Samuli Vahonen
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While evaluating 85GM photos I'm slowly starting to like the lens. Rendering style is very subtle, and I don't find any "character" from the lens (maybe that is GM85 character?). Seems that lens behaves better at f/1.7, 2/3 stopped down, than wide open - majority of large distance boke issues I found are solved by this 2/3 stop. At shorter distances also f/1.4 is usable, but due to focus plane improvements I prefer f/1.7 also at closer distances. Due to mechnanical vignetting DOF is thick in corners, it takes 2 stops to f/2.8 to make the boke almost as thick all over image area (very normal for f/1.4 lenses, even Zeiss Otus seems to suffer from this defect). In addition to "portrait distance shooting" lens has been serving well also for landscapes, thou lack of pop/3D/zeiss-look/whateveryoucallit causes much more post processing work than lenses I'm used to shoot with, and some scenes just don't work which would have worked well with Contax G90 or Zeiss ZE 85 or C/Y Sonnar 3.5/100. What surprised me the most was that one could shoot landscapes wide open, at least from sharpness point of view.
As GM85 photos look really odd when combined to Zeiss C/Y, G, ZE/ZF/Milvus photos from same location. I started to wonder what wider lens to get for similar style. I don't like this style so much that I would need 3 or 4 lens set, 2 is enough for this odd characterless style. I'm seriously considering to try Sigma Art 1.4/35, as it's supposed to have similar lack of character (I'm aware about the the little chromatic aberrations and onion ring boke balls Art 35 seems to suffer, but I'm OK with them) - Sony FE 1.4/35 would be ideal based on what I have seen, but due to small stock in Finland, I don't feel brave enough to perform lens lottery required to get decent copy... Ideally I would like to combine 85mm with 28mm, but Otus 28 is just too expensive, and I feel 24mm is too wide as boke is the main thing for this set of 2 lenses => I prefer 35mm. Good ideas are welcome or if you think Sigma Art 35 is mistake let me know.
Sony FE 1.4/85 GM @ f/1.4, 1/1250s, A7vII @ ISO 100 - sometime even f/1.4 manages to draw nice background boke from this quite challenging scenario
Sony FE 1.4/85 GM @ f/1.4, 1/4000s, A7vII @ ISO 100 - quite flat rendering
Sony FE 1.4/85 GM @ f/1.7, 1/250s, A7R @ ISO 100 - shooting 10+ years mainly with Zeiss lenses made me to expect that the cart would somehow pop-up from image - took tens of pictures, but all of them are super flat like this; nice transition from focus to background boke and no distractions in boke
Sony FE 1.4/85 GM @ f/1.7, 1/600s, AR @ ISO 100 - closing down that 2/3 stop made huge difference in this scene, at f/1.4 rather difficult background was quite ugly but as can be seen f/1.7 managed to draw it without issues
Sony FE 1.4/85 GM @ f/1.7, 1/2500s, A7R @ ISO 100 - lots of separation, but 100% flat rendering
Samuli
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. I hand hold my Nikon D500 + Sigma 150-600 Sports mostly but can only do it no more than a minute at a time. With the Sigma decked out to 600mm, it's like holding a dumbbell with your arm stretching out. Hand holding the Nikon 500mm f4 VR is even worse.
