Photo Jottings

Full review of the Vivitar 85mm F/1.4 lens. 

Box and contents

The Sony A700 and A900 were used for this review.  For a better understanding of terms and methods used in this review, go here.

The usual center, mid-section and corner crops are located at the very bottom of the page.

The inexpensive Vivitar 85mm F/1.4 IF aspherical lens was introduced in 2009, and is available for most major camera mounts, including Sony alpha.   It appears this lens is identical to the “Bower” brand and may also be found labeledRokinon, walimex, Falcon, Opteka, and Samyang.  I’m told Samyang of South Korea is the original manufacturer.  The lens says “made in Korea.”

Found on the outside of the lens is a plastic aperture ring and metal manual focusing ring, no focus hold or limiter buttons.  Build materials of the body seems to be a mix of metal and plastic.  Build quality is just ok, and by that I mean; the trim paint (orange and white) application is sloppy with over-spray of both colors, although hard to see unless viewed closely.  Additionally, the plastic filter ring at the front that surrounds the odd bulbous looking front element is thin, and bends easily with finger pressure.  Make sure you don’t strip the threads when mounting a filter.  The lens body has an appealing black spatter paint finish.  Vivitar claims the use of one aspherical element in the design of the lens.

Use.  Make sure you select “enable” for “release W/O lens” on your camera, otherwise, the camera thinks no lens has been mounted, and won’t release the shutter.  This is a manual lens only, meaning there is no communication with the camera, you must use manual focus, and choose an aperture.  Metering is ok, but you’ll need to check your LCD after each shot for best results.  The aperture settings are marked in one stop increments between F/1.4-2, and F/16-22, everything in between is in half stops.  It is possible to use an in-between aperture, you’ll have to carefully turn the ring and set it between marked stops, although I don’t know why you’d want to do that.  The viewfinder is very dark when the aperture is set smaller than F/8.

One thing I noticed with this lens is; light fall-off is so heavy at F/1.4 that you’ll probably need to drag the shutter at least half a stop for a correct exposure, so that means the light gathering ability is not really F/1.4, it’s more like F/1.8.  Of course, depth of field is still the same, and backgrounds can be wiped out easily with this lens, just make sure you focus accurately.

Note; bright daytime use at F/1.4 will often result in having to use a shutter speed of 1/8000 at ISO 100.  Most consumer grade cameras don’t have that shutter speed, (the pro bodied Sony A700/A850/A900 do) so you’ll need to use a neutral density filter to bring down the light value and get the proper exposure.

The aperture blades form a nice circle between F/1.4-8, however, at F/11-22 the hole becomes oblong.

EXIF data reads 0mm for focal length, and F/1 for aperture.  The live view screen will read F– with no aperture.

In the box is the lens, front and rear caps, plastic solid hood, a carrying bag and owner’s manual.  Note; the hood will not fit over the cap, so if you want to put the hood on, you have to take the front cap off, unfortunately, the cap is not a pinch type which might allow you to put it on once you install the hood.

Focusing.  Manual focusing only.  The focusing ring is damped a little too much in my opinion, and is hard to turn with one finger.   Focus ring travel is over 1/3 of a turn form close-up to infinity, which is a good amount of travel, but precise focusing at F/1.4-2 requires practice as you can’t see the difference in the viewfinder, even with an “M” focusing screen.  Don’t worry though, it’s pretty easy to get acceptably sharp shots using manual focus or focus check live view in most situations.

Side shot showing odd bulbous front element

Back side, no contacts

Recessed front element with plastic filter threads

Samyang X-ray view

General information and specifications.

Lens flare/ghosting.  Fair to poor control.  At large apertures I see some amber/reddish blobs when bright lights are near or inside the image, and at small apertures I see a string of amber ghosts in a line from the light source, see examples below.

Light fall-off.  Huge amounts at F/1.4, but brightens up at F/2.  See samples below.

Color fringing (CA).  Lateral color fringing control is above average.  I see just a little magenta and green at the edges of the image.  See example farther down the page in the full frame section.  You see some axial color fringing too, but it clears up mostly by F/5.6-8.

