Hasselblad XCD 120mm Quick and Dirty Review Part 2 of 3

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BradP

The third and last flower shot, red ginger.  It's about 3 inches across and 6 inches high (7.5 cm, 15 cm).  F12, 1/4 sec, ISO 100.  The leaves naturally are light yellowish, so that's about real.  I may need to apply nitrogen.  Its in my organic side yard, and fertilizing is a bit of a necessary pain that I might need to catch up on this winter.

Further below is what I do lately the day I receive a lens.  I used to use more formal charts but find this more user friendly and practical.  If a new lens fails those tests such that I want to send the lens back, they're about as likely to fail this one.  I'll leave more precise measurements to others.  That's why this is entitled "Quick and Dirty."  If you have a more user friendly and practical way to test lenses, let me know. 

For all my non-flower shots, I tested apertures f3.5, 5.6, 8 or 9, 18, 36 and 45.  I have only included what I think are near the most illustrative, noteworthy apertures for this board. 

Basically, after taping my charts to the wall in about the area I think they belong, I back up the camera on a tripod to get everything in frame and the lighting acceptable.  Here the lighting is NOT acceptable for light fall off evaluation, which I am much less worried about when testing lenses.   I first try to read the text in the center, then make sure I can read about the same lines in each corner, noting mentally how equal or worse the corners are from the center, and especially the corners are from each other.  I go through this drill with shots from all apertures.  I especially look out for collimation problems (where one corner is worse than others).  If I can't read the same line in each corner and it's bad, I will send the lens back.  I also look at the star charts to make sure that the same moire patterns in the corners line up with each other, and how different they are from the center.  Same result if that's bad. 

What I found impressive was that I could read further down than memory serves in my 30 and 90, and that the field was exceptionally flat, as a macro lens should be.  But in my mind anyway, this lens seemed exceptional with the reading and star chart tests.  Something is lost in the JPEG compression here that I'm not intending to drill down on.  I could read further down than I can in the attached files and see more color moire, which actually I take as a good sign (as in the lens outresolving the sensor). 

Though not an expert, I pretty much get MTF charts.  Based on what I see, I believe the advertised ones are probably right for this lens, though didn't test that.  Again, that kind of testing to others.

This test immediately made me happy and coupled with a flower shot, pretty much sold me on keeping the lens.  Not only am I keeping this one, I think I like it a lot.  Love will take more time . . .

Part 3, the final part for now, continues here.  http://www.hasselbladdigitalforum.com/index.php?topic=5379.0

The beginning of this review begins here. http://www.hasselbladdigitalforum.com/index.php?topic=5377.0