Carl Zeiss Milvus 50 mm f/1.4
11. Summary
- solid, stylish casing made of metal,
- excellent image quality in the frame centre,
- very good image quality on the edge of the APS-C,
- very good image quality on the edge of full frame,
- low longitudinal chromatic aberration,
- slight lateral chromatic aberration,
- imperceptible spherical aberration,
- lack of distortion-related problems,
- slight astigmatism,
- very pleasant out-of-focus areas,
- excellent performance against bright light.
Cons:
- huge vignetting on full frame,
- coma in the corners of full frame could have been less distinct.
I suppose after our test it is pretty clear what the target groups of the Otus and the Milvus devices are. The Otus is a demonstration of the power of the Zeiss company. It is a lens produced without any compromise which is supposed to prove how high a resolution you might obtain on the most densely packed sensors. The Milvus is not as sharp in the frame centre but instead its performance on the edge of the frame is brilliant indeed and in many testing categories it might fare as well as the Otus which is three times more expensive. The Milvus loses to the Otus only in the vignetting category and it is also its biggest slip-up.
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Everything would be fine if there was no Sigma. Their A 50 mm f/1.4 DG HSM model proves that you can construct a lens as efficient as the Milvus for half its price; a lens which optically is almost as good and in some categories fares even better.
Fortunately for the Milvus fully manual Zeiss lenses are aimed at a slightly different group of customers than the Sigma lenses so it seems both of these devices might gather a number of devoted enthusiasts.
