Hasselblad / Zeiss Sonnar CF 150mm f/4

Put this next to the 180mm CFi Sonnar that came along later and the argument is mostly about reach and weight. The 180 is sharper into the corners wide open and the newer coatings hold flare better, but it is bigger and heavier, and both take the same 60mm bayonet filter so there is no savings there either way. The 150mm f/4 is the one most Hasselblad portrait shooters actually kept on the camera. On a 6x6 frame it works out to roughly an 85mm short tele in 35mm terms, which is exactly the focal length that flatters a face without distortion and lets you stand a comfortable distance from the subject.

The optics are a five-element Sonnar in three groups, the same design lineage Zeiss has been building since the 1930s, reworked here for the V system. Wide open at f/4 it is a touch soft and glowy in the corners, which is not a flaw for portraits, it is the reason people shoot it. Stop down to f/8 and it snaps to genuinely excellent sharpness across the frame, with the kind of micro-contrast that makes skin texture and fabric read clearly without looking clinical. The out-of-focus rendering is calm and undramatic. Highlights behind a head stay round, the transition from sharp to soft is gradual, and nothing churns at the edges. Color runs a little warm and saturated, the way most Sonnar designs do, and it holds up well under mixed studio light.

This is the studio and wedding lens. Most working medium-format portrait photographers from the 1980s through the film era owned the 150 before they owned anything longer. It is the focal length for headshots, three-quarter portraits, and tight groups, and it doubles as a clean landscape lens once you stop it down. Then there is the shutter. Every CF lens carries its own Prontor leaf shutter, which is the defining change from the older C series and its Synchro-Compur. The payoff is flash sync at every speed up to 1/500. For studio strobe and outdoor fill that matters enormously. You can drag the ambient or kill it at full sync without the focal-plane ceiling that limits 35mm SLR shooters.

The honest weakness is that f/4 is not fast. In dim light you are focusing on a dark screen and metering a dark scene, and the lens does not gather much. If you need available-light reach the 110mm f/2 Planar exists and embarrasses this lens for speed, at a steep price and weight penalty. The 150 is a daylight and strobe lens, not a low-light lens, and pretending otherwise leads to camera shake at 1/30.

When you do shoot it in marginal light, meter for the shadows you care about and remember the leaf shutter only goes down to one second, so very long exposures mean switching to B and timing by hand. In Zone Light Meter, place your key tone where you want it on the zone scale and read off the aperture; at f/4 in low light the app will often push you toward those slow speeds, which is your cue to add support. Today the CF 150 is one of the more affordable entry points into the Hasselblad V system, far cheaper than the 110 Planar or the 180, and it stays in demand because it nails the everyday portrait-with-sync-flash job without costing what the faster glass does.