Since first getting my Hasselblad over a year ago, my digital camera has been getting left behind more and more often. I’ve only got one decent lens for it (which the sensor crop makes even less fun), and unless I’m taking pictures for posterity (parties or other events where I’d want lots of pictures), I generally want anything worth taking a picture of to be on big, glorious film.
So when I bought a Hasselblad-lens-to-Canon-EOS-mount adaptor from Shanghai, I initially thought it’d be a bit of a novelty, but it’s a surprisingly useful thing to have. I took some comparison shots on a Canon 20D, using a 50mm CF T* , an 80mm C, and a 150mm CF T* Hasselblad lens, compared to a Canon 50mm f1.8 and a Sigma 70-300mm lens. The best EOS mount lens I’ve got is a Canon 17-40mm L, but I wanted to have comparable focal lengths so I had to use my less than stellar lenses; not exactly a fair match up (though the 50mm is pretty decent).
Everything was shot as RAW at 200 ISO, f/8, 1/125s, shown with no adjustments.
50mm
80mm
150mm
Granted it’s a pretty cheap Sigma super-zoom, but to me the Hasselblad versions seem much crisper and more detailed, if a little colder in tone. This little adapter definitely expands the usefulness of my digital camera, and makes me feel ok about not carrying around other lenses for it (which I never did anyways), as I can always use one of the other, proper lenses in my bag. It DOES however make me lust after a Canon 5D. The cropped sensor in the 20D makes little use of the 6×6cm image circle.
You can see them all uncropped in this album, where I also threw in a shot taken with the Canon L lens (at 40mm) just to be fair (it’s a far better lens then the 50mm or Sigma.