Related Local Pages:
Aux. Lens Adapters (wide/tele) Pages
Fisheye and Ultrawide (0.42X) Lens Adapters
Lens Availability Table (Excel spreadsheet)
Lens Mount Adapters Pages
Telephoto Lenses
Wide Angle Lenses

Article Table Links:
6x4.5 SLR Lenses [Mamiya 645; Pentax 645; Bronica ETRSi 645]
6x6cm SLR Lenses [Bronica SQA-I, SQ-B; Hasselblad 50x/20x; Rollei 600x SLRs]
6x7cm SLR Lenses [Bronica GS-1; Pentax 67; Mamiya RB67 Pro and RZ67]
All SLR Lenses [all 6x4.5, 6x6, and 6x7cm below]
Hasselblad C Lenses Sold Table [lens sales and popularity versus renting]
Minimum Focusing Distance of MF Lenses Table (+ weights, filter sizes)

Here is a table of current medium format lenses for 6x4.5cm, 6x6cm, and 6x7cm SLR users. I have sorted by focal length and B&H price. Use the Excel 5 spreadsheet to check out your own interests. Source is the B&H Professional Photo Sourcebook (first edition). See notes for comments...

All SLR Lenses - 6x4.5cm, 6x6cm, 6x7cm - sorted by focal length and cost:

6x4.5cm SLR Lenses - sorted by focal length and cost:

6x6cm SLR Lenses - sorted by focal length and cost:

6x7cm SLR Lenses, sorted by focal length and cost:

Notes: Prices are in US$ from B&H catalog, rounded up. Focal length is obviously in millimeters. Fp is for focal plane shutter, versus leaf for leaf shutter systems. Formats are 6x4.5cm (64.5), 6x6cm (66), and 6x7cm (67). All lenses shown are for SLR cameras. Aperture is f/stop, e.g., 3.5 is f/3.5. The model column relates the manufacturer and model (see format). For 645 cameras, models are pentax 645, mamiya 645, and bronica ETRSi 645 cameras. For 6x6cm cameras, models are Rollei 600x series, Hasselblad 50x/20x SLR series, and Bronica SQAI and related bodies (SQ-B). Finally, for 6x7cm SLR cameras, models are Bronica GS-1, Pentax 67, and Mamiya RB67 Pro and Mamiya RZ67 series SLRs. The "notes" section highlights special features of each lens, such as tilt/shift capability, fisheye lenses, leaf shutters (if on focal plane model cameras), zooms, macro lenses, APO and specialty ED IF glasses, mirror lenses, soft focus offerings, and teleconverters. Hopefully, this column may help explain why one lens costs more than a similar lens on a different camera due to some specialty feature or capability.

Total Sales for Hasselblad C lenses, from the Hasselblad Compendium per posting:

24mm f3.5 F Distagon     - about 50          0.01%
30mm f3.5 F Distagon C   - under 1000        0.24%
40mm f4 Distagon C       - approx. 9,000     2.16%
50mm f4 Distagon C       - approx. 75,000   18.03% 
80mm f2.8 C Planar       - approx. 210,000  50.46%
105mm f4.3 UV (quartz)   - approx. 100       0.02%
120mm f5.6 S-Planar      - approx. 14,000    3.36%
150mm f4 Sonnar C        - approx. 70,000   16.82%
250mm f5.6 Sonnar C      - approx. 30,000    7.21%
350mm f5.6 Tele-Tessar C - approx. 3,000     0.72%
500mm f8 Tele-Tessar C   - approx. 4,000     0.96%

For non-SLR Hasselblads:
38mm Super Wide (Angle)  - approx.  2,000
38mm Super Wide C        - approx. 14,000
38mm SWC/M (incl. CF)    - approx.  6,000

Lens Sales Guide

What is the typical medium format SLR lens user profile in terms of lenses owned and used? The short answer is that roughly 85% of all Hasselblad lens sales are for the classic trio of 50mm wide angle, 80mm normal, and 150mm telephoto lenses (see sales table above). I consider these the "people and places" lens kit. Most photographers shooting such subjects will want a trio of wide/normal/tele optics of their choice. Lens choice is obviously highly personal and dependent upon your professional needs.

Changing Tastes and Newer Options

On the other hand, if you are buying the 250mm super apochromatic lens at an equally super price, or the $15,000 US quartz 105mm UV specialty lenses, you should have a specific scientific need for these lenses (or be a very well heeled collector!). The fisheye lens is often rented for specialty shots. The frequency of use of fisheyes for most photographers is low, and that is a lot of money to tie up in a low usage lens. Similarly, unless you do a lot of bird/nature or industry telephoto shots, the 350mm and 500mm lenses run under 2% of sales. Many low selling pricey lenses which are infrequently used are probably often rented by photographers who just need access for a specific job need. If you anticipate lots of rentals over time it may be wiser to buy one if you can afford to do so.

