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

In this post, I continue testing 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

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 iamges are shown at about 150% magnification.

At 35mm,two-thirds of the way from the center of the frame to the upper left corner:

Quite sharp for tangential features, not so sharp for radial ones. Astigmatism?

A little sharper, but the same idea.

Now we’ve got good sharpness in both directions.

Diffraction is kicking in.

A fair amount of diffraction.

At 60mm:

Given that the sharp direction changes so radically between the f/3.5 and f/4 images, I’m inclined to think that the aberration we are seeing here is primarily astigmatism.

Nice and sharp at f/5.6

Losing a bit of sharpness at f/8.

Diffraction rules at f/11.

100mm:

These 100mm shots are all good, but not great.

Again, the performance at 35mm and 60mm is excellent for a zoom. The image quality at 100mm is acceptable, but nothing to write home about.