Hasselblad XCD 100-35 on X2D II, Siemens star, center

I’m taking a break from testing the Hasselblad X2D II body so I can test the XCD 35-100 lens. I mounted the lens to the X2D II, and clipped them onto an Arca Swiss C1 that was perched on a Foba camera stand. I set the camera up as follows:

• ISO 50
• AFS-S
• 14-bit precision
• Mechanical shutter
• 4 second self timer
• Zeiss Siemens star chart at 25 feet. Note that this distance is farther than what most people think the effective lidar range is for the X2D II AF system.

I made a series of five exposures at each focal length in the series 35mm. 60mm. and 100mm, and also at the widest f-stop and whole stops down from that until I reached f/11. I compensated for the f-stops by changing exposure time accordingly.

I developed the images in Lightroom Classic as follows:

• Defaults except for the below
• Sharpening off
• Adobe Color profile
• White balanced one of the frames to the gray near the center of the star.
• Exposure tweaks to taste

I picked the best of the 5 frames at each setting. This gave me an opportunity to get an idea of how accurate and repeatable the new Hasselblad lidar based autofocus system is. The answer: pretty accurate but not as repeatable as the Fuji GFX 100 II autofocus. It’s a definite improvement over the mediocre-at-best AF system in the X2D Mark I.

The images are presented at about 150% magnification.

At 35mm, in the center of the frame:

Good performance her.

Also good.

I would hae expected better results here. I blame the AF system, not the lens per se.

Now it’s looking good again, with some diffraction effects.

Lot’s of diffraction at f/11.

Now at 60mm:

Good.

Also good.

Loosing a bit to diffraction.

Lots of diffraction.

At 100mm:

OK. I wouldn’t call that great.

OK.

OK.

OK.

The performance at 35 and 60mm is excellent. The image quality at 100mm is acceptable.