X1D 120mm Macro Lens and Other Announced X1D Lenses

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BradP

#15
Thanks for the ref to LuLa.  Someone there did a quick and dirty lens test posted in the medium format area, although it's still unclear where they got it.  I checked Hasselblad's website.  It still states Autumn delivery and there are no press releases stating otherwise.  B&H's website still says October 24 (5 days from now) as it has for a month or so.  Been waitlisted since May so I hope B&H is the most reliable indicator. 

BradP

#16
There is also a link on DP Review here https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4215310.  Other than this, I have found no pre-release reviews in some google searches. 

It's nice to see that the 120 is likely going to be very sharp in the corners and possibly with little light fall off.  I had expected that it would suffer a bit, as it apparently does, from octagonal bokeh in some situations as does the 90 (and actually all XCD lenses released so far).  My understanding is that this is caused by the straight blades forming the aperture, even wide open. 

Since only negative things have been discussed about the straight edge blade designs in other XCD lens posts, I'll diverge a bit about that here.  I considered the octagonal bokeh issues (as described in the above link) pretty thoroughly when demoing the GFX and before my return period was up after I purchased the X1D.  I concluded then and still believe there are pros and cons about both straight and rounded blade designs.  The advantages of straight edges are that they produce sun stars with pinpoint bright lights (like bright stars) and a impressionistic-like bokeh with lower contrast out of focus backgrounds (e.g., without out of focus larger light sources in the frame or extremely high contrast out of focus objects).  I found the impressionistic bokeh the straight edge blades throw off more interesting than the blurry background that circular blades produce.  That can be used advantageously and distinguish this lens from Fuji or other circular blade lens designs if one is aware of these dynamics and conscious of it when shooting.   

For illustration, below are two examples of a lower contrast out of focus background shot in my backyard, one with the GFX 120mm (a round blade design) and the other with the XCD 90mm (straight).  The reds compressed to sRGB pretty badly, so disregard that, the bokeh is what's important here.  Though it's purely a matter of taste, I prefer the impressionistic background blur with the XCD over the more simple blur produced by the GFX.  Additionally (though I'm not publishing examples) I prefer stars in the night sky with the XCD since brighter objects like planets or very bright stars have a sunstar instead of a big blurry blob surrounding them.

Still, in future lenses, it would be an even better design to insert a simple thin circular ring that covers the straight blades at full aperture (creating a perfectly round aperture wide open), but allowing the lens to be stopped down a half stop or so to allow the photographer to obtain straight blade bokeh.  This would be the best of both worlds, and a few lenses I've found do that. Maybe in the future . . .

xoda

Just got a chance to test the out of focus rendering of the XCD 120mm some more. Definitely improved after the firmware update. Is the circular ring you mention able to deliver results that the current lenses just can't by the nature of their designs?

XCD 90mm OOF


XCD 120mm OOF


XCD 120mm slightly less OOF

Domip

#18
I find some people interest strange, when they are looking for what the lens is not made for. Why so much importance to the unsharpness (bokeh) when a lens is optimised and made for it's sharpness??
Look at the beauty of this lens' natural rendition, and don't focus too much on overhyped things like bokeh and MTF's...
ENJOY your lens!

BradP

#19
Quote from: xoda on October 29, 2017, 12:23:53 AM
Just got a chance to test the out of focus rendering of the XCD 120mm some more. Definitely improved after the firmware update. Is the circular ring you mention able to deliver results that the current lenses just can't by the nature of their designs?

The new firmware update (issued a few days after my last post here) solves the problem of the octagonal bokeh when wide open when configuration>max aperture>full is selected and actually gives X1D owners the best of both worlds at least wide open, the ability to have creamier, circular/cats eye bokeh when high contrast OOF background objects are in frame (like the lights in your images), or with the >normal setting, to have the impressionistic bokeh (like my pics above) or sunstars with more pinpoint overexposed highlights objects (like Venus in a night shot or the sun).   As I said elsewhere, personally I couldn't be happier with whoever came up with this solution at Hasselblad.  It basically gives us two lenses in one at full aperture and will be particularly important with the 120mm Macro for that type of shooting, but has general application with any OOF background blur. 

If you look down the barrel with a flashlight and press the shutter button you can see what's going on with the mechanics.  >full leaves the aperture blades fully withdrawn from the light path, leaving a circular aperture.  >normal stops down the aperture a little bit so that the light travels through an octagonal aperture.  My understanding is that is what causes the different effects. 

Domip

This lens is excellent, it's a briljant piece of optical design !
Sharp?...look out not to cut yourself ;-)
Jpg compression here doesn't really show what the image looks like in Phocus.