Until I purchased this lens, the Nikon 85/1.8g was my favorite lens. I love the focal length. The Nikon produces great contrast and colors. It was acceptably sharp at 1.8 and tack sharp at 2.8. At just a bit over $400, it's a great value.
I do some professional shooting on a part-time basis, mostly portraits, a lot of engagement couple sessions. I've never felt the need to invest in the cost and weight of a 1.4 aperture 85mm lens. I'd end up stopping down anyway. For my professional work, a 1.8 aperture lens is fine as long as it is acceptably sharp wide open.
The Nikon 85g only had two flaws in my book. Like most primes, it lacks image stabilization. For whatever reason, I don't have the steadiest hands. Even shooting 1/80 - 1/100, I would lose some shots to camera shake. To get consistently sharp images, I was cranking up the shutter speed to at least 1/160, sometimes 1/250. So this wasn't exactly a weakness of the Nikon 85g, but a weakness of non-stabilized lenses in general.
The optical weakness of the Nikon 85g is chromatic aberrations. Particularly, really bad purple and green fringing at wide apertures. So bad, that at times it was difficult to correct in lightroom.
So my dream lens, was essentially the Nikon 85/1.8g + Image stabilization + improved CA.
The Tamron delivered in spades. At $750, it's $300 more than the Nikon, but still not a "break the bank" lens. Still significantly cheaper than any of the 1.4 models on the market. And it is the ONLY 85mm on the market with image stabilization. Yes, if you absolutely need 1.4 aperture for the narrowest possible DOF, then there is no substitute. But if you're stopping down anyway most of the time, I see absolutely no advantages of 1.4 lenses over this Tamron.
Before getting to images, let me address the many strengths of this lens along with one weakness.
- It is built like a tank, but still not too big. Really solid build quality.
- Very effective image stabilization. I'm not shooting at 1/10 or anything, but I can easily shoot handheld at less than 1/focal length.
-The Nikon 85mm was the sharpest lens in my bag. No longer. The Tamron 85mm manages to beat it by a little bit. If you nail focus, the lens is nearly tack sharp by F2. If you look at the professional testing reviews, you find that the Tamron comes close to Zeiss Otus levels of sharpness.
-Color fringing is nearly non-existent. If i pixel peep, there may be a few images that could use a tiny bit of correction, but nothing severe.
- Background blur is smooth, the bokeh balls are beautiful. can get a bit of a cat's eye at the edges of the frame, but that's not unusual.
- So why no 5 stars? As noted in some of the professional reviews and my own experience, there is a bit of focus shift in the lens. Some of the reviews blame it on spherical aberration. When I tried to micro adjust this lens, I got massive front shift at wide open, but then less and less as I stopped down. (As confirmed by Reikan FoCal). I eventually got the Tamron TAP unit, and used it along with in-camera adjustment. I finally found a micro adjust balance that I was happy with. But it remains enough of an issue to prevent the lens from scoring as totally perfect.
For reference, here is an image from the Nikon 85/1.8g..
At F2.0, it is tack sharp. But if you look closely in high contrast areas, you will still see some color fringing, and this was after correction in lightroom.
So how does the Tamron hold up:
Also F2.0 -- and even sharper.
Another F2.0:
At F2.5, check out the sharpness and the bokeh:
At F4.5 in the above image, IMO, it takes tacks sharpness to a new level.. I guess this is razor sharpness. And still perfect bokeh.
Another example of amazing sharpness at 2.2:
Wide open:
Last one, at F2.5.... high contrast image that required no correction of color fringing. Perfect sharpness across the entire frame. Perfect bokeh balls:
Bonus shot... "landscape portrait" At f2.8.... tack sharp across the entire frame. You can crop this to 100% and completely use the 100% cropped image..
Conclusion: You need to carefully micro adjust this lens and consider the potential for focus shift. You may want to resort to live view at times. But when you nail focus, this lens is simply breath taking. At F1.8 and wider, I suspect it will play even with any of the 1.4 competitors. Of course, at a much lower price and less weight. Throw in the stabilization, it is a wonderful bonus.
Ultimately, this is probably the best portrait lens you can buy for under $1,000... and for many shooters, it may replace the need to even consider any portrait lens over $1,000.