The Hasselblad Superwide slightly distorts the wide angle sales of the Hasselblad line, since you can opt for the highly corrected 38mm Biogon as your wide angle. SLR users may prefer the 40mm distagon lens instead, but even adding up both lenses suggests that only 7+% of Hasselblad lens sales are in this 40mm very wide angle range.

Lens Availability

This problem has several dimensions. First, was a lens ever produced in the desired focal length and/or speed needed? If yes, are they available new or used at an affordable price, or via local or mail order lens rentals? If not, is there another alternative such as a fisheye adapter which would work sufficient for your needs or budget instead?

Multiple Systems Multiply Lens Options

Similarly, the unique 19mm Kowa fisheye is another lens that was made, but in such low numbers as to be found in only a handful of camera bags. If anything, I feel very lucky to have the 35mm Kowa 6x6cm ultrawide rectilinear optic. I have only seen one other such lens offered for sale in 2+ years. I need to caution you that just because a lens might have been made, doesn't mean you can find one for sale even if you could afford it!

My point here is that it may be simpler, easier and lots cheaper to have a second medium format camera with different strengths than to try and extend a single system to do every possible job you might encounter. Different SLR systems have different strengths. Many photographers have even bought yet another 6x6cm SLR just to get access to a single low cost lens available for it. I am thinking of the highly rated 30mm fisheye medium format lens for the Kiev-60 and Kiev-88 series camera bodies and lens mounts. But someone else might buy into the Kiev lineup to get those low cost shift lenses (with 3 available lenses under $1,000 US). Other photographers have bought Hasselblad Superwide cameras just to get the highly regarded Zeiss Biogon 38mm rectilinear lens. So consider this approach if you have only a few holes and such a solution is feasible or suggests itself. More cameras = more fun!

Sample Usage of Above Table(s)

This review is a brief example of how you can "mine" the tables of lens availability data and pricing information to consider which camera offers the best match to your lens requirements and budget. While these are just some of the factors to consider, the cost and availability of lenses has a major impact on what you can do and afford to buy for your system. You can also check the newly published (6/2000) McBroom's Camera Pricing Guide for pricing on recent and current medium format cameras, lenses, and accessories.

Rentals

Rentals come in two flavors. A local camera shop may have a 40mm lens they would prefer to sell, but it isn't a fast turnover item. So they are happy to rent such a lens for a rental fee (plus insurance costs). Who knows, maybe you will decide to buy the lens, and at worst they have some income from rentals. But eventually, somebody decides to buy that 40mm lens, and now they don't have one. This setup lets you test a lens before buying, but it makes it hard to rely on the local store for rental gear since they aren't in the business in a serious way.

On the other hand, there are pro shops which support a strong rental program with equipment dedicated to such rental services. One reason you will find so many pro stores with Hasselblad rental gear may relate to great deals the store has gotten on such rental equipment from your national Hasselblad importer and distributor. By contrast, another brand such as Rollei may have a different rental incentives program, or have fewer dealers enrolled. If you happen to have a local dealer who provides such Rollei SLR lenses in depth in their rental program, you are in luck. But many of us are not so lucky. The only option may be to rent such equipment via the mails, where such services are available. And when one of the major national rental sources for Rollei SLR lenses drops their Rollei rental by mail program, you will see a number of posting on related mailing lists from dismayed users who have lost their main source for such needed lens rentals.

I should also cite another personal observation that it is easier to go with the flow on rentals. Are you a semi-professional photographer who plans on renting unusual lenses when needed locally? If so, it may behoove you to buy a basic camera kit that matches the local rentals program. So while I have only a few lenses for my Hasselblad 500c and 500 EL/M cameras, I can rent more exotic optics locally if I should need them for modest fees. I have a number of backs (including 6x4.5cm and polaroid) and viewfinders and two bodies (for backup purposes). While I could rent the entire setup, the cost for renting spare bodies and backs and viewfinders adds up fast too. So I can just rent the exotic pricey optics when I need them and use them with my older bodies, backs, and finders. But if I had a different 6x6cm SLR (e.g., Rollei 600x), I might have a harder time finding a local rental source for exotic optics. If you haven't bought into a major system yet, and are considering supplementing your startup kit with local rentals, you need to review local rental program costs and availability issues carefully.

