Hi,
Jim Kasson made some practical tests of his own 85 mm lenses, not including the Milvus.
His test confirms the greatness of the Otus but it also confirms the goodness of the Batis. He also found that the lenses are pretty good at f/4.
Jim is a scientist, so he goes on showing more curves than you ever have seen, and yes that Batis is very good.
What is interesting to me is that the Otus is made to perform really excellent at f/1.4 and they have used a lot of expensive optical glass to eliminate out of focus fringing at full aperture.
The old 85/1.4 was pretty much a simple Planar kind of lens, six lenses in a double gauss configuration. while the Otus and Milvus have quite similar designs with 11 lenses, the Batis also has 11 lenses but in a different configuration.
So, my conclusion is that:
- I would buy the Otus if perfect performance at f/1.4 was most important for me.
- The Milvus seems to be an affordable alternative to the Otus except at large aperturess.
- The Batis is very good and probably matches the Otus when stopped down slightly and it has AF
Of the three I would buy the Batis. I ordered the Batis initially, but cancelled my order and bought the Sony 90/2.8G instead. With what is known today I would have stayed with the Batis.
Best regards
Erik
Sometimes I think all of the MTF data means nothing if the weight of the lens puts the camera out of balance for you the photographer. And heck how much $$$$ do we want to spend on lenses? I have the Zeiss Batis 25mm for my Sony A7II and Sony A7RII and it is one of the best lenses I've ever used, Just Love it. I would love to see a Batis 40mm as I'm not to keen on the 50 field of view.