Up next in 10
Sony FE 85mm F1.4 GM II Review | Does it Stand Out from the Crowd?
Aug 28, 2024
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review of the second generation Sony 85mm F1.4 G Master lens. Does the Sony 85mm F1.4 GM II stand out from the crowd of good 85mm options? Find out in Dustin's review. | This video is sponsored by Fantom Wallet. Visit https://store.fantomwallet.com and use code DUSTIN20 to get 20% off | Read the Text Review: https://tinyurl.com/85GMIIreview | Visit the Image Gallery | Purchase the Sony FE 85mm F1.4 GM II @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3ADcM2m | Adorama https://howl.link/qk87os1o0yhn1 | Amazon https://amzn.to/4dSjQqw | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/4nnug | Sony Canada https://tinyurl.com/Buy85GMII | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3z5hqFV | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/4cRAKVi | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3MmSb51
Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch | Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | On the Web: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu Follow Craig @ https://www.instagram.com/craigstoffersen/
Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at:
B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge
Adorama: https://howl.me/cjU0LKdp3LN
Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan
Sony Canada: https://www.thesonyshop.ca/?ref=abbott
Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HrY64d
Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/3qG1p18
Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay
Into the AM Clothing: https://bit.ly/intotheAMda and use code DUSTIN10 for 10% off
Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI
=============================
Table of Contents:
=============================
0:00 - Intro and Concept
1:24 - Fantom Wallets
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my video review of the new Sony
0:15
FE 85mm f1.4 G Master Mark II lens. Now the original 85mm G Master lens was actually the OG G Master lens
0:26
It was the first that they released back in 2016 and I looked at that lens, I was a
0:31
little late to the Sony party so I think it was 2019 when I did my review of that lens
0:36
a few years later and I did it as a part of a big comparison with other 85mm lenses
0:42
What I found is that it was optically nice but it was bigger and heavier than what it
0:47
needed to be, probably more expensive than what it needed to be and it had a surprisingly
0:51
rough focus motor for such a premium lens. Fast forward to 2024 and we have the new Mark II version and the new 85 GM Mark II
1:01
it is smaller, it is lighter, it is faster and it is sharper but what it isn't is f1.2
1:09
So my question that I'll try to answer as a part of this review in the broader sense
1:14
is another f1.4 lens going to be enough to stand out from the existing crowd here on Sony
1:21
Well we'll dive into all of that right after a word from our sponsor. So let's start by talking about build and handling here
2:15
Price tag of this lens is $1799 US dollars. From what I understand right now though the final price has not yet been announced
2:23
That places it at the same price point as the original GM lens but it does place it
2:28
considerably more expensive than a lens like the Sigma 85mm f1.4 DN lens
2:35
It is a smaller and lighter lens than the first generation GM lens
2:40
In this case it is a full 20% lighter and is 13% smaller in terms of its overall internal volume
2:47
As to its size here I'll pop off the lens hood so you can get a more sense of the actual
2:51
size of the lens itself. It is 84.7mm in diameter, retains a 77mm front filter thread
2:59
It is 107.3mm in length and so that is 3.3 by 4.2 inches
3:08
The weight here is 642g which is 180g less than the predecessor or 22.7oz here
3:18
Now the features have also been updated. While the original GM lens of course it was starting Sony's premium gold master series
3:26
and so as a byproduct of that it did have more features than what any other lens basically
3:31
did at that point, at least prime lens. Over the years of course obviously the standard has continued to rise and while GM lenses
3:39
remain some of the most feature rich out there, there are a few areas of further improvement
3:44
that Sony has gone to here. A lot of the features here are actually centered around the control of the aperture iris
3:52
So you have an aperture control ring here and the aperture ring you have the option
3:56
of choosing clicks, 1 third stop to tense. You can also click a switch on the side and you can go to a de-clicked aperture if you
4:04
want to do aperture racking. There's also an iris lock here and so the advantage of the iris lock is that if you're
4:10
