Photographers craving the shallowest plane of focus love lenses with wide, bright apertures. If you fit that bill, and use Hasselblad's medium format mirrorless system, the XCD 1,9/80 ($4,845) will have some appeal. It's an expensive, heavyweight prime lens, but one that more than lives up to the renowned Hasselblad name. I've only had a chance to use a pre-production copy, but have some first impressions to share.
Worth Its Weight
The XCD 1,9/80 is built for medium format photography. Its optics cover a 44-by-33mm image sensor, the type used by the X1D II 50C camera, so it needs more glass than a similar lens for the smaller, more common full-frame (24-by-36mm) sensor format.
And extra glass is heavy—the lens weighs in at 2.3 pounds, which is especially weighty when you consider the X1D II comes in at just 1.7 pounds. It measures 4.4 by 3.3 inches (HD) and uses a long, metal lens hood, so it juts out quite from the camera body. Even with the length, the lens is substantial enough to make the system feel a bit front heavy. Like the X1D body, it includes protection against dust and splashes.
But the results are worth it. The 80mm focal length nets an angle of view that's at the edge of the standard-angle range, roughly matching the angle of view of a 60mm lens on a full-frame system. The 80mm focal length introduces more image compression, and when coupled with an f/1.9 aperture nets images with smoothly defocused backgrounds.
The X1D camera doesn't have its own shutter, instead putting one into every XCD lens. The 1,9/80 can make exposures as short as 1/2,000-second and as long as 68 minutes. You may find that you'll need a shorter shutter length to make f/1.9 images in bright light, so it's a good idea to invest in a neutral density filter—the lens has a 77mm thread.
You can focus as close as 2.3 feet (0.7-meter), good enough for 1:6.4 life-size reproduction. It's not a macro lens, and you'll certainly have to pull back to get some shots, but the working distance is by no means limiting.
Our pre-production copy showed occasional issues with autofocus, but when it worked, it worked as well as the other XCD lenses we've used.
Outstanding Optics
I paired the XCD 1,9/80 with the 50MP X1D II 50C and Imatest software. Even though our copy isn't final, it netted outstanding resolution all the way from f/1.9 through f/11, hovering around 4,800 lines throughout. Diffraction cuts into resolution a bit at f/16, but it's really only the smallest f/22 and f/32 settings you should take care to avoid, as they notably soften shots.
Distortion is minimal, but the lens does show a vignette at its widest aperture. The effect, which darkens corners and edges, isn't nearly as apparent at f/2.8 and smaller settings. There's really nothing bad to say when it comes to image quality—the lens does well in the lab and nets gorgeous results in the field.
For Bokeh Fiends
If you love snapping shots with smoothly defocused background blur—bokeh—the XCD 1,9/80 offers a lot of appeal. It's a big, heavy, and expensive lens—almost as much as the X1D II camera itself—but for portrait specialists, carrying an extra couple pounds in your bag may be worth it.
I've only had a chance to use a pre-production copy, so I'm not giving it a rating at this time. But overall, I can't think that anyone would be disappointed by the images the lens captures. If you're an X1D system owner, be happy to know that you'll get gorgeous photos with this big piece of glass.