Clinical, no soul?. What are you on about?. Its a lens!

It’s about compromise in lens design.
When sharpness is the priority, bokeh and rendering will be compromised. When bokeh and rendering is priority, sharpness, PF, Ca, etc is compromised.

That said, I think Sony did a great job with this lens, balancing sharpness and rendering.
True, it doesn’t render like the brilliant 135 Sonnar, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s “clinical” or “has no soul”.

More and more people & review sites value sharpness above all these days, even in a portrait lens. And they’ve become the most vocal.
So how can we really fault camera companies for giving them what they want?

Canon light tue sel85f18 is actually super sharp and has very creamy dreamy bokeh i have it and love it 👍

You guys need to shoot slide film. You probably think neg film is for poseurs.

If people had to buy cameras based on JPEG cameras alone, Leica would never sell a camera. And yet they do.

What does that tell you?

Sure, snd darkrooms were the autotune of analog photography, right? That does not make sense. The ability to process your photographs is integral to photography and lightroom did not revolutionize this.

"The only "real" photography is SOOC jpegs, anything else is cheating."

Jpegs aka letting the camera do the photoshopping for you. I'm pretty sure doing the processing yourself requires more skill.

@fastguitar

The edit is just as important as the shot, and people have been editing photos since the first photo made

@andrewedin

People having a better understanding of their gear is nice, and I guess you have the risk of manufacturers leaning on adobe making mediocre lenses, but at the end of the day a raw file still needs interpretation

"The only "real" photography is SOOC jpegs, anything else is cheating." ... That has got to be the most misinformed and silly comment I have ever seen on the internet.... Which JPEG? With what settings? Using which camera profiles? ... You let some engineer in Japan or Germany decide what your photo's look like? The ART of Photography is in the mind and skill of the photographer ... the camera is...and has always been just a tool... the final output has never been just what the camera, be it digital or film, renders.... the concepts of exposure correction, Cropping, filtering, fogging, dodging and burning are film development concepts ... and were not invented for digital...

New lens design; unrelated to the A-mount Sonnar. Though, I must say, I can't find a single thing to complain about re: the bokeh on this new GM lens. It's virtually perfect.

The GM is more bias to sharpness (Sharpness > Bokeh>Color) and the old A-mount Zeiss are hybrid of Minolta and Zeiss which is Bokeh>Sharpness>Color
The original Minolta is Color>Bokeh>Sharpness
Which is very hard to get Sharpness and Bokeh together without missing something...The SAL135/1.8 is a really special lens, one of my favors lens I ever used.

I think base on all the review and response from the reviewers and users, I can see that Sony will move towards the GM design principle than the E-mount Zeiss or Amount Zeiss/G design.

The tipping point on all this is when Sony hire the Nikon chef designer to handle the design department (Which I remember starting from the FE50/1.4ZA)...and every thing is razor sharp like you know...Nikon lenses...anyway, Im kind of happy they con't the Minolta tradition of good quality bokeh (in a Sony way XD)

@rashi, if my memory serve me correct 金井真実, the team leader of the optic design team was from Nikon. And I need to correct one thing is, he started working for Sony way early then I mentioned (FE50/1.4ZA). He also worked on the SAL 50/1.4ZA and 16-50/2.8 SSM and maybe more.

@samhain, it's hard to sell something in volume with out quantifying it. Sony learn it the hard way when they rebrand some of the Minolta A mount greatest like the 35/1.4G, 135/2.8 STF and 24-105/3.5-4.5. All of these lens was highly praised in real life by some artistic reviewer, however, with their faults in the lab and in practical use...It will never get the sell volume Sony wanted...so to address that, Sony introduce the ZA line...a Zeiss lens with Minolta (Japanese) color/contrast theory hybrid...and as we know, the introducing of GM is a extension to that end but shifting the priority more and maintaining the principle. It's a bit more clinical (not to the Sigma level) and pity to some of us but I think It make business sense and a good direction to carry the system forward.

Thanks guys. Personally, I only care about cat's eye bokeh when it starts leading to LensBaby-like swirly bokeh in regular images. That's not the case here, so it's one of the aberrations I think of as less important.