doing aperture racking for example, an iris lock is going to keep you from inadvertently
4:15
going into either the automatic mode or coming out of the auto mode inadvertently into the
4:21
manual aperture area. And so if you lock that while you're in the auto mode, if you don't like aperture rings
4:27
just lock it in the auto mode and you'll never have to worry about it. If you don't want to inadvertently go into the auto mode just lock it while you're in
4:34
the actual manual aperture position and you'll be able to make sure that you don't inadvertently
4:39
go into the auto mode. We have an AF-MF switch as before
4:44
We have a focus hold slash function button but now rather than having just one of these
4:49
we actually have a secondary one at the top of the lens so you have easy access even if
4:54
you're shooting in a portrait or a vertical orientation. So adding an extra focus hold button is certainly appreciated there
5:02
The manual focus ring itself, it does have a linear focus response and so that you can
5:06
be sure that you're going to have repeatability. Again a lot of these features are designed around video capture and so a linear manual
5:15
focus ring can be important for that. I will say that I don't necessarily love the feel here
5:21
It is very very light and so if you like light, great
5:25
Obviously it's not gritty, it moves smoothly but what it doesn't have is a whole lot of
5:29
feel to it and so to me it doesn't feel like a true manual focus simulation in that sense
5:35
It definitely feels focused by wire in my opinion. The actual aperture iris itself has 11 rounded blades and as you can see that helps to keep
5:45
a circular shape even when the lens is considerably stopped down. Here around f4, f5.6, somewhere in that range
5:53
We also have a very thorough weather sealing, something that's been a hallmark of the G-Master series
5:58
So we have a gasket at the lens mount, we have a flooring coating on the front element
6:03
and then although I haven't seen the cutout diagram yet, from what I do know from Sony
6:08
is that there is internal seals on all of the seal points in the lens itself, on the
6:15
buttons, on the switches and so basically everywhere you would expect to see a weather
6:19
sealing gasket in the area of vulnerability, there is one inside this lens
6:23
It is thoroughly weather sealed. Minimum focus distance here is slightly variable depending on whether you're autofocusing or
6:30
manually focusing. If you're autofocusing, you can only focus as closely as 85 centimeters
6:35
You can get a little bit closer down to 80 centimeters if you manually focus
6:40
Maximum magnification however is just 0.12 times which frankly for an 85 millimeter lens
6:47
is on the low side of average and best in the class would be around 0.14 times and then
6:53
of course the really bad ones are 0.10 times and so it's okay but certainly nothing exceptional
6:59
or groundbreaking in that regard but what we do have is really strong up-close performance
7:05
So the build is basically exactly what I would expect. It allows it to slot right in alongside the 24 millimeter, 35 millimeter and 50 millimeter
7:13
f1.4 lenses and be a very very nice match for those lenses
7:17
I would say in both size and its feature set. Autofocus as mentioned previously was an area of weakness, vulnerability for the first 85
7:28
GM lens and then frankly I was a bit surprised when I did my big comparison back in 2019
7:34
and I compared it to other lenses and found for example that it was easily outperformed
7:38
by the much less expensive Sony 85 millimeter f1.8 for example. So the reason for that is that original GM lens had an SSM motor which is essentially
7:50
was a Sony DSLR focus motor carry over and it was early in their, it was early days for
7:56
the transition to mirrorless and so they were using a lot of the existing autofocus technology
8:00
that they already had. And so that lens, it suffered for that and so the focus motor is a little grittier and
8:07
a little slower than what I anticipated. Sony has made huge strides in autofocus when it comes to their lenses and frankly I don't
8:15
know of any lenses out there where the company is doing a better job in equipping them for
8:20
high speed focus and that's true. Here we have dual XD linear motors and Sony tells me that these are the largest XD linear
8:28
motors that they've ever produced. And so you've got big strong motors working in tandem to move that focus group back and
8:35
forth very quickly. And as you can see here focus is nice and quick whether you're shooting indoors or
8:41
shooting outdoors and what I felt like in real world focus changes is that they were
8:45
pretty near instantaneous. There's basically no focus sound, there's no drama, you just get autofocus
8:52
It just does it and makes almost instant changes from one focus point to another
