Hasselblad Planar CFE 2.8/80 lens review

Introduction This lens is produced for Hasselblad by Carl Zeiss in Germany. It is common wisdom that Carl Zeiss lenses are excellent and one might argue that there is no point in reviewing any of the lenses. I, however, thought that it might be worth my while briefly examining one to just show what is so great about them. Visit here to see the lens' technical specifications and MTF graphs and here for an explanation of what "Planar" means. If necessary, you can find simple explanations of the terms below here.

Features and handling

The lens boasts a built-in leaf shutter - apart from shake-free operation when mirror pre-release (mirror lockup) is used it also means flash sync at all shutter speeds (up to and at 1/500 sec.). The shutter can be disabled when the lens is used on Hasselblad bodies which employ focal-plane shutter. As the CFE designation indicates ("E" standing for Electronic), the lens also has databus connections for transmitting lens data to the metering system of the Hasselblad 200 series cameras. Apart from this, it has a PC-socket with a secure lock.

The lens also boasts a very unique and handy feature common to all Hasselblad CFE and CFi lenses - it has an EV (exposure value) scale and a locking button which allow you to easily change shutter speed/aperture combination while maintaining the same exposure value.

Hasselblad and their Zeiss lenses define what the proper quality of construction is. The lens is solidly built and a pleasure to handle and use. Operation of the focus, shutter speed and aperture rings as well as the DOF preview knob located on the lens barrel is smooth and substantial.

Light fall-off

Technically, there is light fall-off; aesthetically, there is no light fall-off. This is to say that unevenness of illumination that the lens exhibits is very mild and gradual and you are unlikely to notice it unless you juxtapose two identical shots of an evenly lit surface taken at f/2.8 and, say, f/5.6. In other words, light fall-off signature of the lens is gracefully invisible. Wonder what this aberration looks like when it gets ungraceful and ugly? Have a look at the performance of this or this Nikkor, which is pretty much unusable wide-open.

Sharpness

The images that the lens delivers are very sharp and contrasty. Moreover, the lens is pretty much equally sharp center-to-corner and at all apertures. If you want to be seriously neurotic, though, there is an almost imperceptible loss of sharpness at f/2.8 which is only detectable at the level of at least 10X magnification (I hope you are sane enough to not scrutinize 6X6 slides at this magnitude) and upon several minutes of thorough examination.

Distortion

There is no visibly perceptible distortion - even when dissecting slides with a ruler and a loupe on a light table. Seriously. Feel free to run horizons along any of and as near to the frame edges as you wish.

Bokeh

Out-of-focus areas in slides taken with this lens look subtly smooth - it is difficult to appreciate it unless you see it for yourself (for instance, have a look at this image). All I can say here is that this lens produces better bokeh than any of the pro-level Nikkor zooms that I have ever used.

Conclusions

One often hears that Zeiss lenses are razor sharp. In case of the CFE 80mm f/2.8 lens this is certainly true but not all. To put it into a more appropriate perspective, the lens is designed and built to a quality point and not to a price point. The engineers cut no corners and made no compromises to ensure that it performs equally outstandingly at all aperture settings and in terms of all major technical characteristics. The lens is solidly built, tack sharp and shows no perceptible light fall-off, distortion, or chromatic aberration; a nice and smooth bokeh is thrown in on top. In one word, the lens is pretty much perfect and it would take a heck of a photographer to be somehow limited by the performance it offers.