If many here disagree, then I'm happy to oblige and start testing for it more rigorously in our lens reviews. Let me know.

Looks pretty damn tack sharp wide open to me.

This lens has incredible sharpness wide open, and even manages to be sharp edge to edge wide open, which is quite uncommon for a fast telephoto portrait lens.

4sofnature

The FE system LAUNCHED with a 35mm lens - please rein-in the drama.

@thx1138 You already have 24GM and 24 1.8 ZA that has 35mm equivalent FOV for crop E mount. The kit lens for a7000 should be 16-80 f/4 or 16-50 f/2.8

A fat guy in pink pajama did put me off. I am not even sure what camera it was.

EDIT: ah! It was a lens.

The lens I am sure is excellent. But I do agree that the subject matter choice for the photo shoot, which is not the fault of DPR, is both an odd one and unappealing one.

In general I am not a fan of boxing/wrestling, as it only promotes violence and baser instincts.

In general, I wish the photo companies would do a better job of choosing creative and uplifting subject matter for the shoots that they stage for journalists to see new equipment.

given that you are an m4/3 owner, I take it that you don't have any 135 art experience of your own.

I've shot the 135 art, and I didn't find the bokeh all that impressive, at least in daylight... it can look downright ugly in bright reflection spots, with a general nervousness to it that my fe lenses don't have... the fe90 in particular has better looking bokeh.

so while the 135 art is a wonderful lens, the bar it set for bokeh shouldn't be too difficult to top.

Can't say I've pixel peeped it but I doubt it's easy to see if it's possible. And I'm not sure I'd accept the increase in file size unless it was

@HowaboutRAW

"Given an optically good lens the difference is easy to see".

And yet only you have seen it.

Even Richard Butler, the technical editor of this site, who has seen more raws than we've all had hot dinners was skeptical: "I'm out. I do not believe that claim can be backed up." https://www.dpreview.com/news/9768716484/sony-announces-a6400-midrange-aps-c-mirrorless-camera?comment=6639534373

I suppose as a last resort you could post an ACTUAL EXAMPLE to back up your claim - it's a long shot, but it might help...

HowaboutRAW: As we've told you many times before, you need to understand what compressed Raw for Sony actually is. It only affects high contrast edges that have been pushed, has nothing to do with bit-depth or your ability to judge the character of a lens. Please read our many articles on compressed Raw, or Iliah Borg's excellent treatise on it.

You expect everyone else to show you.. yet you refuse to show us. You are asking us to show you what we don’t see. Please show us what you DO see...

Or is there really nothing to see?

You are a waste of time.

haw posts are known for setting new standards here on dpr ;-)

being able to put his unsubstantiated claims on ignore will be a welcome feature addition, to these article comments.

Who is mgrum? And why should I waste my time to track down their post about some who knows what comparison.

You failed to provide ANYTHING other than a screen name.

No links. No photos. No scientific analysis. No nothing. You have nothing.

I wish DPR would give us the option to ignore specific users comments. It would really cut down on the garbage.

I can read just fine. You are the one who seems to be imagining or hallucinating things that are not there.. I will not reply again. You can continue to talk now.. to yourself...

Yea, the boxing thing is just weird. They need something like a bathing suit contest or a dog show.

Or something with cats , Ha!

On the Z7 sample gallery, other readers were really pleased with the setting. Not surprised to see it again. Maybe, if the weather allows for it, they should go test gear at a hot air balloon festival.

It's $1400 new. Still $500 cheaper

And so it should be.

Larger, heavier, slower AF, non-native DSLR optical design...

the 135 art is a wonderful lens, no question about it, I got accurate 13-14fps af-c on the a9/mc-11 with it.

it was a bear to handle tho, and this sony 135 will be better for that, and it'll probably shoot at 15fps af-c... possibly cleaner bokeh as well.

@milc
The sigma isn't fast enough to keep up with the a9 if someone sprints at you from 10 -15 yards away. Something to keep in mind but if the sony keeps up it could be worth swapping if you shoot something like roller derby indoors

@3pgrey - i used the a9/135 art to shoot beach soccer, and the af easily kept up with people running at full speed; it was extremely accurate... I've posted sequences of that on dpr several times.

135 art is a great lens.