LensRentals has loaned me a Hasselblad XCD 55mm f/2.5 V lens for testing.  I needed some banners for a newsletter I’m working on, so I took the XCD 55V out for a ramble. I stayed away from the nosebleed shutter speeds where the mechanical shutter of the lens gives, um, unusual bokeh. I shot wide… [Read More]

LensRentals has loaned me a Hasselblad XCD 55mm f/2.5 V lens for testing.  Today I tested for focus curvature, using Roger Cicala’s test method. I found a flat surface with some texture, set the lens to wide open, focused about 5 meters away, and got this image: In order to show the in-focus area, I… [Read More]

LensRentals has loaned me a Hasselblad XCD 55mm f/2.5 V lens for testing. Today I tested illumination falloff off-axis. I focused the lens to infinity, and made four photographs of a white wall with the camera rotated 90 degrees between each image. I used ISO 64 and the mechanical shutter. I brought all four images… [Read More]

LensRentals has loaned me a Hasselblad XCD 55mm f/2.5 V lens for testing. In my testing this week, I determined that the lens exhibits the same kind of strange bokeh at 1/2000 second mechanical shutter speed as the 38V, and has fewer of these issues than the 90V. Today I did some testing with real… [Read More]

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… [Read More]