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
