The Classic 85mm Lens that Still Wows Me

Earlier this year in 2026, I completed my Zeiss 85mm f1.4 Otus ML lens review. to me, it felt stale, lacking imagination, and nowhere as good as the original did. The original Zeiss Otus 85mm f1.4, which I reviewed back in 2014, is a lens where I look back with fondness. Sure, it was big, heavy, and even hard to use. But to this day, I’m still in love with the images I made with it and even use them for references in my archive of photographs.

So what changed?

I think it’s the colors and the fact that Zeiss took the soul and character out of the lens for something insanely clinical. Let me put it this way: when I used the original lens, it felt impossible to make a bad image. But when I used the newer Otus ML, it seemed to be like everything else.

What’s more, it felt like I was working for a good image and like diminishing returns were almost non-existant. The output of the images would and could only get better and better. Even now, I’m in the middle of consolidating my archive of 20+ years of images made on real cameras. And as I look into the work that I’ve done with the 85mm f1.4 Otus lens, I’m smitten with all the output that the original lens gave me.

Below is a gallery of 9 images that I made with the Zeiss Otus 85mm f1.4 lens. Trust me when I say that many of these had little to no editing done. In fact, I often remember looking at the back of the camera and being so in love with what I got. Plus, also wondering why Canon couldn’t make a good high-resolution camera at the time.

This, ultimately, is what I feel needs to come back. Why did cameras get to a point where the brands just said that they’d let the photographers figure things out in post-production? Why did so many people cosplaying as photographers think that in order to gain authenticity, they had to take immense amounts of work home with them?

I think I know why: I think that it’s because so many of the newer crop of mirrorless-digital photographers never learned how to use film and how you have to ensure that the camera isn’t doing all the work for them. So ultimately, lenses became something of just a blank slate.

The fix-it-in-post idea isn’t always all that bad if there’s good pre-production and good production. Many times though, that doesn’t exist at all.

Last year, I bought a Nikon D850 and sometimes I think about buying the Zeiss Otus 85mm f1.4 for the camera just to see what kind of awesome work I can do with it. So every now and again I check out Used Photo Pro to see how prices are. If I bought this lens all over again today, I’d have to dedicate time to use it for a project of some sort because it would deserve that kind of treatment.