8:58
In fact, Sony claims that focus speed is three times faster than the original G Master lens
9:05
and its ability to track moving subject is improved by as much as seven times which tells
9:11
you that there was an even bigger margin there to be made up for
9:16
This new lens has been optimized for the 120 frames per second autofocus on the A9 Mark
9:21
III which in other words it needs to keep up with the fastest focus possible at this
9:28
point and I would say that it does. I was trying to wait around for ducks to come back in and land at a pond that they were
9:36
scared off when I came near and while they never did land while I was around they did
9:41
come for some high speed low passes and I was able to not only acquire this duck in
9:46
flight but track it flawlessly at f1.4 all throughout this burst and if we take a look
9:52
at an individual image and then crop it down you can see just how accurate focus is despite
9:58
having a very complex background. Perhaps even more impressive is I went out near the side of one of my hives and I found
10:05
that I was actually able to acquire honey bees in flight and if you know how small and
10:10
how quickly they are moving that is extremely impressive to be able to grab onto one of
10:14
those and actually focus and have accurate focus as you can see our focus is flawless
10:19
is very very impressive. So that means that a little bit easier subject like Nala moving towards me I was able to
10:27
do without issue even though that is an issue for a lot of other lenses not only was I able
10:33
to do that but in this shot that I'm about to show you I was actually back pedaling because
10:37
she wouldn't stay still for me to get into position holding the camera down and trying
10:41
to back pedal to get there and taking some shots they were all flawlessly focused and
10:46
you can see in the shot just how amazing the detail is for the conditions in which I acquired
10:52
the shot. So this is a huge strength now for this lens. I also found on the video side of things that I had zero complaints you can see here that
10:59
focus transitions focus pulls are smooth and confident going back and forth between a subject
11:06
even though the subject is very dark and not high contrast it was able to grab it and accurately
11:12
go back and forth there. You can also see that focus breathing is really low and I could see that even in my earlier
11:18
focus test when I compared it for example to the Sigma there's a pretty obvious difference
11:23
between the amount of focus breathing that is present there and of course the GM lens
11:27
would have the further advantage if you so desired to use Sony's focus breathing compensation
11:33
if you're shooting on a body so equipped and you could reduce what little bit of focus
11:37
breathing is there you could reduce that even further. I also found when doing my hand test that focus was good and confident in that making
11:45
good transitions from my eye to my hand and vice versa even when fairly quickly moving
11:50
it back and forth and so really good confidence there and then in natural focus transitions
11:57
I found that it's not like a really like fast and kind of jarring transition from one subject
12:03
to another but there's a reasonable amount of damping there to where those focus transitions
12:08
feel fairly smooth to me. So overall autofocus is definitely top of the heap and I'm reminded I was reminded when
12:16
doing this review that not all that long ago a lens like you know the Canon EF 85mm f1.2
12:24
and the Mark II version was fairly glacial in making focus changes so we are in just
12:30
whole other areas of progress when it comes to the autofocus performance
12:36
So let's talk about image quality. Now I will give you the detailed image breakdown if you're interested at the end of the video
12:42
here this new optical design is a little bit more complex it's moved up from I believe
12:48
11 elements in 9 groups to 14 elements in 11 groups we have two of kind of the Sony
12:55
specific extreme aspherical elements here and then we also have a few extra low dispersion
13:01
elements as a part of the optical design. Whatever they have done here this is an incredibly sharp lens all across the frame
13:08
So on the technical side of things it has very low distortion when I tested for that
13:13
I found that I could maybe do a minus 3 correction of a little bit of pin cushion distortion
13:18
but frankly particularly for shooting portraits you might want to leave that uncorrected because a little bit of pin cushion distortion tends to be flattering to your subjects
13:26
I found also that vignette was very negligible even at f1.4 I used a plus 30 to correct maybe
13:32
a stop in the corners but again something you could leave entirely uncorrected and your
13:37
