Hasselblad / Zeiss Planar CFi 100mm f/3.5

Ask a V-system shooter which lens out-resolves the 80mm normal and the 100mm Planar comes up fast. It is widely regarded as one of the highest-resolving lenses Zeiss built for the 6x6 system, and people who run it tend to keep it within reach. The trade for that resolution is one stop of speed, f/3.5 instead of the 80mm's f/2.8, plus a design that prioritizes flat-field correction over fast-aperture drama.

The optical layout is a Planar derivative, five elements in four groups, deliberately departing from the classic symmetrical double-Gauss to wring out field curvature. That is the whole point. On a flat subject, an architectural facade, a copy stand, a product on seamless, the corners hold focus right out to the edge of the 6x6 frame in a way the 80mm cannot match. Wide open it is already excellent and clinically clean. By f/8 the negatives look practically etched, with detail that holds up under a loupe and then some. Contrast is high and even, the Zeiss T* coating keeps flare in check against backlight, and out-of-focus rendering is smooth and quiet rather than swirly or characterful. This was never a lens built for bokeh.

The CFi generation arrived in 1998 with redesigned ergonomics, a more durable NIVAROX shutter spring, and improved internal anti-reflection materials and barrel coatings that cut stray light compared to the older C and CF versions. Same Planar glass, better mechanics and stray-light control. Like every CFi it carries a Prontor leaf shutter built into the lens, the Prontor unit that replaced the older C-series Compur, now with the NIVAROX main spring that the CFi added, and flash sync at every speed up to 1/500. Studio and product shooters live on that. The honest catch with leaf shutters is the top speed: 1/500 is the ceiling, so on a bright day with fast film and a wide aperture you can run out of shutter before you run out of light, and you stop down or reach for slower stock.

It draws a crowd from landscape photographers who want a slightly long normal with edge-to-edge bite, from product and still-life shooters who need true flat-field correction, and from portrait people who like the modest extra working distance over the 80mm. If you are after creamy falloff and rounded rendering for headshots, the 110mm f/2 FE or the 150mm Sonnar give you that and this one does not. Think of it as a precision instrument that also happens to take fine portraits when you ask it to.

On the V system you are metering off-body anyway, so the practical note is simpler than usual. The 60mm filter thread is the small Hasselblad bayonet-60 size, which matters when you are buying polarizers and grads for it. Pull this lens onto a bellows or extension tube for tight still-life work and the leaf shutter gives you no warning that close focus at 100mm is costing you light, so set your reading and let Zone Light Meter compute the bellows factor for the added extension before you trip it. Today these sell in the same used bracket as a clean CF 80mm, and people pay it on purpose, because little else in the V bag resolves like this one.