The Bokeh Master: A Review of the Sony 135mm f/1.8 Lens

135mm is often a popular alternative focal length compared to the more traditional 85mm focal length. Sony's 135mm f/1.8 lens is part of the company's G Master series of high-level lenses, and it offers photographers ultra-thin depth of field and lots of bokeh. This awesome video takes a look at the lens and the kind of performance you can expect in practice with it. 

Coming to you from Wes Perry, this great video review takes a look at the Sony 135mm f/1.8 GM lens. The 135mm f/1.8 offers a versatile focal length that offers more compression than an 85mm lens along with a very wide maximum aperture. Its design includes an XA element to reduce field curvature, coma, and spherical aberrations, two extra-low dispersion elements for reduced chromatic aberrations and improved clarity, Nano AR coating for reduced flares and ghosting and increased contrast, XD Linear Motor, two focus hold buttons, de-clickable aperture, rounded 11-blade diaphragm for smoother bokeh, fluorine coating to protect against dust and fingerprints, and dust- and moisture-sealing. Altogether, it looks like a great lens, especially for portrait photographers who love lots of bokeh or indoor sports shooters. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Perry.

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Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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19 Comments

Couldn't sit through the intro. Was that supposed to be a lens review or a music video?

I thought we weren't supposed to use the word Master anymore?

This political correctness stuff is beginning to give me a migraine headache.

Nothing wrong with the word "master" when it refers to somebody who mastered a craft or an art form.
Light manufacturers phase out the term from their manuals because they are uncomfortable associating their products with slave masters. Get over it...

Tell em massa!

Can't have patience for less than an entire minute, and going off topic for trying hard to make a joke. Typical but expected responses.

Makes an account to comment on the comments. smh

Not a fan of the bokeh in the sample images he showed. Calling this lens a bokeh master while subsequently admitting he prefers the look of the 85mm gm is very telling. I'm a victim of clickbait yet again. PS, i can think of several lenses with smoother bokeh.

Can you suggest a few for Sony E-mount?

Sigma 105mm f1.4
Or you can adapt:
Rokinon 85mm f1.2, 135 f2.

Thank you. I will look into those.

Bokeh is one of the best lenses for blur many professional photographers also use this lens on different places as a professional logo designer at https://logodesigner.pk/ also want to admire your research about the bokeh and all over the world many people also want to photography skill by professional.

I’m sorry this is a great lens and all, but the bokeh of a 300mm f2.8 or 400mm f2.8 blows any other lens away.Plus portraits look best when taken from 15ft away or so, even full body shots are possible with a 400mm f2.8 and some yelling or help from an assistant! My most favorite portraits and also most of my former clients and family members were images I shot at distance with a 300mm or 400mm f2.8! Currently I have the Nikon 400mm f2.8E VR FL, but that’s mostly because I cover sports and breaking news. I don’t do much portraits or weddings anymore these days, but if I did! You could bet it would be with a longer lens!

It's a great lens, but the price of the F1.8 over the amazing range of 135mm F2.8s out there is very high !

For a portrait shot, with a 135mm/full-frame focus distance of 2.7m, the DoF is 6.2cm at F2.8 and 4.0cm at F1.8......is it worth it?

Before you pay out, try out the impact of that extra aperture on the wonderful free-to-use DoF simulator at --- https://dofsimulator.net/en/

.....all of a sudden, that "fast glass" loses some of its appeal, while a trip to eBay for a 135mm F2.8 looks more and more appealing !

best wishes - Paul C

Bokeh master is the best camera lens many photographers also preferred this lens for blurring as a content writer in Pakistan https://contentwriters.com.pk/ I also want to admire who those wrote the content about the bokeh the reason is that's this content much information about the camera and lenses.

I'm not sure if it's his processing, settings, backgrounds, etc, but the bokeh on his images are not very appealing compared to others I've seen with this lens.

Processing shouldn't have much to do with it. The image samples provided, though, are pretty lightly processed. I have seen quite a few people posting images from this and other similar lenses and then applying liberal amounts of gaussian blur to the background in post, which I find super gross.

hmmm, nice info, these lenses used for blur images makes them not blurry or they just perform when placed close to a object? i saw some pictures of logo designers of https://techsmiths.co/ and the result was tremendous. The detailing on the images and videos were absolutely amazing, just curious.

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