Hasselblad 90mm f/4 XPan Lens

I bougt this fine lens to use with my newly acquired XPan II and the 45mm lens that came with it. I've also done a review of this excellent camera separately. The 90mm lives up to every expectation of an outstanding Fuji lens and the XPan "system". When you first pick it up you realise it is a high quality product - superbly made and finished and not the sort of awful plastic junk so common today. The aperture ring is very smooth if not a bit to silky smooth (not very "positive" click stops) and the focus ring is superbly smooth to use with the right amount of throw for fast focusing. The "rings" could be a bit more prominent than they are and their surfaces ar a bit too similar thus not making "blind" movement a bit more obvious to touch. It fits to the XPan with a wonderfully solid and positive click very similar to fitting Leica M lenses to a Leica body - all metal and beautifully finished - quality all the way. At a fastest aperture of f4 it is of average "speed" for an MF lens - which it is in that it throws a 6x7 like image circle necessary to cover the 1.8x 135 format frame. The new locking type lens hood is a treat and not so easily lost as the earlier iteration. Full marks Hasselblad (or Fuji in fact)! The image quality is superb - lovely colour tonality and smooth OOF which is gradually achieved displaying a "bokeh" of moreclassic lenses which is very appealing. Resolution of very fine detail is excellent and held quite well all the way to the edges even when wide open. At an optimal F stop of f8, this is a quite outstanding lens. Correction of aberrations is very good indee with strong resistance to flare, no visible astigmatism and no visible coma or chromatic aberration under a variety of conditions. The 90mm panorama frame has an AOV equivalent to a 50mm 135 format lens, which is very appealing and a great fit with the 45mm lens (25mm AOV in 135 format). It is a very attractive panoramic AOV and a very useable one at that. It does not require a ND centre graduated filter for any film type in any mode since it is not a wide angle lens. I fully recomment this lens.

Quality of build and finish. Excellent optical quality that does full justice to any high quality MF lens. Excellent value for money.

Minor fussier points include the fact that the aperture and focus rings are not sufficiently differentiated in their feel. The aperture position stops could be more "positive". The DOF scale printed on the lens barrel is a bit "light on"! A clever designer could have come up with a way of showing these more clearly and with more apertures indicated. It's of little real user value as it is.

Leica M7, Leica 24mm, 35mm 50mm 90mm 135mm lenses. Xpan II 45mm lens. Hasselblad 6x6 MF lenses - 50mm, 80mm 120mm 150mm 180mm 250mm. Large format lenses by Schneider, Rodenstock and Fuji.

None used. But the Hasselblad Australian distributor has low technical expertise in this camera and its optics - should be much better than that.

Superb performer and quite handy when shooting landscapes as you can exclude some (uninteresting) foreground if necessary. Stopping down not necessary unless you need more depth of field.
Buy now - enjoy always!

Compact, lightweight
High performance optics.

Nah, not really.

Nothing quite like this twin format lens, no.

Haven't had the pleasure.

this lense is certainly a very welcome edition to the line up for the Xpan. it performed beautifully and I can say is well worth the price for the image quality alone will say it all.

I admit I wasn't to excited about this lense in the panoramic mode. I perfer a good wide lense for pan's, but as a portrait lense it did some beautiful shots for me. I am not really a distance panoramic kinda person so I don't have a real deep opinion on it's images in the double wide mode. but what I did take with it in double wide came out really sharp.

F4 at 90mm is nothing to really be excited about.

lot's of leica's

never had to bother with them.