Product Description

A brilliant lens for portraits, low light and midrange telephoto shooting. It's a beautiful piece of glass - and for intimate or low-light portraits, fashion shots, and quick candid photographs with superior visual accuracy, this professional lens will satisfy the most uncompromising demands. Its performance at fully open aperture is astonishingly precise - and its 35mm-equivalent 125.7mm focal length gives you sharp midrange close-ups and natural, distortion-free portraits at relaxed distances.

Product Details

• Brand: Sony
• Model: SAL-85F14Z
• Released on: 2006-11-15
• Dimensions: 3.53" h x 3.83" w x 7.35" l, 2.00 pounds

Features

• 85mm f1.4 telephoto lens boasts professional performance for portraits and close-ups
• Astonishing sharpness at fully open aperture
• T* coating to reduce flare and increase contrast
• Smooth, visually pleasing background effects
• Focus hold button for full creative control, auto clutch to stop manual focus ring rotation

Manufacturer Description
The Sony Carl Zeiss SAL-85F14Z lens is a brilliant lens for portraits, low light and midrange telephoto shooting. It's a beautiful piece of glass--and for intimate or low-light portraits, fashion shots, and quick candid photographs with superior visual accuracy, this professional lens will satisfy the most uncompromising demands. Its performance at fully open aperture is astonishingly precise--and its 35mm-equivalent 125.7mm focal length gives you sharp midrange close-ups and natural, distortion-free portraits at relaxed distances.

Features:

• Superb Sharpness at Fully Open Aperture: In conjunction with the Super SteadyShot image stabilization system of the Sony α (Alpha) DSLR-A100 camera, this superb Carl Zeiss lens achieves pinpoint sharpness--even working with hand-held camera by available light.
• Excellent Contrast Reproduction: Precision optical design and advanced T* coatings help to reduce flare and increase contrast.
• Smooth Backgrounds: Smooth, visually pleasing out-of-focus backgrounds give portraits and close-ups an extra dimension of beauty.
• Focus Hold Button: For full creative control, a focus hold button located on the lens can lock auto-focusing even in continuous advance mode--and focus lock can also be set on the spot-focus center frame area.
• Auto Clutch: In auto-focus mode, the manual focus ring does not rotate--and in manual focusing, you'll have a solid, hands-on feel.

Compatible Models
Sony DSLR-A100, DSLR-A100K.

What's in the Box:
Lens, front and rear lens cap, SH0002 lens hood.

Customer Reviews

Best portrait lens ever!
The sharpness creamy bokeh are unmatched by any other alpha mount lens. The auto clutch is a fine addition, since this lens has some heft to it, so you'll find yourself balancing the camera by the lens with your left hand. When it is in AF, the focusing ring doesnt turn. Nice. The colors are reproduced as true as any glass on the market. My only issue is minor, I wish the lens hood had a filter window, similar to the 70200SSM.
Very fast focusing even in low light, but to really get the most out of it, mount it on the A700. It does tend to lag a tad in low light when mounted on the KM 7D.

You'll forget the hit to your pocketbook as soon as you print your first shot!

An excellent portrait lens
I am astonished by this lens, as well as its sibling the 135mm f/1.8 lens Sony SAL-135F18Z 135mm f/1.8 Carl Zeiss Sonnar T Telephoto Lens for Sony Alpha Digital SLR Camera. Each lens is razor sharp at its widest aperture. A discussion of this lens, as well as of the Minolta 85mm f1.4 lens, may be found at the Photozone site. Compared to the Minolta lens, this lens is sharper and exhibits less vignetting, although it does exhibit slightly more chromatic aberration but to no serious extent.

Unbelievably Sharp
Sony's Zeiss Planar 85mm/1.4 is among the sharpest lenses I've ever seen. I've long been a fan of Zeiss medium format glass - particularly the Zeiss lenses for the Contax 645. Not only is this lens incredibly sharp, but somehow even captures a "medium format" look and feel.

Also recommended are Sony's Zeiss 24-70mm f2.8 Sony 24 -70mm f/2.8 Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar T Zoom Lens for Sony Alpha Digital SLR Cameras and Zeiss 135/1.8 lenses Sony SAL-135F18Z 135mm f/1.8 Carl Zeiss Sonnar T Telephoto Lens for Sony Alpha Digital SLR Camera in an growing line-up of amazing Sony flagship lenses.