Has anyone heard whether the 120mm Macro lens has started to ship? Any update on the shipment dates for the other lenses announced by Hasselblad?
http://www.hasselbladdigitalforum.com/index.php?topic=5158.0
This seems typical. I gave up waiting months ago when we thought was eminent, and picked up the 90 instead. Very happy with it. But will wait until the 120 has actually shipped before putting in an order this time around. Not going down that moving carrot path again.
Hasselblad repeats their old errors. Making announcements (delivery end of June) and then not fulfilling them (deja vu X1D, XCD 30mm, GPS module, H-Adapter ...). Now they say "autumn", which means in Europe meteorologically between 09/01 and 11/30 and astronomically between 09/22 and 12/20. Feel free to guess.
Dealers (at least mine) apparently havo also no clue (I ordered my copy in April).
I lost any confidence that they will fulfill their further roadmap.
They should learn from Fujifilm, they promise and fulfill, lens after lens ...
... liked that with "moving carrot path", but careful Hasselblad, this is the best recipe to loose more and more clients
I agree it's disappointing, but comparing Hasselblad to Fuji is unfair. Fuji is a very large operation with way more resources than Hasselblad. AFAIK, Fuji makes its own lenses, so Fuji is in control of the whole process from lens design to manufacture to packaging. Hasselblad depends upon a third party to produce lens prototypes and then manufacture the final versions of the lenses. I knew going in when I bought the X1D instead of the Fuji GFX that Hasselblad was not Fuji. New lenses would not appear nearly as quickly. Same for accessories. Same for the implementation of certain basic features that were in the GFX from Day 1, such as a live view histogram and playback of images in the EVF. Despite this, I still bought the X1D. And I have zero regrets. For what I shoot and the way I shoot, it's the best camera I have ever owned.
Quote from: hcubell on September 30, 2017, 06:22:21 AM
I agree it's disappointing, but comparing Hasselblad to Fuji is unfair. Fuji is a very large operation with way more resources than Hasselblad. AFAIK, Fuji makes its own lenses, so Fuji is in control of the whole process from lens design to manufacture to packaging. Hasselblad depends upon a third party to produce lens prototypes and then manufacture the final versions of the lenses. I knew going in when I bought the X1D instead of the Fuji GFX that Hasselblad was not Fuji. New lenses would not appear nearly as quickly. Same for accessories. Same for the implementation of certain basic features that were in the GFX from Day 1, such as a live view histogram and playback of images in the EVF. Despite this, I still bought the X1D. And I have zero regrets. For what I shoot and the way I shoot, it's the best camera I have ever owned.
We have to agree to disagree on that one.
It's about management capacities, efficient planning and coordination processes and ... transparent communication with costumers. This has not much to do with company size.
And this is not about whether we like the camera or not. I love my X1D, but I waited and bought it only one week after the lens roadmap had been announced, because for me a macro lens and a super-wide lens is very important.
In this announcement from February they said, the 120mm will be ready for shipping end of June and the other lenses will be shipping within 12 months, meaning until February 2018. Nobody forced them to make this announcement and publish a roadmap. But if you do that, you better fulfill your promises.
So after that I (naively) decided, I can wait so long (macro in the summer, super-wide next spring), although Fuji had the macro already shipping and promised the super-wide much, much earlier.
Don't forget that Hasselblad Gothenburg is 70 people only!
That is all, cleaning ladies and reception lady included :-)
John
New expected availability at B&H: Oct 24
Double checked that, and it seems true. :-\
H's X1D framework should clearly be superior, anyone handling the camera can see that. One can understand an occasional delay in an announced schedule. Even a double delay if there is a good understandable reason. Repeated announced delays are not a good foundation of a loyal partnership with those who really fund the partnership (i.e. customers). I hope this pattern changes.
satijntje, ther is no reception lady in Gothenburg ;-)
70 people are all? Well if so I have a newfound respect for Hasselblad. And I really mean that.
I don't need photography, I simply want to do it as well as I can at this stage of my life. I guess I have been fortunate. Earlier I worked in a highly leveraged business quite similar to H's (if 70 is a close number) and it grew tenfold. One of the secrets to that success was to underpromise whenever possible, and overdeliver. The perfect state was promise exactly what you deliver. The path to worse was overpromise and underdeliver.
Whatever. There has only been one announced delay by H in the 120mm by my recount. Autumn extends another 2 months and 3 weeks. Retailers could be the font of confusion for the 120. I guess I am jumpy because the 120mm Macro was an essential part of why I bought into the platform, and I'm getting impatient. Sorry about that.
BH Photo now has the expected date as October 24th. Yet another delay.
Now all they have is that annoying "coming soon" note. No expected arrival.
Today Hasselblad Netherlands told me 'no delivery' of the 120mm Macro this year in the Netherlands...
I have heard the same thing from my german dealer.
Very disappointed ...
Strange, as there is a report about the 120mm lens at Luminous Landscape from someone who claims to have received one.
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.
There is also a link on DP Review here https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4215310 (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 . . .
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
(https://www.hasselbladdigitalforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2Fxq90%2F924%2FoIFv5Q.jpg&hash=6a5a79d83e24ab0e21070270a542fd57137b9904) (https://imageshack.com/i/pooIFv5Qj)
XCD 120mm OOF
(https://www.hasselbladdigitalforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2Fxq90%2F923%2Fv5YgR9.jpg&hash=6769858062c4c110ec8a385ff7e7aafa47cea8c4) (https://imageshack.com/i/pnv5YgR9j)
XCD 120mm slightly less OOF
(https://www.hasselbladdigitalforum.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimagizer.imageshack.us%2Fv2%2Fxq90%2F923%2FwRqjTU.jpg&hash=3aaf3938509a7954170724e21cf8ef49e362b779) (https://imageshack.com/i/pnwRqjTUj)
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!
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.
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.