images might be better looking for it. I also found that fringing longitudinal chromatic aberrations were basically perfectly controlled
13:45
I saw no fringing either on my test chart or in real world 3 dimensional objects very
13:51
very strong ability to control aberrations. As a byproduct you can also see in this close up of a flower for example in the crop that
13:59
micro contrast is amazingly good because we're not losing anything to fringing of any kind
14:04
I also found no lateral chromatic aberrations near the edges of the frame so a very strong
14:09
performance in all of those areas. So as you might expect even shooting on a 61 megapixel a7r mark 5 and my results I examine
14:19
them at 200% magnification basically all across the frame the results were basically perfect
14:24
great sharpness and contrast in the center of the frame in the mid frame and right out
14:28
into the extreme corners. I found that there is a bit of a contrast boost when stopping down to f2 but basically
14:36
from f2 through about f8 results are just flawless and the only reason you would stop
14:41
down further is to get a little bit more depth of field. So I found that even in fact when shooting landscapes at f1.4 detail held up perfectly
14:50
so this is a really really sharp lens. I did start to see a little tiny bit of softening by f8 due to diffraction on a high resolution
14:59
body it's a little bit more obvious by f11 and as you can see even more obvious by f16
15:05
which is the minimum aperture all of that is to be expected it's kind of baked into
15:09
the cake with the modern high resolution cameras. The bokeh quality is good in fact in some situations it is very good
15:18
It's not what I would necessarily call magical one of the things that happens when you have
15:22
a really amazingly corrected lens as this one is that it's hard to also have really
15:27
really soft and creamy bokeh because sometimes aberrations actually help in that regard
15:34
They hinder in the sharpness area but they help in the bokeh area. I think that Sony's done a pretty good job here and that the lens bokeh is very very
15:42
good it's I'm not trying to say it's negative at all it's very very good but it's I've seen
15:47
a few 85mm lenses where I felt like just the overall rendering was maybe a little bit more
15:52
special than what I see from the 85 GM Mark II. That's a taste thing however and you may love the bokeh from the images you see here
16:01
Another area of pretty flawless performance is when it comes to flare resistance
16:06
Now in this shot at f1.4 the image is overexposed because obviously shooting in bright sun at
16:11
f1.4 is tough for a camera to do but as we stop down we can see that again there's no
16:16
flare issues there, flare resistance it's pretty much flawless and even as I go along
16:22
and allow little like pops of flare to come through you're not seeing any kind of ghosting
16:26
artifacts it's just really really well controlled. This lens optically is pretty amazing there's not any real flaw that I can point to
16:35
So that brings us to the conclusion. I understand the logic of going at f1.4 and clearly they've created an amazing 85mm f1.4 lens
16:45
It pairs nicely with the other f1.4 prime lenses in the G Master series but I will also
16:51
say that the choice to not go to f1.2 does make it a little bit harder to stand out from
16:56
the crowd when you have lenses like the Sigma 85mm f1.4 DM that have fairly similar feature
17:04
sets fairly similar optical performance and basically it's only the autofocus that makes
17:11
the GM stand out from the crowd. Of course the Sigma is significantly less you can get it for under $1,100 at the moment
17:18
but even at its full MSRP pop it's under $1,200 and so you're talking about a pretty serious
17:24
price premium to move to the GM lens. So the fact that it's only f1.4 I think is maybe a missed opportunity to stand out from
17:33
the crowd. The biggest advantage here is that incredibly good autofocus and so it means that you can
17:40
get amazing images from the G Master lens even at the margins that you might not be
17:45
able to get with the Sigma and definitely wouldn't be able to get with a lens like the Samyang for example
17:50
The Samyang has beautiful rendering it's 85mm f1.4 series 2 lens is beautiful optically
17:56
but autofocus is not quite there and so that's an area where definitely the Sony distinguishes itself
18:03
You know and at $1,800 US dollars it's going to cost about $700 more than the Sigma probably
18:10
cost you more like $1,000 more than the Samyang and so frankly it's worth it if you need the speed
18:16
But if you don't need the speed then it's a little bit more debatable and I don't really
18:21
have the answer for you I'll leave that decision up to you. Now if you want more information you can check out my full text review that is linked in
