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85/1.4 PLANAR ZA on Sony A7 family

On the basis of the published lens road map for the FF E mount I am considering the possibility to buy now an 85/1.4 Planar ZA and the LAEA4 adaptor to be used mainly as a portrait lens.
Is there any comment/suggestion in favour or against?
 
V

Vivek

Guest
Ario, Here are the choices (manual focus):

Olympus OM 85/2:

The oldest is a classic Sonnar clone, the most compact and the lightest of any 85mm lens.

Otus 85/1.4:

The most modern design with all the trimmings. The design is a class aprt without any doubt.

The old planars and its clones are somewhere in between (performance, size, weight, etc) and you have plenty of choices! :)
 
Thank You Vivek, but actually I am looking for an AF lens, in this case.
On the manual focus camp I have already in house pretty good solutions such as the Summilux 80 R and the Summilux 75 M.
Anyhow also the Olympus 85/2 you are suggesting is quite intriguing, i will have a look on it.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
The ZA 85 1.4 is your classic portrait look lens. It has some wide open aberrations like purple fringing but when you hit 2.8 it is outstanding in that regard. Its a fabulous lens. I did a nice test against some of the best in its class the 55 1.8 and Zeiss 135mm F2 which maybe one of the best around outside the Otus series. The 85 came very very close to them and equal by F4


check this out

http://www.getdpi.com/forum/lens-ac...-8-vs-sony-za-85mm-1-4-vs-zeiss-135mm-f2.html
 
I do not have any concern about the optical quality of this Planar, what I do not know is how the AF will perform on an A7x compared with the native lenses.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
With the LAE4 its very good but need to remember with ZA lenses and the adapter you will only have a center cluster of AF points like on the A99. I use it and the 50 1.4 ZA and I really like them. The 85mm is a screw drive so it is old style but still has nice speed. Now I would not shoot sports with it normally but for portrait type work it works very nice. Right now you don't have much choice here if your after speed otherwise you could go to the 70-200 F4 zoom which by all reports is very good.
 

Malina DZ

Member
I do not have any concern about the optical quality of this Planar, what I do not know is how the AF will perform on an A7x compared with the native lenses.
AF is loud and relatively slow on a850 body, so I'd expect it to be even slower on A7 with LA-EA4 adapter (and less accurate).
 

Cindy Flood

Super Moderator
I calibrated mine to a target. I rarely shoot it at f/1.4. I almost always shoot it at f/2. I feel that mine is very accurate, but if often tweak the focus to make it perfect.
If I was looking for advice on this lens, I would look to Guy. He uses his professionally.
 
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