Canon and Sony have continued to produce incredible cameras and lenses for all kinds of photography. For portrait photography, wide aperture 85mm lenses are one of the popular options. The large and expensive 85mm f/1.4 lenses are great; however, over the last few years, f/1.8 primes are starting to become better options in some regards.
In a recent video, Anete and I compared two 85mm lenses, the Canon RF 85mm f/2.0 and the Zeiss Batis 85mm f/2.0 lens. These are not the fastest 85mm lenses you can buy; however, the slightly smaller aperture helps to keep the lenses smaller and lighter. Not to mention the fact that these lenses are considerably cheaper than their wider-aperture alternatives.
At double the price, the Zeiss is the more expensive option, although it does offer some extra features too, such as the electronic display, better quality build and design, and weather-sealing. The Canon is a more bare-bones lens with a more conventional design. It also lacks any weather-sealing, which could make it less effective in tougher conditions.
Our comparison covers a number of points, and what's most interesting is how well the Canon lens holds up against the Zeiss. Even though it's priced at half of what the Zeiss is, it definitely offers more than half the quality.
Check out the full video linked above to see how each lens performs.
How do these compare to the Rokinon/Samyang 85mm RF f1.4?
I haven’t tried the Samyang properly yet but from the brief time I tested it, the lens seemed like a great performer. Could be a great alternative.
About the Canon permitting a shallower DoF by getting closer (@2:10) obviously you would not get the same composition, so I'm not sure if mentioning that makes much sense. It's not like comparing a face photo DoF and a nose DoF is usual ;-)
However, out of curiosity, if one used the Zeiss to take the image from its minimum focus distance, and cropped to have exactly the same frame as the Canon, wouldn't that lead to similar DoF, due to "zooming in" pixels while cropping?
The field of view on the Canon is wider, so stepping in closer would grant a similar field of view with a similar depth of field. The perspective might be a little different though but the frame would be about the same.
Ah, now I understand what you meant, thank you. I had thought you meant getting much closer to the subject with a different framing. Thanks for clarifying.
You’re welcome, thank you for asking :).
Thanks for this.
A few points:
The Batis does not come in RF mount.
No IS
At the end, the Canon is seemingly identically sharp (as far as one can tell on video) for less money.
I might also observe the speed of AF may be in the lens and not in the body on the Sony.
Zeiss is a lovely tool but the plain fact is that Canon, Nikon and Fuji are making brilliant glass these days.
Based on the specs I read for the Zeiss it does have optical stabilisation, however I didn’t test or compare those two features between the lens. Both cameras have IBIS anyway so at these focal lengths it doesn’t make a huge difference in my view.
I did not understand the review, compare two lenses in two different systems, shoot in two different apertures, in two different types of files with a jpg with all the camera processes because it looks better.
Forgot to clarify in the video that although we mentioned the JPEG, the main comparison was done with raw files for both.
Also, f2 and f1.8 is so close it’s negligible.
So cool Canon have made such a great camera. Colors are important, at least to me. I am not all together happy with the colors on my Sony and I am thinking about trying both Nikon and Sony. But the Sony profiles in Lightroom are terrible. There are some green tint orange green thing there. Adobe profiles are usable and compered to output from Capture One not so different. Canon might have much more magenta in the blend, that does not look great on white skin. I kind of think Lightroom sucks big time if you want to compare colors:)