18:27
the description down below. You'll also find linkage to my image gallery from the lens some buying links there and
18:33
if you want even more optical deep dive stay with me right now and we'll jump into it together
18:39
Okay we'll start by taking a look at vignette and distortion. As you can see here from the left side completely uncorrected there's really not a whole lot
18:47
going on here to correct. So on the right side you can see a very mild correction just a tiny bit of pin cushion
18:52
distortion about a minus one minus two is really sufficient to do that and then as far
18:57
as the vignette it's very mild and you can see here that using a plus 30 completely corrects
19:03
it so no issues there at all very very positive results. To give you some perspective with a real world example here is the GM lens and then here
19:13
is the Sigma you can see that there is just a huge amount of pin cushion distortion by
19:17
comparison with the Sony lens which is basically distortion free whereas the Sigma has a pretty
19:24
significant pinch there towards the edges of the frame. We can also see without any kind of electronic correction here that the lateral chromatic
19:33
aberrations near the edge of the frame are basically non-existent. I can't see any fringing in any of these transitions from black to white so that's flawless there
19:42
Likewise when it comes to longitudinal chromatic aberrations before and after the plane of
19:46
focus there's just very little to see here. As you can see I mean there is not really hardly any fringing to point to in either
19:53
direction so no problem there. And if we look at a real world image this would be one where there'd be a lot of opportunity
20:01
for fringing in these very high contrast areas with the light hitting the blossom here
20:07
You can see that there is basically no fringing. I see a tiny little bit of green fringing there but next to nothing and you can see
20:14
as a byproduct the textures just really pop on this image and allows for a tremendous
20:20
amount of contrast. So that leads us to our look at resolution and contrast
20:25
So even if we take a look here at 61 megapixels and 200% magnification you can see that in
20:31
the center of the frame the results are just exceptionally good. I mean great contrast, great detail
20:37
If I go over to the mid-frame here it looks exceptionally good and if I pan right down
20:42
into the extreme corner very very good. You can see just how much detail is there right off to the very edge of the frame
20:48
I rarely see this portion right here resolve so well. I've added these Ansel Adams stamps as soon as I saw that they were coming out I knew
20:57
I wanted these for my test chart. So if we pan across the frame we can see that there really is basically no difference in
21:05
the way that these are executed here. Maybe the slightest bit less contrast here at the very corner of the frame but I mean
21:12
it is a very very similar result I get and if I go the other direction as well you can
21:17
see in similar fashion we're resolving well right off to the very edge of the frame
21:22
So for real world perspective here is a landscape image at f1.4
21:27
It's really impressive to see just how much detail is there basically as far as I can
21:32
go you can see right off into this corner where the initial trees are not blocking that
21:37
there is resolution right off to the edge of the frame and not just a little resolution
21:41
I mean just a tremendous amount of detail. You can look at the golf carts here and even the golf carts way off back here and how nicely
21:49
they're resolved and just to give you perspective remember this is the image we're looking at
21:53
and so those golf carts are I mean that's what they're occupying in this frame
21:57
You can see the draw distance from up here even out to this lighthouse on a bit of an
22:01
island there's just detail everywhere very impressive. A closer shot here of Ferrari and so now we're moving to a you know a medium distance here
22:11
you can see how much is just resolved everywhere I mean just perfect little pen sharp details
22:17
and all of the fur around his eye. This image was really impressive to me for a lot of reasons so you can see just how much
22:24
micro contrast is there at f1.4 the ability to resolve all of these tiny little textures
22:30
in here is very impressive and if we come down here you can see that again this is an
22:35
opportunity for a lot of fringing and it's just not there very very impressive results
22:41
So if we stop down to f2 which I have here on the right side you can see that contrast
22:45
just gets a little bit better in the center of the frame we're near perfect and so it's
22:49
a fairly mild result there but for example if we look over here you can just see more
