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Camera Lens News No. 9
NAB 2000 edition |
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Distagon 3,5/60 T* for Hasselblad – The Carl Zeiss royal wedding lens
The majority of successful wedding photographers all over the world use the same camera system as their workhorse:
Hasselblad.One of the standard tasks in wedding photography is the group shot capturing all the important people of the event. Quite often this group shot has to be taken indoors, where space tends to be limited. Usual solution in case of space limitations is the use of a wide angle lens. However, this obvious way has its short-comings:
People positioned close to the edges of the frame, or even worse: close to the corners, may look more or less dis-torted. These people will most likely not want to own a print of this shot, and will probably not want to pay for it.
A lens suitable for this task needs to fulfill three needs at the same time: Offer a certain degree of wide angle to save space, keep wide-angle distortion very low on the other hand, and be extra-ordinarily sharp so every single person in a 200 people group shot can be clearly and pleasingly recognized.
Such a lens exists in the Hasselblad program. It is the Zeiss Distagon 3,5/60. In recent performance tests at Carl Zeiss it has managed to resolve up to 240 line pairs per millimeter which is far beyond the capability of today’s best professional portrait films. The Distagon 3,5/60 was the lens chosen for the indoor group shot of 31 people at the royal wedding of Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones which took place at Windsor Palace. Four Has- selblad 555 ELD cameras were released simultaneously by Royal Photographer Sir Geoffrey Shakerley, each of which was equipped with a Zeiss Distagon 3,5/60. Three of these cameras were loaded with color negative and transparency film. For the first time at a royal wedding a camera was fitted with a digital back (by Phase One), connected to a large screen monitor that enabled the group to view and enjoy their picture immediately.
Zeiss has been recommending the Distagon 3,5/60, available for both Hasselblad and Rolleiflex systems, as the ideal lens for group photos on the Zeiss website (see below). | |
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