A $569 85mm That Matches a $1,948 Lens?

Two 85mm portrait lenses, one costing $1,948 and the other $569, produce photos so close in sharpness that even a 200% crop of a model's eye barely separates them. That kind of price gap between near-identical results forces a real question about what you're actually paying for when you buy first-party glass.

Testing the Sony 85mm f/1.4 G Master Mark II against the new Meike 85mm f/1.4, Mark Bennett runs both lenses through sharpness, bokeh, autofocus, flare, and build quality with side-by-side images you can judge yourself. Bennett owned the G Master before this comparison, so his reaction to how close the Meike 85mm f/1.4 gets carries some personal sting. The new Meike is smaller and lighter than the original version, landing within 10 g of the G Master on the scale. It carries an aperture ring that clicks or declicks and locks, a focus hold button, weather-sealing, and a USB-C port for updates. The build still trails the Sony slightly, with a less refined lens hood and softer aperture clicks, but the gap has narrowed dramatically.

Autofocus is where the surprises pile up. The Meike uses what the company calls a Hyper STM motor against Sony's XD linear motors, and Bennett found the tracking snappy and reliable enough to keep pace during action shots of his kid kicking a soccer ball. On a Sony body, you're capped at 15 frames per second, though that's a Sony limitation rather than a lens one, and the Meike also comes in L-mount and Z-mount where that ceiling doesn't apply. Chromatic aberration stays well controlled on both, showing up only under extreme backlighting at 300% magnification. Flare and ghosting go to the Meike, which held contrast and suppressed ghosting as well or better than the G Master, a result nobody would predict from the price difference alone.

The Sony still wins a few rounds. Sunstars come out cleaner and easier on the G Master, with fine points that the Meike can't quite match. Build quality favors the Sony too, with a rubber focus ring, more solid aperture detents, and a higher-grade hood with a rubber seal for setting the camera face down. The G Master also breathes worse than the Meike during focus racking, though Sony's focus breathing compensation cleans that up in video. In raw photos, both lenses show breathing you'll have to manage.

If you shoot Sony and have been treating third-party 85mm options as a compromise, this comparison sits inside a larger shift that's been building for a few years. Manufacturers like Meike, Viltrox, and Sigma now have access to Sony's E-mount protocols, and the autofocus reliability that once separated first-party from everything else has largely closed. That changes the math on a portrait lens. An 85mm f/1.4 is a specialized tool most people reach for on a shoot rather than an everyday walk-around lens, which means the extra hit rate and marginal build advantages of a G Master matter most to working pros shooting paid jobs where a missed frame costs money. If portraits are a personal pursuit or a side of your work, the case for spending three times as much gets thin fast. Bennett also points out that the original Meike 85mm f/1.4 sits at $399, so there's a tier below even the $569 option if you're willing to give up a little focus speed and some out-of-camera color pop.

His verdict is measured. Plenty of professionals will still buy the G Master because it's the best first-party option, the build is exquisite, and the frame rate ceiling lifts on capable bodies. For everyone else, he pegs the Meike at roughly 95% of the Sony's performance for the way he shoots, which makes it a genuine steal at the price. The pin cushion distortion and mild vignetting on the Meike correct easily in post, and Bennett often leaves the vignette in for portraits anyway.

See the full side-by-side breakdown and decide for yourself which lens you'd spend your money on in the video above.