Sony Carl Zeiss Planar T* 85 mm f/1.4 review - Summary

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Sony Carl Zeiss Planar T* 85 mm f/1.4

7 October 2007

Arkadiusz Olech

11. Summary

Pros:

very solid casing and high build quality,
very good quality of image both in the centre and at its edge,
inconsiderable chromatic aberration,
zero distortion,
small coma,
slight vignetting, quickly decreasing while stopping down,
very good work against bright light,

Cons:

disastrous autofocus work
a little too big astigmatism
outrageous price

It is impossible not to grade this lens without considering its price. From a portrait prime that costs almost 5000 polish zloty we demand perfection in every aspect. As far as the noticeable astigmatism at the wide-open lens can be understood and the slight sharpness less forgiven, the focusing mechanism must be heavily criticised. Its disastrous work is to such a degree noisy and inefficient that much better effects we will achieve treating this lens as a manual one.

It is interesting that the Sony company appears to be working to its own deterioration. One of the key arguments to encourage the users to buy Alfa was the presence of the cult Zeiss lenses equipped in autofocus. In view of such work of this mechanism, this argument is absolutely losing its purpose, since there are manual Zeiss lenses with the Nikon thread, which can be attached to Canon with a use of a proper adapter.

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Sample shots:


Camera: Sony Alfa 100 Parameters: 85 mm, f/1.4, exp. 1/1250 sec, ISO 200 File: JPG, 3872x2592 pix, 2.4 MB	Camera: Sony Alfa 100 Parameters: 85 mm, f/4.0, exp. 1/160 sec, ISO 200 File: JPG, 3872x2592 pix, 2.6 MB	Camera: Sony Alfa 100 Parameters: 85 mm, f/4.0, exp. 1/800 sec, ISO 200 File: JPG, 3872x2592 pix, 3.1 MB

Camera:Sony Alfa 100 Parameters: 85 mm, f/1.4, exp. 1/640 sec, ISO 200 File: JPG, 3872x2592 pix, 2.2 MB	Camera: Sony Alfa 100 Parameters: 85 mm, f/4.0, exp. 1/160 sec, ISO 200 File: JPG, 3872x2592 pix, 3.3 MB	Camera: Sony Alfa 100 Parameters: 85 mm, f/1.4, exp. 1/2000 sec, ISO 200 File: JPG, 3872x2592 pix, 3.2 MB

Camera:Sony Alfa 100 Parameters: 85 mm, f/4.0, exp. 1/125 sec, ISO 200 File: JPG, 3872x2592 pix, 4.2 MB	Camera: Sony Alfa 100 Parameters: 85 mm, f/1.4, exp. 1/1250 sec, ISO 100 File: JPG, 3872x2592 pix, 2.4 MB	Camera: Sony Alfa 100 Parameters: 85 mm, f/5.6, exp. 1/100 sec, ISO 100 File: JPG, 3872x2592 pix, 2.5 MB