Sony Sony FE 85mm f 1.8

[L0n3Gr3yW0lf]

I can't seem to find a thread for this lens:

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Very sharp little lens, whether wide open or stopped down.

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Through careful shooting in very high contrast, this one is the most extreme you can get because I was overexposing too much by mistake and pushing the shadows will bring out more purple fringing. It is fixable but at this level with an IQ penalty (a lot of grey pixels replacing the purple fringing).

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But I do love the fact that the lens has character and personality. The lens is not clinically sharp but wide open is sharp enough for portraits without having to soften them up but can be sharpened a bit for other subjects. I haven't found the cat's eye in the bokeh distracting, I have quite a fondness for swirly backgrounds. The LoCA and CA are manageable in most situations, it has purple and green fringing with some cyan and yellow in the background and foreground.

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I have only 2 disappointments, so far, with this lens: lack of weather-sealing (while I understand that it's a budget-designed lens, they advertise splash resistance but the quality is not up to my Tamron f 2.8 lenses) and minimum focus distance is 80 cm leaves it not very good for close-ups (it's very sharp to crop 1.5x down to 14 MP and gets a bit more magnification but it's not great).

I hope the weather gets better so I can test the autofocus.

 

[Harry Cutts]

Ovi, I have recently picked up this lens and have to agree that it is sharp (enough). The close focussing is very poor in my opinion, although it is fast to lock on. I ended up buying a set of extension tubes which I have yet to try in the real world but seems to work well on the shots I have taken indoors. I might manage to get out with it sometime this week as the weather is looking good, at least for the next few days.
On the other hand I also picked up a 50mm f1.8 which is the slowest focussing lens that I have ever used and it has the latest firmware. It is also noisy but was cheap and I can see why.

 

[L0n3Gr3yW0lf]

Ovi, I have recently picked up this lens and have to agree that it is sharp (enough). The close focussing is very poor in my opinion, although it is fast to lock on. I ended up buying a set of extension tubes which I have yet to try in the real world but seems to work well on the shots I have taken indoors. I might manage to get out with it sometime this week as the weather is looking good, at least for the next few days.
On the other hand I also picked up a 50mm f1.8 which is the slowest focussing lens that I have ever used and it has the latest firmware. It is also noisy but was cheap and I can see why.

Thanks. I am disappointed with the magnification as well, you may find the Raynox adapter will work better then extension tubes (extension tubes work most effectively wider then 50mm, where dioptric adapters work best at longer then 50mm focal lengths. Can't remember the physics of why right now, I'm finishing a 12.5 hour shift and I'm tired).

What I am loving about this lens more and more is the character of its rendition, not clinically sharp, with a mild to strong swirls background as you get closer to minimum focus distance (because of the cat's eye shaped boek balls, you can get less effect if you go with better corrected lenses like Tokina, Meike, Yongnuo, and Viltrox 85mm f 1.8).
Both my Tamy 28-75mm f 2.8 G2 and Tamy 70-180mm f 2.8 are optically better but I keep coming back to the Sony because of the character.

I had owned the Sony FE 50mm f 1.8 twice now and as much as I tried I couldn't find the love for it. There were times where it impressed me and managed to make a magical picture. But most of the time it just not sharp and really horrendous chromatic aberration (I can spend more then half an hour cleaning a batch of images of purple and green fringing). More often I would rather shoot with the 75mm end of my Tamy for similar DoF separation instead.

I would look into:
*Samyang AF 45mm f 1.8 FE,
Sony FE 55mm F 1.8 Carl Zeiss Sonnar T,
*Viltrox AF 50mm f 1.8 FE.
If you want a small-ish, cheap-ish, fast-ish, nifty fifty with some character.

 

[Harry Cutts]

Thanks Ovi, I agree with everything you said. I do like the 85mm but the close focus distance is a bit disappointing. As for the 50mm, I always liked that focal length since my 35mm film days. I may look into getting the Zeiss 55mm at some point but will persevere with the Sony until then.
My favourite FL is 35mm and I have the Samyang 2.8 which performs really well with very few faults and what faults it has are easy to correct in pp.