This is not a technical review of this fascinating lens; there are a number of great XCD lenses out there and the XCD 21mm is perhaps my favorite. And this post is also about how I’m finding my way around the Hasselblad X2D, a camera still a little bit new to me. And I’m loving it. Each day I’m still finding something else about this camera that I did not know existed.
I’ve moved heaven and earth to sell what equipment I could to afford the camera and even more for the various lenses, which I bought used at that. The Hasselblad system is expensive!
I’ve tried out a number of the XCD lenses, including one of the new “V” series, the XCD 55mm f/2.5 lens.
After my look around the lenses available to me on the X2D (the 21mm, 30mm, 45mm, 45Pmm, 55mm V, 65mm, 120mm, and 135mm+1.7 TC), I end up finding the most use for the wide-angle XCD 21mm lens.
One thing that has occurred to me is that unlike my Nikon system, where I have a great many lenses, with the Hasselblad X2D, even one single good lens can be enough. How we find and figure out which that one lens is can be costly. It might be best to rent a few.
As for the XCD 21mm, it’s not just because it is wide-angle. My history is not one of much use of wide-angle lenses. I’ve seen too many real-estate photos where wide-angle photos make the house seem larger than it is, and when you arrive for a showing its about the size of a postage stamp. In other words, I’m more just the opposite, into closeup and near-telephoto macros.
However, the XCD 21mm lens is addicting, and in my case very addicting. This amounts to a new experience in my book.
Perhaps I don’t use the XCD 21mm like one would a wide-angle lens, for it’s breadth of scope. I seem to more use it to have plenty of expansive context from which to crop a photo in a number of ways, as I like. This 21mm lens seems to stretch space out in all directions tastefully, giving me room, room, room.
Yet, from all that context, that space, I find room for a great deal of creativity on my part. It’s not that I’m usually not creative, but with the XCD 21 I seem to be more at home with my creativity. Very intuitive and natural.
I can get quite close up with this lens and I can also pull in a lot of space from that wide angle for context, on all sides.
It’s not a lens I would choose for portraits, yet again and again I find myself taking portraits of people with this lens, featuring them, and then adding in whatever I like from the surrounding background as context to bring them out. It could be as simple as I’ve been too many years with closeup and macro. I need to let some light in.
I also seem to come up with what I could only call ‘wide-angle closeups’, something brought in near, close-up, but then inset into an extensive background of space that stretches away wherever.
Most of all, I am troubled, because no matter whatever other lens I put on the X2D, I seem to find myself wishing I had the XCD 21 instead. And so, for me, the XCD21 has become a kind of Swiss Army Knife, a single lens that can serve many purposes. Why? You tell me. Anyway, these are the facts that I’m wrestling with these days.
So, should I just consider the XCD21 my idea of a “street Lens,” because I seem to use it for almost everything, but yet never before would I consider such a wide lens for that. Yet here I am choosing it and using it for this, that, and the other things.
Yes, the XCD21 is sharp. Yet, more important it also has a special character that is appealing, which only a few lenses seem to have. For me it is a special lens, and I cannot understand why Hasselblad discontinued it. I don’t consider the XCD 25 V lens a replacement. I grabbed an XCD21 used while I still could. It’s on the X2D almost all the time.
I feel a little guilty letting my other XCD lenses sit on the shelf while I use the XCD 21, yet that’s life and there must be some kind of lesson learned or in the learning.
In my Nikon lens cabinet I have all kinds of lenses, each is (or at least often) quite different from the next. I can’t say that about the Hasselblad XCD lenses. Yes, they are different, yet aside from the difference in millimeters, they seem surprisingly similar.
The XCD lenses tend to have the same f/stop when they are at their best, all are quite sharp, have a lot of microtones, and so on. If you have one good Hasselblad lens, you kind of have all of them. I have a lot to learn.
[Photo by me using the X2D and the XCD 21mm lens.]
