LensRentals has loaned me a Hasselblad XCD 55mm f/2.5 V lens for testing. Today I tested it with a Zeiss-printed Siemens Star.
Details:
- Target distance about 7 meters
- ISO 64
- Electronic shutter
- Manual exposure
- Manual focusing with 15-shot symmetric focus bracketing, extra small step size.
- 5-second exposure delay
- Edelkrone electrical tripod
- Arca Swiss C1 head
- Some fixturing to make the camera operable from a wheelchair
It looks kludgy and unstable, but it’s actually quite vibration-free.
I developed the images in Lightroom, with default settings except for the following:
- White balanced to the white background on the target.
- Exposure adjustment
- No sharpening
Here are some crops at 150% with the target on the lens axis:
![](https://blog.kasson.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/B0004225.jpg)
This is excellent wide-open performance.
A little more contrast at f/4.
We are suffering from diffraction blur at f/5.6.
More diffraction at f/8.
Just enough diffraction to prevent aliasing at f/11.
In the lower-left corner:
Not bad. I had to boost the Exposure setting in Lr by 2/3 stop for this f/stop, even though lens corrections were on.
Sharper.
A bit sharper yet.
Starting to lose sharpness.
No aliasing at f/11.
This is excellent performance.
Testing notes:
- Symmetric focus bracketing does not return the focus position to that at the beginning of the series. I consider this a deficiency when compared to the GFX focus bracketing implementation.
- Symmetric focus bracketing does not create a symmetric series, but starts at one end and progresses through the initial position to the other end.
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