Carl Zeiss Milvus 50 mm f/1.4 review - Coma, astigmatism and bokeh

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Carl Zeiss Milvus 50 mm f/1.4

18 November 2015

Arkadiusz Olech

7. Coma, astigmatism and bokeh

As long as you work using the small APS-C/DX sensor the coma won’t be a problem at all. When you progress to the corner of full frame that aberration becomes visible both by f/1.4 and by f/2.0. The image of the diode is not deformed very much so the performance is not very bad but it is not so good either.

Still compared to the old 1.4/50 constructions the improvement is huge. What’s more at the maximum relative aperture a similar level of that aberration was seen in the case of the Otus and the Sigma. After stopping down the aperture to f/2.0 the Sigma seems to be the best actually.

Center, f/1.4	Corner APS-C, f/1.4	Corner FF, f/1.4

Center, f/2.0	Corner APS-C, f/2.0	Corner FF, f/2.0

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Apart from testing the coma level in our studio we also had an opportunity to check how the Milvus 1.4/50 manages outside, taking photos of the starry sky. Appropriate crops taken from the corner of full frame are presented below. The conclusions remain pretty much the same as in the case of the images of the diode.

5D MkIII, f/1.4, corner 1:1

Carl Zeiss Milvus 50 mm f/1.4 - Coma, astigmatism and bokeh

5D Mk III, f/2.0, corner 1:1

When it comes to the astigmatism, understood as an average difference between horizontal and vertical MTF50 function values, amounted to 4.9% so was slight. What’s interesting, the Milvus experiences here less problems than the Otus and it fares slightly better than the Sigma too – a round of applause!

The appearance of defocused light points should be praised as well. The light spread is even and smooth so you can expect the blurry background to be very pleasing to the eye. You can have some reservations concerning the distinct truncation of the circles in the frame corners. What’s interesting, even though the situation is worse than that of the Sigma, the Milvus still fares better than the Otus. In the case of the latter the effects of mechanical vignetting were visible even by f/2.8.

Center, f/1.4	Corner APS-C, f/1.4	Corner FF, f/1.4

Center, f/2.0	Corner APS-C, f/2.0	Corner FF, f/2.0

Center, f/2.8	Corner APS-C, f/2.8	Corner FF, f/2.8