Hasselblad XCD 20-35mm f/3.2-4.5 E Review

Focusing Characteristics

The Hasselblad XCD 20-35mm f/3.2-4.5 E autofocuses very accurately, even in a demanding lab environment. Focusing speed and capabilities, especially in low light, are somewhat limited by Hasselblad’s current cameras. Still, I would consider it more than adequate for what photographers would want with an ultra-wide lens. Just don’t expect to be autofocusing on the stars.

At least on my copy of the lens, which was a pre-production model, the focusing motor was surprisingly loud. It was a good bit louder than the Hasselblad XCD V lenses that I’ve tried. Every once in a while, it would also seem to get “stuck” in a too-close focusing position and refuse to reset focus back to far distances. I had to manually re-focus in these situations before the lens started working properly again. This type of problem is not uncommon in pre-production lenses, but it is still disconcerting for a lens that costs $5929.

Beyond that, there is also some focus breathing on this lens. This matters if you intend to make any focus stacks. Namely, the photo focused at infinity will be more tightly cropped than the photo focused up close. It’s enough of a difference that you should frame your focus stacks while focused at infinity, or else risk cutting off some important parts of the composition.

Finally, although the Hasselblad XCD 20-35mm f/3.2-4.5 E has some promise for Milky Way and nightscape photography, you do need to resign yourself to focusing manually if the light gets too low. And, at the moment, one downside of Hasselblad’s current cameras is that the live view magnification cannot go as far as you might like. It magnifies plenty for most types of photography, but not for attaining critical focus on the stars. Some trial and error is definitely needed for pinpoint accuracy at maximum aperture – though it can be done with practice if your eyes are up to the task.

Distortion

I was very impressed with the distortion performance of the Hasselblad XCD 20-35mm f/3.2-4.5 E. Unlike most ultra-wide zooms, the lens never really gets to objectionable levels of distortion, maxing out at -2.40% barrel distortion at the widest focal length of 20mm. Here’s the full chart:

Anyone who’s familiar with our lens tests at Photography Life will know that this is unusually good for an ultra-wide zoom. In fact, it’s even better than what we measured with Hasselblad’s 25mm f/2.5 V, a prime lens that has about -3.11% barrel distortion.

Although distortion is relatively easy to correct in post-processing without major side effects, it is still a factor in a lens’s image quality. Excessive distortion correction can stretch portions of the image and make them less sharp, and it can also add to some compositional challenges. Keep in mind that Hasselblad currently does not have the option of in-camera distortion correction. You can always fix it in post-processing, but this will slightly crop your composition from how you framed it in the field. So, a lens like the XCD 20-35mm f/3.2-4.5 E that has low distortion is certainly welcome.

Here’s a simulation of -2.40% barrel distortion:

Vignetting

In uncorrected images, the XCD 20-35mm f/3.2-4.5 E has high levels of vignetting (falloff) that doesn’t totally go away as you stop down. Vignetting on this lens is worse at infinity compared to close focus, and it’s strongest at 20mm. At its worst, it has among the highest vignetting that we’ve tested in the lab before. Here is our chart as measured in Imatest:

The maximum vignetting at 20mm and f/3.2 is 3.76 stops, which is extremely high. It improves when you stop down to f/4 but is still very high at 2.96 stops. It’s not until you stop down to f/5.6, or zoom in a bit, that the vignetting reaches more manageable levels. This is a very disappointing performance from an otherwise great lens.

For some context, the Hasselblad XCD 25mm f/2.5 V – a lens which I already said “has high levels of vignetting,” maxes out at 2.46 stops at infinity focus, which almost seems tame by comparison. Even the Canon RF 15-35mm f/2.8, whose vignetting I called “really bad” reached 3.09 stops at infinity focus.

Unfortunately for the Hasselblad XCD 20-35mm f/3.2-4.5 E, it’s a good bit worse than even that. Below is how the vignetting looks on a flat field at 20mm, f/3.5, and infinity focus. This images was exported as an unedited JPEG from Lightroom using the Adobe Neutral image profile:

I suppose if there’s any silver lining, it is the fact that the lens does have less vignetting as you zoom in and stop down. Its vignetting is actually similar to the XCD 25mm f/2.5 V at 25mm specifically, as well as the XCD 38mm f/2.5 when you look at 35mm. But there’s no sugarcoating the performance at 20mm. It’s necessary to use vignetting corrections on this lens much of the time at that focal length, which harms the dynamic range and noise levels in the corners of the image.

Lateral Chromatic Aberration

There is a small amount of lateral chromatic aberration on the Hasselblad XCD 20-35mm f/3.2-4.5 E. It’s a little worse at 20mm, but it never reaches objectionable levels at all. Here’s the chart:

Astute Photography Life readers may notice that the graphic design of the chart above is a little different than usual. This is a sign that the numbers above are not to be compared against our full-frame chromatic aberration tests on Photography Life.

