Rollei Schneider Xenotar PQ 80mm f/2

Wide open at f/2 on a 6x6 frame, this lens throws a sliver of focus and drops everything behind it into a soft, undistracting blur. That isolation is the point of the thing. Schneider's Xenotar is a double-Gauss derivative in the same family as the Zeiss Planar, and they took it to f/2 at a time when most medium-format normals were f/2.8. The extra stop on a frame this size gives you a depth of subject separation that no 35mm normal can reach.

The look is recognizably Schneider. High micro-contrast, neutral color, crisply defined edges. Stopped down to f/5.6 or f/8 it resolves cleanly across the whole 6x6 field, enough detail that scanned 120 holds up under a hard crop. Wide open the center is already excellent and the corners drop off gently, which works in your favor on a portrait rather than against it. Bokeh is round and quiet, with smooth out-of-focus transitions and no harsh outlining on background highlights. It can read a touch clinical next to the warmer Zeiss Planar that Hasselblad shooters prefer, which is exactly the cross-shop here: Rollei 6008 plus Xenotar versus Hasselblad plus the 80mm Planar. People who pick the Rollei usually want the leaf-shutter system and the electronically integrated 6008 body, not just the glass.

This is a studio and location portrait lens first. Wedding and fashion shooters who stayed on film through the 2000s loaded it for skin work, and it built a reputation as one of the few medium-format normals you could shoot wide open and still trust the focus plane. The PQ designation means it is built for the 6000-series electronic bodies, with the aperture and the leaf shutter both driven through the body.

The leaf shutter is the real practical advantage. Flash syncs at every speed up to the top, so you can drag a strobe against bright sky at 1/500 and kill the ambient, which a focal-plane camera simply cannot do. The trade is the slow end. Leaf shutters get sluggish and slightly less precise at their longest exposures, so for anything past a second or two of timed light you want to meter carefully and confirm with a tested exposure rather than trusting the dial. Set Zone Light Meter to the lens's leaf-shutter speed range and let it flag when your reading falls into that soft slow zone or past your sync ceiling.

Its weak point is flare against a strong source. The fast double-Gauss layout has a lot of air-to-glass surfaces, and with a bright light just outside the frame you can lift veiling flare and lose some of that signature contrast. Use the hood, and use the 77mm thread for a deep shade or your ND when you are shooting wide open in sun. Do that and it holds contrast beautifully.

Today it trades for real money but less than the Hasselblad equivalent, mostly because the 6000 system scares people off with its battery and electronics dependence. If you already run a 6008, this is the normal lens to own. The f/2 aperture and the every-speed sync are a combination almost nothing else in medium format offers.