Hasselblad 60mm

[richard_matthews]

I borrowed a Hasselblad 60 mm Distagon and 20 rolls of film. In

general I was delighted with the results, but on two rolls shot in

low light there was a problem - around streetlights, whether

distant or near there were extremely sharp, thin lines extending

radially from the center anywhere from 2 to maybe 7mm in

length. The lights themselves showed very nice detail and were

not veryover exposed. No filters were use.

I have much experience with the Planar and the 40mm distagon

and have never seen this before.

Anyone have any ideas what caused this? Is it posible that the

lens is defective?

[russ_britt1]

Flair from the lights. Did you use a lens shade? Its more important with wide angles, than with any other lens . Also was the lens a T* lens?

[tarashnat]

Richard,

 

You may want to state which version of the 60mm as there were 3 versions of the C type,

each with a different maximum aperture, and the more modern CF versions. Also a sample

of the image may help to identify the issue. For example, was there a streetlight in the

center of the image in question? How many lines are there? Etc.

 

Taras

[richard_matthews]

The lens was a 60CB (same glass as CF), a lens shade was

used. The photos were taken at about 5:30 am so there are

several street lights in the shots, anywhere from 25 - 400 meters

away. There are not any street lights in the middle of shots.

Apperture f/8. There are about 8 lines around each light - very

uniform - they look like the lines from a star filter.

The interesting thing is that I used the 40mm distagon for nearly

identical shots (although on a different day, without a lens shade

and didn't have this problem.

I actually gave the negatives to a friend who is going to print one

of them. I did a search on lens flare and none of the examples

matches the effect.

[kevin_ing]

Hi. It sounds to me like you are describing a diffraction star. This is an intrinsic characteristic of any lens with its aperture stopped down a bit, but some lenses produce more pronounced starbursts than others. The number of spikes of the star is also related to the number of aperture blades.

 

Here's a thread related to this topic: http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0065MN

[paul_chan4]

I'm not so sure the 60mm CB has exactly the 'same glass' as the earlier CF version. May have the same number and configuration of elements but I recollect having read a report in the Shutterbug some years back the thickness of some elements are slightly different. If that's correct, this may account for some slight variation in the performance results. Not necessarily inferior though.

[richard_matthews]

Kevin,

Thanks very much for your post and the link. I read that thread.

Very interesting. There's always something to learn! The only

thing I am puzzled about is that I shot similar photos with other

Hasselblad lenses and didn't have the problem, but I think I am

going to shoot a test roll and deliberately try to recreate the

"problem" with the 80mm Planar.

 

Paul,

Hassleblad told me the the 60CF, 60CFI, 60CB have the same

glass. The only difference is that the CB does not have the F

setting and has more plastic. (at least that is what I was told).

[picturesque]

Also, the CB is supposed to have the "old" style shutter main spring (as in the CF lens) while the newer CFi lens is supposed to have a spring made of the newer material called Nivarox (?) that is supposed to be long lasting.

[evan_dong1]

Nadine,

 

Based on what Hasselblad told me, as lenses in the CF,CB, and CFi comes in for the mainspring repair, they will use the newer style mainsprng. I had several lenses in for repair and they replace them with the newer mainsprings.

[q.g._de_bakker]

I believe the CB lenses were the first to get the new main spring, even before they were used on CFi/CFE lenses.<br>