My Review of the New Sony FE 85mm f/1.4 GM II

After more than six years, Sony has released a new version of the FE 85mm f/1.4 GM. The lens is improved in every aspect and promises to deliver outstanding quality and results. I have been using this lens for weeks prior to its official announcement, resulting in this review.

I’ve been using an 85mm fixed focal length for many years. It’s my all-time favorite focal length for a wide range of photography. This includes portrait photography of all kinds, wedding photography, and concert photography.

This focal length offers a great perspective, perfectly reflecting the proportions of people. Its field of view allows for a clutter-free background, especially when combined with a shallow depth of field. The f/1.4 aperture of the new Sony FE 85mm f/1.4 GM II guarantees this perfectly.

A large aperture not only offers a shallow depth of field, with the possibility of rendering a 3D feel, but it also allows for optimal autofocus performance under dark conditions. The amount of light that can pass through the lens allows for good autofocus performance where other lenses with a less wide maximum aperture fail to perform.

Although the first iteration of the FE 85mm f/1.4 offers all these benefits, the lens begins to show its age. High-resolution sensors require better performance, and the old lens can’t keep up with the speed of the latest autofocus systems.

The Lens in More Detail

At first glance, there are almost no differences between the FE 85mm f/1.4 GM II and the original version. If you look closer, the differences start to appear. First of all, the lens is somewhat smaller, at 84.7 x 107.3 mm. The weight is 642 grams, making it almost 20% lighter than the first version.

The lens offers a nice aperture ring with clicks at 1/3-stop intervals. It can be fixed in the A-position for those who prefer a dial on the camera instead of the aperture ring. If you are using the lens for video, the clicking sounds can be turned off.

The lens offers two programmable buttons and an AF/MF switch. There is no stabilization switch, which tells us that the lens doesn’t have image stabilization. You have to rely on in-camera body stabilization for that.

I’ve been using the FE 85mm f/1.4 GM II with the relatively new Sony a7C R camera. I find this compact Alpha series camera a bit too lightweight and small for the FE 85mm f/1.4 GM II. The balance is a bit off, making the combination too heavy at the front. No doubt, a full-size Alpha series camera like the Sony a7 IV, a7R V, or a9 III offers much better balance.

Image Quality

Fourteen lens elements can be found inside the FE 85mm f/1.4 GM II, divided into eleven groups. There are two ED-glass elements and two super aspherical XA lenses. The lens has a Nano AR Coating II. This coating, combined with the different lens elements, offers a lot of quality and resolution.

I’ve been testing this lens with the in-camera lens correction turned off. Despite this choice, Sony does bake some correction into the raw file format. However, regardless of that one small detail, the images show excellent sharpness, ranging from excellent in the center to good at the corners at f/1.4, up to excellent in the center and corners as well at f/8. Beyond f/8, the image begins to show signs of diffraction, making the image softer.

There is no noticeable image distortion. While this is the result of good lens design, it is also characteristic of the 85mm focal length, of course. However, the lens does show a lot of vignetting at f/1.4, reaching at least three stops. The aperture has to be set to f/8 to get rid of it, although it’s not completely gone.

Vignetting is not a bad thing, especially for portraits. If you don’t like this amount of light falloff, the in-camera lens correction will compensate for this. Or you can correct the vignetting in post.

The eleven-blade aperture offers a great-looking bokeh. At f/1.4, the characteristic bokeh balls are round and free of onion ring effects or bubble effects. The circles transform into cat-eye shapes at the edges of the frame. The quality of the bokeh is maintained throughout the aperture range.

The shallow depth of field has a nice-looking transition from in-focus to out-of-focus, rendering ball shapes in the highlights. If there is an extremely bright light in the frame, the lens will show flares. However, this can contribute to the feel of the image when a shallow depth of field is used.

I’ve been searching for signs of chromatic aberration, but I couldn’t find any. If there is some present, it’s probably removed by the baked-in lens correction. Or perhaps I didn’t search well enough.

Autofocus

The autofocus system of the FE 85mm f/1.4 GM II has received a major update. Two linear XD motors have increased the autofocus speed by a factor of three. The tracking speed has improved by a factor of seven, enabling the lens to keep up with the 120 frames-per-second speed of the Sony a9 III.

I haven’t used the lens in situations where autofocus speed was important. I did use it in the dark, though, and it was able to focus without problems. While using the lens under less demanding situations, I found the autofocus to be instantly fast and silent. Even with the minimum depth of field this lens is capable of, it got the focus every time.

Although Sony ensures minimal focus breathing, it is present. The size of elements in the frame changes when they become out of focus. The lens supports in-camera breathing compensation. Just be aware of a small crop in the footage to allow for this compensation.

Conclusion

I’m biased when it comes to a lens with a focal length of 85mm and a wide aperture that allows for an extremely shallow depth of field, even to the point that I’m willing to accept some lens defects.

However, there is little to complain about with the Sony FE 85mm f/1.4 GM II. It offers excellent image quality with nearly no chromatic aberration and smooth out-of-focus rendering. The bokeh is lovely.

The FE 85mm f/1.4 GM II does show quite a bit of vignetting at f/1.4 and f/2. That doesn’t pose many problems since this light falloff is often desired in portraits. If the vignetting is too strong or completely unwanted, in-camera lens correction will get rid of it.

I do find the lens not perfect for small bodies like the a7C series. The balance is off. That said, it’s perfectly usable, but the user experience on a full-size body is undoubtedly much better.

Is this lens worth an upgrade? I think it is, especially if you’re expecting the best possible image quality and autofocus performance. However, the release of this new FE 85mm f/1.4 GM II doesn’t mean the older first version is suddenly a bad lens. The new one just offers much better quality, capable of keeping up with the newest cameras.

What I Like

• Compact size and weight
• Excellent image quality
• Bokeh and the transition from in-focus to out-of-focus
• Lens buttons
• Switch for turning off the clicking sound of the aperture ring
• Reliable autofocus, up to 3x faster, and 7x better tracking ability (compared to the first version)

What I Didn’t Like

Nothing really, except perhaps the strong vignetting at f/1.4 and f/2. Oh yes, and a lack of image stabilization, although that might undo some of the benefits regarding size and weight.

I want to thank Sony Netherlands for providing this amazing FE 85mm f/1.4 GM II, which I can recommend to every Sony user who loves using the 85mm focal length.

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