Not every portrait lens needs to be expensive to be effective. Sometimes all you need is visible sharpness, pleasing bokeh, and a price that doesn’t hurt your wallet. The Meike 85mm f1.8 Mark II is a prime (pun intended) example of such a lens.
Table of Contents
The Big Picture: Meike 85mm f1.8 Mark II Nikon Z Mount Lens Review Conclusions
Meike’s 85mm f1.8 Mark II exists in a very specific space in the Nikon Z ecosystem. It’s not trying to compete with Nikon’s own 85mm f1.8 Z-mount lens. Nor is this lens attempting to disrupt the market the way Viltrox has with its higher-end offerings. It seems more of a lens that Meike decided to quietly refine, making it just good enough to matter to certain types of photographers (mostly entry level.) At USD $229.99 it’s a fairly inexpensive portrait lens, and at times behaves like one. However, it definitely performs above that price point in a few key areas. Sharpness is strong, even wide open. Bokeh is pleasing, and autofocus is usable in the right conditions. Plus the lens itself is small enough that you don’t think twice about bringing it along.
I’m giving the Meike 85mm f1.8 Mark II lens three out of five stars. The slightly tacky exterior feel, the lack of weather sealing (none was mentioned on the website), and the extremely cumbersome macro feature leads me to drop 2 stars for what is otherwise a very good portrait lens.
- Sharp even at f1.8
- Creamy bokeh really helps the subject stand out
- Macro focus distance is difficult to attain with autofocus, and even more difficult in manual focus mode
- Exterior seems like powder-coated metal, but has a plastic feel to the touch
Experience
This isn’t a lens you pick up expecting a great experience. Neither is it something you purchase for bragging rights of build quality. While image results fall short at close focusing distances, the lens more than makes up for it with sharp results at distances where portraits are more commonly taken. If your subject isn’t moving around too much, you’ll find that the autofocus motor is more accurate than you’d expect. The Meike 85mm f1.8 Mark II lens can be relied on in most situations, but it’s hardly one you’d expect to find inside a professional’s case. This one seems more like an entry-level photographer’s first choice for a traditional portrait lens, and it definitely delivers more than you’d expect for such a label.
I tested the Meike 85mm f1.8 Mark II Z-mount lens on my Nikon Z8 and Nikon Zf. No filters were used.
The build feels lightweight, and the exterior might even seem plasticky to some. Autofocus can hesitate in close-range situations, and the manual focus experience is not exactly refined. But I suppose these shortcomings aren’t accidental. This is probably the best way for Meike to keep the cost down and stay competitive. Also, this makes these primes accessible to many photographers who might not otherwise find themselves using this focal length. In that sense, the Meike 85mm Mark II feels less like a lens you fall in love with. It’s more of a lens you slowly appreciate for what it lets you do.
The autofocus motor is fairly fast in good light and for mid-range distances. While it is no way close to being blazing fast, for portraits and casual street work, it’s passable. The focus motor is slow for close distances. Did I say slow? Make that snail-paced. In spite of this lens’s minimum focusing distance of about 0.6 meters, the autofocus system can hunt endlessly when trying to lock in on subjects at very close distances. Even in good light, the lens can hesitate for ages before deciding where to lock on to.
Manual focus is where it gets obvious what’s going on in the design. The focus ring needs a long travel, around 15 rotations, to go from infinity to its minimum focus distance. That means you can focus manually with very precise control, but it’s also super annoying. It’s like a design compromise more than anything. If you need it to focus on something in close proximity, you’ll have to turn that focus ring way more than you’d anticipated. The ring itself is smooth and consistent with no mechanical roughness or looseness. It is simply very slow to use.
Image Quality
The Meike 85mm f1.8 Mark II achieves redemption through its performance.
The lens provides exceptional sharpness, which it maintains even wide open at f1.8. In my images, the centers of the frame showed strong sharpness, while the corners exhibited a minor drop that usually does not affect the kind of work this lens will be used for. Facial details were sharp while maintaining a natural appearance in portraits. Subjects’ eyes just sparkle when the eye-autofocus is done right. Textures appear natural, and the lens achieves better frame-wide sharpness after you stop down. Contrast was also quite effective, resulting in images where the subjects clearly stand out from the background. Colors matched what I’d normally expect from my other Nikon-branded lenses, displaying no unusual color casts or washed-out areas.
The greatest strength of this lens lies in the smoothness of its bokeh. Out-of-focus sections display a smooth, creamy texture. Highlights really stand out while backgrounds dissolve pleasingly. It performs excellently at f1.8 for creating shallow depth-of-field effects. You can see strong subject separation, and the bokeh is nicer than you’d expect for a $229.99 autofocus lens. Macro shows inconsistent results, if you can find enough patience to try this. I often found that at the closest focusing distance of 0.6m, the results were softer than when the subject was farther than 1m. But hey, at this price point, one can’t really complain, and it’s not being marketed as a macro lens either.
Tech Specs
Declaration of Journalistic Intent
The Phoblographer is one of the last standing dedicated photography publications that speaks to both art and tech in our articles. We put declarations up front in our reviews to adhere to journalistic standards that several publications abide by. These help you understand a lot more about what we do:
- At the time of publishing this review, Meike is not an advertiser with the Phoblographer. Either way, that wouldn’t affect our reviews.
- Note that our reviews are constantly works in progress. This review will be updated later on.
- None of our reviews on the Phoblographer are sponsored. That’s against FTC laws and we adhere to them just the same way that newspapers, magazines, and corporate publications do.
- Meike sent a Meike 85mm f1.8 Mark II lens to the Phoblographer for review. There was no money exchange between Meike and the Phoblographer for this to happen.
- Meike knows that they cannot influence the site’s reviews. If we don’t like something or if we have issues with it, we’ll let folks know. We were the first publication to inform about the issue with the Leica M10R and how it renders the color orange.
- Meike sent the lens to Phoblographer in Dubai. Our home office is based in New York.
- At the time of publishing, the Phoblographer is the only photography publication that is a member of Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative. We champion human-made art and are frank with our audience. We are also the only photography publication that labels when an image is edited or not.
More can be found on our Disclaimers page.