Now, for most of my portrait sessions, unless I have space limits, I often will exclusively use the Tamron 85mm for all my shooting.
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I do some professional shooting on a part-time basis, mostly portraits, a lot of engagement couple sessions. I've never felt the need to invest in the cost and weight of a 1.4 aperture 85mm lens. I'd end up stopping down anyway. For my professional work, a 1.8 aperture lens is fine as long as it is acceptably sharp wide open.
The Nikon 85g only had two flaws in my book. Like most primes, it lacks image stabilization. For whatever reason, I don't have the steadiest hands. Even shooting 1/80 - 1/100, I would lose some shots to camera shake. To get consistently sharp images, I was cranking up the shutter speed to at least 1/160, sometimes 1/250. So this wasn't exactly a weakness of the Nikon 85g, but a weakness of non-stabilized lenses in general.
The optical weakness of the Nikon 85g is chromatic aberrations. Particularly, really bad purple and green fringing at wide apertures. So bad, that at times it was difficult to correct in lightroom.
So my dream lens, was essentially the Nikon 85/1.8g + Image stabilization + improved CA.
The Tamron delivered in spades. At $750, it's $300 more than the Nikon, but still not a "break the bank" lens. Still significantly cheaper than any of the 1.4 models on the market. And it is the ONLY 85mm on the market with image stabilization. Yes, if you absolutely need 1.4 aperture for the narrowest possible DOF, then there is no substitute. But if you're stopping down anyway most of the time, I see absolutely no advantages of 1.4 lenses over this Tamron.
Before getting to images, let me address the many strengths of this lens along with one weakness.
- It is built like a tank, but still not too big. Really solid build quality.
- Very effective image stabilization. I'm not shooting at 1/10 or anything, but I can easily shoot handheld at less than 1/focal length.
-The Nikon 85mm was the sharpest lens in my bag. No longer. The Tamron 85mm manages to beat it by a little bit. If you nail focus, the lens is nearly tack sharp by F2. If you look at the professional testing reviews, you find that the Tamron comes close to Zeiss Otus levels of sharpness.
-Color fringing is nearly non-existent. If i pixel peep, there may be a few images that could use a tiny bit of correction, but nothing severe.
- Background blur is smooth, the bokeh balls are beautiful. can get a bit of a cat's eye at the edges of the frame, but that's not unusual.
- So why no 5 stars? As noted in some of the professional reviews and my own experience, there is a bit of focus shift in the lens. Some of the reviews blame it on spherical aberration. When I tried to micro adjust this lens, I got massive front shift at wide open, but then less and less as I stopped down. (As confirmed by Reikan FoCal). I eventually got the Tamron TAP unit, and used it along with in-camera adjustment. I finally found a micro adjust balance that I was happy with. But it remains enough of an issue to prevent the lens from scoring as totally perfect.
For reference, here is an image from the Nikon 85/1.8g..
At F2.0, it is tack sharp. But if you look closely in high contrast areas, you will still see some color fringing, and this was after correction in lightroom.
So how does the Tamron hold up:
Also F2.0 -- and even sharper.
Another F2.0:
At F2.5, check out the sharpness and the bokeh:
At F4.5 in the above image, IMO, it takes tacks sharpness to a new level.. I guess this is razor sharpness. And still perfect bokeh.
Another example of amazing sharpness at 2.2:
Wide open:
Last one, at F2.5.... high contrast image that required no correction of color fringing. Perfect sharpness across the entire frame. Perfect bokeh balls:
Bonus shot... "landscape portrait" At f2.8.... tack sharp across the entire frame. You can crop this to 100% and completely use the 100% cropped image..
Conclusion: You need to carefully micro adjust this lens and consider the potential for focus shift. You may want to resort to live view at times. But when you nail focus, this lens is simply breath taking. At F1.8 and wider, I suspect it will play even with any of the 1.4 competitors. Of course, at a much lower price and less weight. Throw in the stabilization, it is a wonderful bonus.
Ultimately, this is probably the best portrait lens you can buy for under $1,000... and for many shooters, it may replace the need to even consider any portrait lens over $1,000.
Now, for most of my portrait sessions, unless I have space limits, I often will exclusively use the Tamron 85mm for all my shooting.
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