You can also use your rental receipts and projected usage rental fees to identify potential needs that might be cheaper if met with a purchase rather than frequent renting. For example, buying a $300 used macro lens and tubes for a Kowa 6/66 might be a better way to get a flat field lens than frequently renting the 120mm macro Hasselblad version. My point here is that you have to consider the cost of other alternatives, including buying into another (budget) line that covers such needs at an attractive total cost. Just because your main system is a Rollei SLR or Hasselblad doesn't mean you can't use or justify another camera or lens setup for doing an infrequent or specific task. Not only will this approach solve your current problem, but it may open up solutions to other problems in the future more easily too. In engineering terms, you have more "degrees of freedom" in finding a solution to any problem with multiple camera systems than with just one.

If you really like the 30mm Hasselblad fisheye ($5,800 at B&H), you might consider buying a Kiev-60 with the well regarded 30mm fisheye on 6x6 for circa $400 for both 30mm lens and Kiev-60 camera with metering prism. It doesn't take many Hasselblad 30mm rentals at that price to pay for the alternative 30mm lens and camera. You can also recoup part of your investment when you resell your Kiev 60 and fisheye lens too. With rentals, you will just have a pile of receipts and no gear to resell. So your total cost of ownership may be surprisingly low if you find the Kiev-60 and 30mm lens an acceptable alternative.

Buy to Sell

Buying Grey Market Overseas

Another set of financial tips for the semipro photographer suggest ways to use your photo business to reduce costs too. By using such business related deductions, you can greatly reduce the amount of taxes you pay for such business related goods and services too.

Lenses You Can't Rent or Buy Anytime Soon

On other lenses, you may be on a nearly one year wait cycle for the annual production run of a particular lens. Get the idea? Lots of lenses are listed which sell in such small quantities that they are custom built on your order. So you can't rent or buy one right away, even if you have the $21,000+ available in your hand.

Hmmm? Maybe that Pentax 67 with 800mm f/4 lens for only $7,300 is starting to look pretty good about now? Here again, it may be cheaper to buy another camera body than try to deal with higher costs and delays in another lineup. And obviously, I am not saying these practices are limited to a single manufacturer or unusual; all the manufacturers have limited production one-off lenses that are custom built after you order and pay for them!

Lens Envy Cures

One solution to these problems of lens availability and cost is discussed in the section on lens adapters below. Thanks to these low cost alternatives, you can get some unusual effects such as fisheye photos, ultrawide shots with amusing distortions, and additional short telephoto soft portrait lens options at surprisingly low cost. Best of all, these adapters can work on a variety of cameras, including medium format SLRs, TLRs, rangefinders, and even 35 cameras with low cost adapter rings. So don't despair if the lenses you want aren't available for your system. Use an adapter instead!

Lens Adapter Alternatives

So the above sales table is not a usage table, but simply a reminder that not everybody has a 40mm lens, let alone the 30mm fisheye. You may be happier using a 2X teleconverter on your 150mm f/4 knowing that less than 1% of the lenses sold were 350mm f/5.6 optics, and many were probably in rental programs to boot. I am fairly happy with the circular fisheye photos from mounting my Kenko 0.18X fisheye adapter ($50-100 US used) on my medium format lens(es) [more so than on 35mm]. For one per cent of the cost of a new 30mm Hasselblad fisheye, I can take fisheye photos on my Hasselblad older 500C and 500 EL/M, but also Kowa 6/66 SLRs, Bronica Z/S2A/EC SLRs, Rolleiflex and other TLRs, 6x9cm folders and even 35mm. Wow!

Similarly, my 0.42X superwide and 0.5X wide angle adapters are pretty handy wherever wider coverage is needed than a less distorted rectilinear 50mm. Here again, the 0.42X adapter turns the normal 80mm lens into a near 35mm ultrawide lens (with unique barrel distortion of a semi-fisheye optic). The 0.5X adapter on an 80mm normal lens yields a 40mm very wide angle effect, with somewhat less distortion than the 0.42X superwide adapter. The 0.6x wide angle adapter produces a bit more distortion than the true 50mm wide angle lens, but the result is a unique if subtle distortion effect. Naturally, lens adapters won't have the same refined edge resolution and contrast of a true prime (fixed) lens, and flare resistance will often be lower too. But a low cost lens adapter in the hand beats a non-existent or unaffordable lens in the catalog anyday!

