According to DxO Mark:

http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Publications/DxOMark-Reviews/Which-lenses-for-your-Nikon-D800


Carl Zeiss not necessary.

Are the NIkkor 85's really that good??

The 85 Nikkor's are awesome and absolutely no reason to pay 3 times as much for the f/1.4 and note there is a $100 instant rebate right now on the 85/1.8.

You can't make a general negative statement about Zeiss lenses like that because the findings only apply to the lenses tested.  They didn't use the highly acclaimed Zeiss lenses, namely the 21mm, 15mm and the new 55mm which isn't widely available yet - all of them would beat anything Nikon makes in their tests.  For some reason they only used the lenses from Zeiss that are deemed average.  I wonder why?

DXO underscores the corner sharpness thing for my taste.  I personally place a lot of emphasis on corner sharpness.  unfortunately most testing outfits don't.  For portrait and wedding photographers, etc, corner sharpness is not that huge of a deal.  For landscape photographers, corner sharpness is a critical item.

Update: turns out more are coming so it should prove to be interesting.  Do remember that DXO equates everything to an A4 (approx US letter size) print so you have to take that into account.

Is that a typo on the size ? I thought US letter was approx A4.

Yeah thanks, I corrected it.

The Sigma 50/1.4 and 35/1.4 are very good.  The 35/1.4 is the best 35mm lens ever made.  In my opinion Zeiss shines at the extreme wide end.  The 15, 21, and 25/2 are exceptional.  The 18 sucks though.  the new 55 will beat anything ever made when it becomes widely available according to early tests.

That was my conclusion as well. I did a ton reading online of reviews and tests that compare the 85/1.4 and 85/1.8. The conclusion I reached was that the two lenses were mostly equal sharpness wise with the 85/1.8 even being more sharp wide open than the 85/1.4. Stopped down the 85/1.4 has a very slight sharpness advantage but I had to look really hard to see it. The 85/1.4 does have far less distortion than the 1.8 model though. So based on all of that, I bought an 85/1.8.

Yeah, I really like the Nikon (Nikkor) 85mm f1.4G. No doubt the f/1.8 is also great and a cheaper but it does give you some more light gathering and DOF options.

I often use the 85 when stitching and if I do a 4x3 (12 image) stitch I get a final image about 200MP-250MP witha FOV about the same as a 21mm.


Brian