Jannik Peters Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Sony FE 1.8/85 vs. Sony FE 1.4/85 GM - The Big Shootout | |
Hi everybody,
I have put hours over hours of work in that comparison that I have promised for quite some time. I knew from the beginning that I could only afford one of them and therefore I had to do a detailed comparison.
It is way too much material to upload here, therefore I refer to our blog:
https://phillipreeve.net/blog/sony-fe-1-885-vs-sony-fe-1-485-gm-the-big-shootout/
I hope this helps somebody, this is my conclusion:
"The FE 1.4/85 GM and the FE 1.8/85 share the same focal length and the same lens mount. Even the user interface is comparable despite of the dedicated aperture ring of the GM. But this is where the similarities end. I see two very different lenses with very different strengths.
The FE 1.8/85 is a very practical lens. It is cheap, small, silent, decently built and has very fast autofocus. It delivers sharp and nice images in most cases and most people will also be happy with its optical performance and its rendering. It also doesn’t focus stopped down which is great for studio usage. It is a lens for all people that make a buying decision with the head or with the wallet. My advice to them: Stop reading here, get the FE 1.8/85 and be satisfied by it.
Nevertheless, the Sony FE 1.4/85 GM is the lens that excites me and that has conquered my heart. I have had this impression before I did my comparison and it got only stronger after this test. The build quality of the lens screams quality in every regard. Optically, the FE 1.4/85 is superior in all relevant categories. For landscapers, It is sharper at infinity at equal/large apertures and very sharp across the frame stopped down. Furthermore, it is significantly sharper at close distances and renders colors more gentle and accurate, especially at large apertures. The flare performance of the Sony FE 1.4/85 GM is far superior to the flare performance of the Sony FE 1.8/85 and almost flawless when the lens hood is used. The Sony FE 1.4/85 GM doesn’t show the purple fringing that the Sony FE 1.8/85 has but there is a relevant amount of LoCA wide open. The GM also has a small amount of focus shift when focusing wide open and stopping down. The autofocus of the FE 1.4/85 GM makes noise and is not the fastest around. Forget about shooting running kids with it.
The most important aspect to understand the FE 1.4/85 GM is of course the bokeh. I was never satisfied by the bokeh comparisons that I have seen in the past (mostly FE 1.4/85 GM vs. Zeiss Batis 1.8/85) because they were always limited to the shape of the bokeh balls at close distances. The simple-minded message was: Get the GM if you want round bokeh balls. This is true to a certain degree, but this approach is way too simple to understand the FE 1.4/85 GM’s magic. It became visible that Sony has managed to archive different contrast levels in the focal plane and outside of it. While both lenses have high contrast in the focal plane, the contrast of the FE 1.4/85 is much lower outside of it. The dispersal circles are less harsh and clean of chromatic aberrations, outlining and onion rings. They melt into each other gently. This contributes to subject isolation greatly and the difference in subject isolation is much bigger than the aperture difference might indicate. This is especially if the background is close to the subject. These big differences are not only caused by the speed difference, that becomes visible when comparing the f/1.7 and f/1.8 samples. It is really the lens design that causes these differences.
Another special trick of the Sony FE 1.4/85 GM is the f/1.4 setting. While still being sharp, it is less contrasty and renders even more gently than stopped down. Maybe there is even a small tad of spherical aberration that contributes to that behavior. This “feature” is very nice for many portrait scenarios. Already at f/1.7, the lens crisps up greatly and changes its character. It has more microcontast then but still keeps the bokeh calm. I am pretty sure that Sony has designed this “two-face” behavior intentionally.
Finally, some people claim that the Sony FE 1.8/85 is the sharper lens than the Sony FE 1.4/85 GM and refer to the Lensrentals MTF measurement. The problem with this kind of comparison is that Lensrentals only measure wide open, and these lenses have different speeds. At equal apertures, the Sony FE 1.4/85 GM is visibly sharper than the Sony FE 1.8/85."
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