You can also find some odd-ball telephoto adapters and very low cost ($10-20 US used) kits of a wide angle and telephoto adapter lens. These kits are much poorer optically than the more expensive and heavier glass 0.42X and similar very wide 0.5X adapters. But I have found that the softening effects of the 1.25X telephoto adapter in some of these kits has some limited uses as a short telephoto lens for portraiture. Here, the softening effect of the low cost optics is a benefit, as it smooths out the wrinkles and facial faults of the subject. The resulting 100mm range focal length (1.25X) to 120mm (1.5X) is less ideal than the typical 150mm or 180mm portrait lens usually used on 6x6cm SLRs. But the effects are slightly more compression and less facial distortion than the normal lens in your shots. For the price of a no-name filter ($10 or so), you can try out these effects cheaply enough and see if you like and can use them.

Finally, I highly recommend trying out two element achromatic diopter closeup lenses if you don't have access to either extension tubes or bellows with macro lenses. The results are very useful for most natural subjects, where slight distortion in the image edges is rarely noticeable or objectionable. Unfortunately, if you are copying documents or artworks and duplicating color slides, you may have to spring for a true macro lens (or make one - see homebrew medium format lenses).

Lens Mount Converters

Most lens mount adapters don't preserve metering or lens diaphragm automation, so you have to be able to meter and use the lens in manual mode (or use a handheld meter). Unfortunately, most medium format lenses are rather expensive. So it may be cheaper to buy a used camera body for the cheaper lenses and use them on the fully automatic body (e.g., Kiev-60). But this approach can be quite attractive if you have a lot of lenses in one mount and want to use them on a second focal plane body style (e.g., Bronica S2/EC on pentax 645 or Rollei SL66).

Unfortunately, leaf shutter lenses are much harder to interchange, so few such mount adapters are available for them. After considering the cost of a full range of Hasselblad lenses against my grad student budget, I opted to expand my Kowa 6/66 system to a full range of leaf shutter lenses from 35mm to 250mm, including 110 flatfield macro and the 35mm ultrawide lens - the widest rectilinear every made for 6x6cm SLRs. The cost was less than a single macro lens for my Hasselblad 500c! In other words, sometimes it is a lot cheaper to switch than to fight!

In a few cases, the savings with lens mount adapters are so great that you can get the lenses permanently adapted to the new body and save a lot over similar OEM lenses, or get lenses not otherwise available. For example, KievUSA adapts some of their lenses for Hasselblad 200/2000 series focal plane body mounts. Given that there are three (3!) wide angle shift lenses (45mm, 55mm, 65mm) for the Kiev mounts, as well as a low cost 30mm fisheye ($200+ US), the attraction of such options becomes doubly apparent. You can save a lot of money (even at nearly $1,000 for the converted mount lenses), and you can get some optics you can't otherwise get on your camera. Neat!

Conclusions

Look into potential for renting exotic lenses you are unlikely to rent very often. If you can't rent locally, inquire if other mail rental services are available (e.g., on user mailing lists). If you can't rent, look into buying new items more cheaply overseas as well as on the used market.

One of my more surprising suggestions has probably been that since no one medium format camera system is equally strong in all areas - optically or otherwise - you should consider combining the strengths of multiple systems. Not only is this more fun, but you may find as I have that a mix of leaf shutter and focal plane cameras provides a lot more capabilities at lower total cost than either system alone. In my case, I have combined the low cost of closeup and longer telephoto lenses for focal plane cameras (Bronica S2/EC) with the desired leaf shutter optics focusing on wide angle and short telephoto portraiture with fill-in flash options.

Another surprise for many readers has probably been my suggestion that you consider buying a particular camera or lens to fill a real need beyond the range of available or affordable optics on your current system. Using my Hasselblad 500c system as an example, I can rent the 30mm Zeiss fisheye many times rather than find $5,800 US to buy one (at B&H discount prices!). But I can pay for a fisheye adapter for most of my fun and explorational shots for the price of one weekend's rental (e.g., $50 US up). Similarly, for under $400 I can buy a Kiev-60 with their 30mm fisheye optic and take similar photos but of higher quality than my adapter. On the other hand, I could buy 2 pentax 67 bodies each with its own $1,200 35mm fisheye for less than the price of the cheapest 30mm leaf shutter fisheye ($4,500 US on Rollei 600x). If I must have fill-in flash synch with fisheye coverage, I use one of my adapters (fisheye or ultrawide) on the leaf shutter prime lens. Make sense? Sure it isn't as great as the zeiss lens, but we live in an imperfect world!

Finally, having multiple cameras enables you to have the fun and excuse of experimenting with them to extend your enjoyment of photography. As I have added a lens here and an adapter there, I have greatly expanded the capabilities of my equipment. But it is more important to go out and use the gear you have and make small improvements and try things out than it is to wait for a winning lottery ticket to buy that ideal dream outfit. The results and experiences you get from this experimenting and learning process will make you appreciate each camera and lens setup for its own merits, charms, and uses in your photography!

Good Shooting!