85mm lenses with wide maximum apertures are some of the most popular out there, particularly for portrait photographers, but they can also run well north of $2,000 for a good model. And so, at less than $200, the Meike 85mm f/1.8 is quite the intriguing lens, but do you get much at such a low price? This excellent video review takes a look at the lens and the sort of performance and image quality you can expect from it in practice.
Coming to you from Christopher Frost, this great video review takes a look Meike 85mm f/1.8 lens for Sony E mount cameras. Certainly, at less than $200, you should not expect the 85mm f/1.8 to compete with flagship models, but on the other hand, it is hard to argue with such a cheap price. Though this particularly model does not produce ultra-sharp images free of aberrations, as Frost puts it, they are quite serviceable. Moreover, the bokeh is surprisingly smooth and pleasant, which is certainly a boon for anyone planning to use the lens for wide-aperture portraits. Altogether, it looks like quite a reasonable performer at a particularly affordable price. Check out the video above for Frost's full thoughts on the lens.
1 Comment
First Please PLEASE stop using CHEAP! It is low in price, cheap means it is made of sub par materials! As a second or third party manufacture at least it is "Chipped" and has contacts for metadata lens info as well as for AF and etc.. And a update port if needed. As far a wide open most want that for bokeh/blur/separation, For normal clarity and normal capture you will always do 2 stops above wide open and this one you will get faster shutter speeds than a f/4 if really needed so will also be good in low light like a city night scape. You use a chart the best test of a lens wide open is a clear night shot of stars with the horizon like the ocean/lake, this will show 1. mustache distortion 2. elongated stars in corners due to poor lens glass outer edges 3. comas 4. Chromatic Aberrations if you get a tree limb or leaves in the capture. Lastly no reviews ever mention if say Lr or any other program like C1 has a lens correction, back in '14 I used the Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 and it took a year before I could edit any image because not even Lr had a LC. If just starting out yes a good purchase BUT when $ are avaliable stay with Sony Lenses they will always be the best.