We measure chromatic aberration in pixels, and the sensor used for this test was a 100-megapixel medium format sensor (the Hasselblad 100C, found on cameras like the CFV 100C and the X2D). On such a demanding sensor, measuring at most 1.24 pixels of chromatic aberration is a very impressive result.

Sharpness

As you would hope for the price, the Hasselblad 20-35mm f/3.2-4.5 E is a sharp lens. Testing it both in the field and in the lab, there were no areas of its sharpness performance that gave me pause – I was happy using it on a 100-megapixel medium format sensor without feeling like I was losing any meaningful detail, even in the far corners at 20mm. In fact, I get the sense that Hasselblad really focused on the 20mm corner sharpness when designing this lens.

Note that the MTF test below is not comparable to any existing full-frame lens review on our website. Normally, all of our full-frame lens reviews can be compared against one another (even across camera brands – we account for that), but that does not hold true with such a different sensor size and resolution as this.

In other words, no meaningful conclusions can be drawn between the numbers in the chart below versus the numbers in our existing full-frame lens reviews! I want to get that out of the way first and make it clear to anyone who wants to try – I promise that you won’t learn anything useful. These numbers are meant to be compared only against our existing medium format lab tests.

With that, here are the full results:

As you can see, the sharpest focal length in our tests is 25mm, but 20mm isn’t far behind. It is a hair weaker at 35mm but still plenty sharp. What impresses me most are the corners, especially at 25mm but also at 20mm (and to a lesser extent at 35mm). These corners absolutely live up to Hasselblad’s 100 megapixel sensor and allow corner-to-corner sharpness at any aperture, though especially when you stop down a little.

To put these numbers into context, I’d like to show our MTF test results from the widest two XCD V prime lenses, the Hasselblad 25mm f/2.5 and 38mm f/2.5:

Overall, the two primes are certainly sharper, especially where center performance is concerned. However, the corner performance of the zoom – especially at 25mm – is absolutely competitive with both of these primes. While I would give both of the prime lenses a perfect 5.0/5 star rating for sharpness, I’m leaning toward 4.5/5 for the zoom. However, in real-world images where corner-to-corner sharpness and uniformity matters more than pure central sharpness, it would be very difficult to tell the differences between them.

Here’s an image from the Hasselblad 20-35mm f/3.2-4.5 E on a 100-megapixel sensor, followed by a pair of 100% crops, to demonstrate the sharpness that can be attained with this lens both in the center and in the corners. These images have Lightroom’s default sharpening and noise reduction applied, and they represent just 1.12-megapixel excerpts from the full-resolution 100 megapixel image. Click the crops to see them full size:

As a final note, there is hardly any focus shift on the Hasselblad 20-35mm f/3.2-4.5 E. There is also minimal field curvature at the wider focal lengths, although there is some at 35mm.

Coma

Related to sharpness is coma, a lens aberration that can make dots of light in the corner of a photo look like smears. Coma isn’t usually visible in everyday photography, but for something like Milky Way photography, it can be a factor. Since the Hasselblad 20-35mm f/3.2-4.5 E is partly geared toward Milky Way photography, I was eager to put its coma performance to the test.

However, during my time field testing this lens, I was in Iceland during the summer, when the sun does not set low enough to allow the Milky Way to be visible. While I still hope to test this lens for true Milky Way photography in the future, I was limited to testing coma with artificial lights instead.

Nevertheless, shown below is an extreme crop from the far corner of the Hasselblad X2D with the 20-35mm f/3.2-4.5 E. I cropped the X2D’s 100-megapixel sensor down to a mere 670 × 503 pixels and didn’t do any resizing; this is a direct excerpt from the image, with just my default sharpening applied. Here is the 100% crop at 20mm and f/3.5:

There’s hardly any coma here at all, an excellent result! To me, the issue when shooting the Milky Way with this lens is not coma performance at all, but the vignetting.

Flare and Sunstars

Complex wide-angle zooms like this one can be hotbeds of flare and ghosting. Considering how often the sun ends up in your frame at such wide angles, I consider this to be one of the most important aspects of image quality for wide-angle lenses.

The Hasselblad 20-35mm f/3.2-4.5 E is not totally flare-free, although it’s better than most ultra-wide zooms in this regard. Flare becomes more defined as you stop down to the narrower apertures, but here’s how it looks at f/11 as you zoom in from 20mm to 35mm:

As you can see, flare in most of the image gets more diffuse as you zoom in, but the red-dot flare grows more significant. And here’s an example of how the flare also gets worse as you stop down:

I’d still rate this as strong for an ultra-wide zoom, but we’ve also seen better on some lenses. If you want the best possible flare performance with an ultra-wide, I would go with the Hasselblad 25mm f/2.5 V instead.

Finally, as you can see from the images above, the sunstars on this lens are well-defined, especially at 20mm and narrow apertures like f/16 or f/22.

The next page of this review sums up everything and explains the pros and cons of the Hasselblad XCD 20-35mm f/3.2-4.5 E. So, click the menu below to go to “Verdict”: