Tele-Superachromat 350mm f/5.6 IF

The Tele-Superachromat T* 5.6/350 CFE replaced a four-element lens with a nine-element one at the same focal length and the same maximum aperture, and Zeiss’s data sheet is candid about what that cost: the lens “incorporates considerable amounts of optical glass and metal parts of utmost precision. It is extremely difficult to manufacture.” Catalogue number 10 45 49, 9 elements in 8 groups, an exact focal length of 343.1 mm, f/5.6 to f/45, 1800 g — 450 g more than the Tele-Tessar 5.6/350 it succeeded — with a Prontor CFE shutter and databus contacts for the 200-series meters. Lens-db dates it to 1997; the earliest Hasselblad document consulted here that names it is the 202FA instruction manual, whose 1998 lens list has the CFE 5.6/350 sitting beside the FE lenses from 50 to 350 mm.

Superachromat is a specific claim, not a marketing word. An apochromat brings three wavelengths to a common focus; the Superachromats add a fourth and hold the correction across a far wider band — Japanese Wikipedia gives 400 to 1000 nm for the type. Zeiss’s practical formulation on this sheet is that the lens “incorporates special optical materials to achieve a chromatic correction so good, that even for infrared photos no special index is needed for focusing.” There is no red infrared mark on the distance scale because none is required. The design was meant “to deliver its high image quality even wide open, the way fashion photographers prefer to work,” and the listed uses run to advertising, industrial, aerospace and architectural detail work.

The mechanics are unusual for the V system. Focusing is internal, over a range from infinity to 3.75 m — a reproduction ratio of 1:9.9 across a close-limit field of 545 × 545 mm, at a working distance of 3.4 m from the front of the barrel — and the focusing ring carries user-adjustable limiters at both ends of the travel. Zeiss notes that the two can be brought together: narrowed “down to zero, which means, the focusing ring can be locked in any position,” so a chosen plane of focus can be set and held. Sports and wildlife photographers were the intended beneficiaries. The barrel also carries the Hasselblad system tripod quick-coupling mount, positioned “right under the center of gravity of camera and lens combined,” and takes M 86×1 filters rather than one of the Hasselblad series threads used on the older 350.

Only one version was ever sold. Hasselblad Historical’s lens index lists the lens once, under CFE and CFi, and there is no CF, CFi, CB or ZV variant of it — the Superachromat arrived after the CFE bayonet was established and left with the system. The end date carried here is the V system’s own: Wikipedia gives the 503CW’s discontinuation as 29 April 2013.

What remains open: a launch date from a Hasselblad or Zeiss announcement rather than a database, and whether the September 1997 date sometimes given for it refers to the announcement or to first shipments; any list price, in Deutsche Mark, dollars or Swedish kronor; the quantity built, which for a lens described by its own maker as extremely difficult to manufacture is likely to be small but is stated nowhere consulted here; and who at Oberkochen designed it — as with almost every Hasselblad Zeiss lens, no designer is named on the sheet.