Hasselblad / Zeiss Planar CF 100mm f/3.5

Zeiss computed the 100mm Planar to solve a problem the 80mm could not. The standard 80mm is a fine normal, but it carries the field curvature and the faint distortion that come with a fast double-Gauss. Anyone shooting architecture, copy work, or anything with straight lines near the frame edge wanted something flatter and more disciplined. So Zeiss built a slightly longer Planar, slower at f/3.5, with field flatness and distortion correction as the priorities instead of speed. The CF version landed in 1982, when Hasselblad moved the V lineup to Prontor leaf shutters and the rubber-gripped CF barrel.

What followed is a specific reputation. Among V-system shooters the 100mm is widely held to be one of the sharpest, lowest-distortion lenses in the whole line, in the same conversation as the 120mm and 135mm Makro-Planars when people argue about which Hasselblad resolves the most. Against the 80mm it is not close: the 100mm is visibly cleaner across the frame, and that gap is well documented. Distortion is close to nothing, so it holds rulers and window mullions dead straight. That is the entire reason it exists.

Zeiss's own literature makes the point that it renders fine detail right out to the edges of the 6x6 frame even near maximum aperture, and it only tightens further as you stop down. The trade is character. This is not a portrait lens the way the 110mm f/2 or the 150mm Sonnar is. The out-of-focus rendering is correct rather than seductive, the backgrounds plain, and at f/3.5 on a 6x6 frame you do not get much subject separation to begin with. People who want melting backgrounds and a glow on skin reach elsewhere. People who want a negative that resolves every shingle on a roof reach for this.

It runs a leaf shutter in the barrel, like every CF lens, so flash syncs at every speed up to 1/500. That matters when you mix strobe with daylight on a tripod, balancing a lit interior against a bright window. Meter the ambient base in Zone Light Meter, then let the leaf shutter place your fill independently, with no focal-plane sync ceiling to fight. The 60mm Bayonet mount takes Hasselblad's B60 filters, so ND and polarizers are easy to find secondhand. The honest weakness is the obvious one: stopped down past f/16 it is diffraction-limited like anything else, and at f/22 on 120 you are giving back some of the resolution you bought the lens for, so it lives at f/8 to f/11.

Today it sits in an odd spot. Less famous than the 80mm, less coveted than the fast 110mm, so it stays comparatively cheap used, often the value pick of the lineup. The people who reach for it know exactly why. Technical and copy-stand shooters, and landscape photographers who scan their 6x6 and want the flattest, cleanest field Hasselblad ever ground. If you are shooting people, the 80mm or the 110mm will make you happier. If you want straight lines and edge-to-edge detail off a square negative, this is the lens to track down.