograph at all aperture settings and get perfect results. In one word, an absolutely outstanding optic.

Hasselblad Tessar CB 4.8/160 vs. Sonnar CFE 4/180—the ultimate shootout

Hasselblad Sonnar CFi 4/150 vs. Sonnar CFE 4/180—making the choice