Bokeh.  Smooth, but depends on focusing distance, see examples below.

Color.   seems slightly cooler (more blue) than Sony lenses.

Close up filter.  N/A

Coma.  None.

Regular filters cause a very small amount of additional light fall-off on both APS-C and full frame cameras.

Filter size.  72mm.  Sony uses this size on the 20mm F/2.8, 135mm F/2.8 STF, CZ 24mm F/2, and CZ 85mm F/1.4.

Distortion.  Mostly flat on both sensor sizes.

Distortion example directly below.

Flat!

 

Distortion is not a problem with this lens.

 

 

Bokeh samples.

 

 

Bokeh looks pretty smooth at all apertures, but it does depend on focusing distance.  The last row left crop shows background blur quality, the right shot shows foreground blur.  Blur in front of the subject makes things look weird anyways, and the bokeh is poor, so try not to shoot in this way unless it’s for effect.  I see some spherochromatism here, which means when the foreground is blurred, you’ll get red outlined highlights, with the background blurred, you’ll get green outlined highlights, (F/2 crop above), this usually goes away as you stop down, and is mostly noticeable on fast lenses when used wide open.  You can expect “swirling” bokeh at F/1.4 in certain situations, like the sample image in the full frame section.

 

Light fall-off samples.

Let’s check out the macro capabilities of this lens.

 

As close as you can get, F/5.6.

 

 

 

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Full frame results using the Sony A900 below.

 

Check out the differences when using a film or full frame camera below.  I’m only pointing out the noticeable issues as compared to the APS-C bodies, so if I don’t show it here, the results are not significantly different enough to warrant posting an additional set of images in this section.

 

Light fall-off

 

 

I see exposure altering light fall-off at F/1.4, to the tune of at least -0.50ev.  However, by closing the aperture just one stop, the frame lightens up tremendously.  In fact, you can almost use the same shutter speed at F/2 as you did from F/1.4.  You really don’t notice this so much in normal shooting, but I do, because I need to keep track of apertures and shutter speeds for the testing procedures, and to make matters worse, the camera doesn’t record aperture data, only the shutter speed.

 

 

Full image below illustrating light fall-off from A900.

 

F/1.4, ISO 100, 1/3200sec.

Detail from center of image above.

Swirling bokeh and example of heavy off-center light fall-off.

 

At the top we have a full scene of a huge and ancient Saguaro cactus (the holes are from birds) that shows actual-use light fall-off, It’s noticeable, with an almost over-exposed center, but correct mid-sections and corners.  Be careful when using F/1.4, make sure the centers are not over-exposed!  This bright daylight scene could have been shot around F/2, while still providing a blurred background, and light fall-off would be mostly gone.  Data for the image is; F/1.4, 3200sec, ISO 100. 

 

The middle shot is a 100% crop of the top image, taken from the center.  It looks pretty good for F/1.4 in bright sun! 

 

The boring bottom image shows basically the same thing as the top image, but with a clearly over-exposed middle, and what’s called “swirling” bokeh, formed by the background highlight blur being “lentil” shaped around the image periphery, which is quite common with large aperture lenses, go here for more info.

 

 

Flare and Ghosting.

 

Ghosting control is rather poor, as seen above.  When the sun is in the image, there are amber colored blobs visible, but severity depends on angle and aperture.  As you stop down, you’ll see a disc or two around the sun when centered.  When the sun is out of the image there are still ghosting problems, so use your hand as a light block, which works better than the included hood.

Full frame distortion.

Almost flat on A900

 

I see almost no distortion with full frame coverage.

 

 

Bokeh and axial color fringing.

 

Detail from center of image.

 

This shot shows another rendition of bokeh, this time close up at F/2.8.  I see some axial color fringing too in the water, in this case the color compliments the flower color in the background!  It’s not very strong, but shows up in shots like this.

 

 

Lateral color fringing.

 

Color fringing crop from far right side. F/8

 

This crop is from the last 700 pixels on the middle right side.  I see a little magenta and green color fringing along the window and light fixture, but it’s controlled well, and not really noticeable unless viewed closely.

 

 

 

 

 

Sample crops from the centers, mid-sections and corners.