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Meike 85mm F 18 Lens for Sony Review

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The Meike 85mm f/i.8 for Sony full-frame cameras promises a lot of imaging punch at a very attractive toll signal, only does this manual focus lens deliver the goods on newer cameras like the Sony A7III? Read on for my impression of this lens.

Meike 85mm f/1.viii for Sony Full-Frame Quick Overview

Let'south run down the basic stats and so I'll get into my overall impression.

  • Focal Length: 85mm
  • Mount: Sony East Mount (full frame coverage, but as well works for APS-C)
  • Max/Min Aperture: f/one.8 – f/22
  • Discontinuity Blades: ix
  • Focus Type: MF
  • Aperture Control: Electronic
  • EXIF Passthrough: Yes
  • Glass: nine Elements in 6 Groups
  • Filter Thread: 67mm

Overall Impression

Overall, I think this is an first-class lens, especially considering the price point is under $200 USD. Information technology comes with a petal hood, lens bag, and front and handbag caps. It's quite large for an 85mm prime lens, but on the flip side it'due south besides not very heavy. Construction seems to be generally a metallic-plastic composite, with some purely plastic elements and a metal mount bracket. It does feel a piffling cheap to handle, to be honest. But over again, considering the price and wide discontinuity, in that location have to compromises somewhere.

Overall, the image quality is very good, in my opinion. The center of the prototype is exceedingly sharp, and corner sharpness is respectable equally well when stopped down to f/2.8 or higher. At that place doesn't seem to be a noticeable color bias with this lens. Chromatic aberration is an issue, only just at the widest aperture settings.

In that location are many positives to this lens and only a few negatives, so let's get started breaking it all down.

The Good

In that location are a lot of things to like most the Meike 85mm f/one.8, not the to the lowest degree of which is the relatively depression toll point. Information technology's quite sharp, even broad open up, and really start to pop at f/2.8. Edge and corner sharpness also option upwardly effectually f/2.8 and are quite acceptable at f/4 and smaller.

Here's an example epitome shot on a Sony A7III. This is a 100% crop from the relative eye of the image. Shot details: f/1.8, 1/5000, ISO 125.

Meike 85mm f/1.8

Although it is a manual focus lens, there are electrical contacts to allow for command of the aperture from the camera torso. In addition to the aperture control, the contacts also pass EXIF values for focal length and aperture back to the camera for embedding in the images. One major badgerer of most transmission focus lenses is that your image files won't take focal length or aperture data stored in the EXIF info (or will have bogus numbers). This makes information technology really hard to sort by focal length, lens, or aperture in LightRoom and other photograph management software. With the Meike 85mm f/1.8, this won't be a problem.

Additionally, the fact that the camera can command the aperture besides ways y'all can shoot in shutter-priority or full-auto exposure modes, in add-on to aperture-priority mode. This is not possible with a fully transmission lens mounted to a modern trunk. But with the Meike, you can use all the modes on your camera. This is a very cool reward to have in a lower-priced manual focus prime number lens.

The Meike 85mm f/1.8 also has a USB port to load hereafter firmware updates, which likely will improve functioning in diverse ways.

The Not So Good

Build Quality Issues

As previously mentioned, the build quality feels a trivial flimsy. It's plasticy and lite for its size. The overall feel of it doesn't inspire conviction for extended travel or rugged weather condition. For studio piece of work or fair-weather applications, this lens should be fine. Just don't expect it to take a lot of bumps, scrapes, and drops.

The focus ring is well damped with regard to left/right focusing movement, and there is no hard terminate once you go past infinity or the minimum focusing distance. However, the ring itself has some slop (looseness) in terms of forward/backward motility.  This movement also makes an aural sound (clicking), but doesn't touch on focusing in whatsoever style.

Chromatic Abnormality

At f/i.viii, this lens exhibits conspicuous chromatic aberration in highlight edge areas of the image, even in the middle of the prototype. This is especially pronounced in bright or harsh lighting weather. Honestly, chromatic aberration of this level is very common in lower-priced lenses, including even some more expensive offerings from the OEMs.

The good news is that stopping down to f/2.viii virtually eliminates both purple and green fringing in most shooting scenarios. And fifty-fifty with the maximum abnormality at f/one.8, a little tweaking in LightRoom or Photoshop'south RAW editor can mostly or totally mitigate the color fringing.

Sample Epitome shot at f/2.8, 1/800, ISO 80 (A7III):

Meike 85mm f/1.8

Ingather Mode is Motorcar-Selected

I suspect this lens was originally designed for crop sensor cameras, and peradventure in their testing Meike discovered information technology really worked well on total-frame bodies as well. I recollect this primarily because if the camera torso (A7II or A7III)  is ready to automatically change to crop mode if an APS-C lens is fastened, it assumes the Meike 85mm is a ingather lens and changes to crop mode. In social club to get the full resolution of your camera with this lens, yous'll need to go the bill of fare and select "Manual" for the APS-C Super 35mm setting. On the A7III, this is Menu one, page i at the bottom.

This is something that Meike will probably address this in a forthcoming firmware update.

The Bad

The only really "bad" thing about this lens is a very peculiar, and almost certainly unintentional, anti-feature: with this lens mounted, the IBIS functionality of Sony A7 series and A6000 series cameras is disabled. Say what? Yeah, that'southward right. This lens, which could make swell use of the stabilization of the IBIS, somehow disables the feature. Crazy, correct?

I suspect Meike volition remedy this in a forthcoming firmware update.  As of the date of this commodity, there have non been whatever firmware updates for this lens. I will update this section when an update has been issued.

Last Thoughts

For the money, this lens is a great performer if you don't heed manually focusing. Information technology's electronic control of aperture puts it well ahead of fully manual lenses in terms of shooting mode options and quick adjustments of exposure.

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Source: https://tightcamera.com/meike-85mm-f-1-8-for-sony-full-frame-review/

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