In particular, the ability to resist flare is unusually good. It also has a lovely SA-induced feel in the out of focus range. The idea here is for the Batis to link up to Sony’s internal workings seamlessly and offer things like autofocus and optical image stabilization. As for lens distortion, there is some pincushioning, but this can be easily rectified in postprocessing. The Milvus 85 is said to be almost as good but cheaper. Inside the lens are nine rounded diaphragm blades, which should produce some pleasing bokeh. ? There is, as usual for Batis, an OLED display which tells you focus distance and DOF. 12 Photography and Camera Terms You Need to Know, PowerVision PowerEgg X: Amazing, Spherical All-Rounder Drone, The Eachine E520S: An Affordable 4K Camera Drone, StudioFX 2400 Watt: Affordable Studio Lighting, Cheerson CX-10: A Small, Cheap, and Cheerful Drone. First, wide open at f1.8. It might focus just a touch faster, and it’s cheaper – but my choice would be the Batis if the extra price is not too much of a sacrifice. Correcting distortion optically can lower sharpness. There’s something right about this, but also a lot wrong, and this is a good opportunity to clarify. I would prefer linear focus, but can put up with non-linear and in some situations it’s useful. I’m still very pleased with the Batis 135mm f2.8, which I bought after considering various alternatives (the Sony 85mm f1.8 and the Sigma 135mm f2). If you are interested in purchasing it, buying it from one of these affiliate links makes a small contribution to defraying the cost of this blog. Sunstars are another matter. Has a similar look wide open to the Batis, with a lot of contrast. The Zeiss Batis 85mm F1.8 is a short telephoto prime lens for the Sony E-mount, compatible with both full-frame and APS-C format cameras. Here is an aperture series showing the bokeh when there is a very busy but relatively distant background (from 4m behind subject), focused at about 2.5m (typical portrait distance). Sometimes I’ll use the phrase “class leading” and of course this varies a bit over time: it means the kind of quality that the absolute technically best lens has at the moment (of course a lens could be class leading in some respects but not others). If you want a short tele prime lens with autofocus that is small and light enough to be pleasant to travel with, and which is fast enough to use for portraiture as well as landscape and general travel stuff it’s the best premium choice. A very high amount of CA ruins wide open shots, and it certainly is soft wide open as you stated. You aren’t paying to get any particular class leading feature. Thus, let’s see what this lens can produce and see if the attributes are worth buying into. Required fields are marked *. Zeiss is well known for making spectacularly sharp lenses, but with that high optical quality often comes a correspondingly large price tag. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. Good and very good resolution means that, unless you examine an extremely large print (say a bit less than a metre in diagonal) or the whole image on a high res 30″ very closely, you can’t tell that there is any improvement possible (of course you could if you pixel peep). This means that a variety of 67mm filters can be fitted. This is fairly typical for a lens of this class. It’s one of the best lenses for the system, and the fact that the Batis really maintains contrast up to a similar level is a great tribute to it. Excellent is also my personal high standard of what it is sensible to care about. The Batis 85 measures about 2 stops vignetting in the corners wide open; it isn’t field relevant by f5.6 and largely gone by f8. No! 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