22:55
detail that is executed there if I pop over to this side I feel like I can see it even
22:59
a bit more I mean it obviously looks fantastically good here but you can see the contrast just
23:05
pops a little bit more on that side. Likewise here we come down here and look at the UK bill here you can just see just how
23:14
much fine details are there everywhere you look in the frame it's just really flawless
23:19
it's very impressive results no matter where I look and you can see that it's not a huge
23:25
difference from f1.4 but there is just that little extra bit of contrast that is there
23:31
that really makes for a very exceptional end result. So since we're already basically maximizing the sensor here you're not going to see huge
23:39
gains from there on it does look a little bit better at f2.8 than at f2 not by a significant
23:45
margin but you can just see a little bit further improvement just in some of these contrast
23:50
and details here everything is just resolving really beautifully and already we saw even
23:55
at f1.4 it resolves pretty much perfectly into the corner and obviously I don't really
24:00
see much here we've kind of hit the maximum gains possible. So you can really use depth of aperture really more for depth of field than for trying to
24:09
improve sharpness in some way so we can see here that around f5.6 we're going to get the
24:14
peak on a high-resolution body and while f8 is very close to the same it is just very
24:21
very very slightly softer in terms of the contrast and we'll see that carry out more
24:26
as we stop on down. So by f11 diffraction is going to start to set in a bit more though it still looks pretty
24:33
good and then f16 again it still looks good but it is considerably softer than any other
24:39
any other aperture value and that's due to the effects of diffraction pretty consistent
24:44
across the frame that you're just seeing a slight softening effect due to diffraction
24:49
So as noted earlier we really don't have amazing magnification here 0.12 times pretty
24:56
average but what we can see is this is the area that I focused on and you can see that
25:02
there's lots of detail there and what we can also see here is that the contrast in the
25:07
detail holds up really well right off to the very edges of the frame here so a pretty flat
25:12
plane of focus and very consistently good results. So in the next series of shots we'll take a look at the way that the detail and contrast
25:20
plays out with the bokeh quality and so bokeh here it looks good but you can see there's
25:26
just a little bit of outlining and this shot again it's a little bit more complex and what
25:31
you can see is that the detail is mind-blowingly good and the bokeh is good though there's
25:38
definitely some outlining that's there. Now other times it looks better here not absolutely creamy as in the very best lenses
25:46
here but you can see that it blurs out a background very nicely you can see that you know the
25:51
detail is what really stands out to me it looks exceptionally good and the bokeh looks
25:55
good though I think the detail is the winner here as far as the overall rendering it's
26:01
that that pops a little bit more than what the bokeh does to my eye
26:06
Again this image looks really really nice and so there's nothing here that I'm complaining about it's more that just my general impression is is that I have seen other lenses that have
26:16
a more call it magical rendering to it I think the the GM lens does a very good job but not
26:23
necessarily an exceptional job with the bokeh region. Moving back into what is exceptional however is we're going to see that for a large aperture
26:31
prime lens we will do a great job when shooting into the sun now I had to try to recover this
26:36
a little bit because we're exceeding the shutter limit of the camera due to f1.4 and
26:42
shooting into the sun but we can see here as we stop it down you get a little bit of
26:46
this effect that's kind of naturally there in the clouds but we're seeing a very very
26:52
strong looking end result likewise in this shot here and you've seen previously on the
26:57
video of this that even as we're popping through and allowing the sun to shoot through there's
27:01
very very little ghosting artifacts that are present it really does quite an amazing job
27:06
there so I mean outside of a little bit of quibbling over the quality of the background
27:11
blur I would say this lens is pretty exceptional. So thanks for sticking around to the very end and hopefully the optical deep dive is
27:18
giving you an even better sense of the overall performance from the lens and helps you to
27:22
make a more informed buying decision as always thanks for watching have a great day and let
27:27
the light in
#Camera & Photo Equipment