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Zeiss Announces New 85mm f1.4 Otus Lens

Chris Gampat
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09/08/2014
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Last Updated on 09/08/2014 by Chris Gampat

Newest Otus family member from ZEISS continues the success story Zuwachs in der Otus Familie von ZEISS setzt Erfolgsgeschichte fort

It was only a matter of time until Zeiss added a new lens to the Otus family: and today the company is announcing their 85mm f1.4 Otus lens. The company said on Facebook last year that they’d be releasing a new lens and indeed it’s on its way for Photokina 2014. Before we even get into it, the price is $4,490–way too much for many of us mere mortals. But the company has surely done a lot of work to make sure that the performance is the utmost top of the line. Indeed, we’ve been testing the lens for a couple of weeks now and it has been blowing our minds.

As for the features of the lens, it sports an all metal exterior with the exception of the focusing ring–which is made of rubber just like the company’s Touit lenses. The reason for this is due to working in the cold weather with the lenses. It has 11 elements in 9 groups, a minimum aperture of f16, has an 86mm filter thread, comes in Canon EF and Nikon F mounts, and weights 1140g for the Nikon version with the Canon version coming in at 1200g.

The lens is obviously targeted at portrait photographers along with fashion photographers–but given our user experience with the 55mm f1.4 Otus lens we will probably think that manually focusing the optic without a tripod may tend to shake the camera up a bit to get accurate focusing consistently.

At this point though, the photo world is most likely drooling over this lens but looking at Sigma for an autofocus response.

More tech specs and images are after the jump.

Tech Specs

Focal length 85 mm
Aperture range f/1.4 – f/16
Focusing range 0,8 m (31.50’’) – ∞
Number of elements/groups 11 / 9
Angular field, diag./horiz./vert. 28.24° / 23.71° / 15.97°
Coverage at close range 278,85 mm x 185,61 mm (10.97‘‘ x 7.31‘‘)
Filter thread M86 x 1.00
Dimensions (with caps) ZF.2: 138 mm (5.43‘‘)
ZE: 141 mm (5.55‘‘)
Diameter of focusing ring ZF.2: 101 mm (3.98‘‘)
ZE: 101 mm (3.98‘‘)
Weight ZF.2: 1140g
ZE: 1200g
Camera mounts F Mount (ZF.2)
EF Mount (ZE)

Extra Image

Newest Otus family member from ZEISS continues the success storyZuwachs in der Otus Familie von ZEISS setzt Erfolgsgeschichte fort

55mm f1.4 Otus 85mm f1.4 lens otus photokina 2014 price tech specs zeiss zeiss 85mm f1.4 otus
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.