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 p.21 #12 · Sony FE 135mm f/1.8 GM Review | |
Fred Miranda wrote:
Final Thoughts
This past week, I had a great time pushing the Sony FE 135/1.8 GM lens to the limit. Overall, Sony has once again delivered a top resolution lens, without neglecting rendering. In my opinion, the FE 135/1.8 GM is easily the best medium telephoto prime on the market today.
With the lens wide open at infinity and close-up distances, it's razor sharp from center to extreme corners. This lens is compact with light construction, has great ergonomic features like custom buttons, aperture ring with de-clicking, AF/MF button and linear manual focus by wire. The latter almost tricking you into thinking it's a helicoid MF lens.
I’d say the Sony 135/1.8 GM's main competitor is the Sigma 135/1.8 Art and surprisingly when I compared the two, they produce very similar images. The main difference is the weight, AF speed and price.
The Sony 135/1.8 GM wide open, yields noticeably better resolution at any distance compared to the Sigma and is also equipped with state-of-the-art AF motors. When handling the two, the Sony is quite a bit lighter and less front-heavy. Sigma however wins on price and produces a slightly smoother bokeh - but this advantage is only noticeable at close inspection. When comparing resized images side-by-side, one would struggle to find any real difference in rendering between the two. While the Sigma 135/1.8 Art's autofocus is fast and works with Eye AF, the Sony wins on speed and accuracy, especially in low light.
Compared to the FE 85/1.4 GM, another portrait specialist, the new 135/1.8 provides a different look for portraiture by allowing photographers to maintain a greater distance from the subject. This grants less distortion by producing a look with more flattened facial features. The 135/1.8 GM has more resolution and contrast wide open, giving us images with more punch, dimensionality and more vivid colors. On the other hand, the 85/1.4 is famous for its pleasant "SA" bokeh (from under-corrected Spherical Aberration), while the 135/1.8 GM, although better corrected, is capable of delivering a very pleasant bokeh rendering for both background and foreground.
The Sony lens was also designed with sports shooters in mind. It does an amazing job tracking fast action thanks to its dual linear AF motors, a technology borrowed from the FE 400/2.8 GM sports lens. If you own a Sony and shoot indoor sports, wedding, events, or street and if you are serious about portraits, look no further - the Sony FE 135/1.8 GM is the lens you've been waiting for.
Pros:- Superb resolution and contrast at infinity and MFD (across the entire image field)
- Super fast, accurate and almost silent AF
- Weight: The lightest 135/1.8 lens on the market
- Only traces of longitudinal (LoCA) and lateral (LaCA) chromatic aberration
- Nice rendering at any distance with great balance between foreground and background bokeh
- Very good flare resistance
- Weather sealed
- Great build quality with low tolerance construction Linear manual focus by wire implementation. It really feels like the real thing. :-)
- Great ergonomics with two custom buttons, aperture ring with de-clicking, AF/MF button.
- Round specular highlights from wide open until f/4, thanks to 11 rounded aperture blades
- Great Coma performance for astrophotography
- Absence of onion-ring pattern in bokeh balls even though the lens has a large aspherical element towards the front
- Minimal focal distance at 0.7m and 0.25x magnification
Cons:- Slight field curvature wide open at infinity distance
- Cats eye specular highlights off-axis
- Hood is a must to avoid ring flare
- Price – significantly more expensive than its competitor
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Great thoughts and now we all wait.
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