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; many photographs in this article were taken with the lens.

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 hand-holding is still reasonably comfortable and the lens can be stored vertically in my Lowepro CompuTrekker Plus AW (when the bag is in horizontal position) thus not taking up more space than shorter Hasselblad lenses. I would say that for a 4/180 lens the Sonnar has a very nice weight/size balance. And of course, quality of construction, markings, features as well as smoothness of operation are consistent with any other CFE/CFi lens - meaning first rate.

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 is still slightly visible in a shot of an evenly lit surface but is entirely insignificant for real-life applications; light fall-off is entirely 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 magnification of up to 10X the difference in sharpness is almost indistinguishable center-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 - just out of curiosity. As expected, there is a slight softness at f/32 (caused by diffraction) and in the corners at f/4 (here in the corners only, though). The latter, however, is inconsequential as one normally shoots at f/4 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 seems sharpest at f/11.

All in all, this lens is sharper than most photographers - before even thinking about questioning its sharpness I would worry myself about such things as DOF and proper shooting technique - the lens absolutely requires using a sturdy tripod with a solid ball-head, a cable release and MLU (mirror-lock-up) to get the best image quality it can deliver.

Distortion

The lens exhibits a very slight pincushion distortion which 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. To be honest, 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 it exhibits 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 - no need to stop the lens down; this also goes hand-in-hand with the very gradual light fall-off. Bokeh example shots can be found in the article mentioned at the bottom 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