Zeiss brought back its most iconic portrait prime with a clean-sheet design for mirrorless, and the results delivered where it mattered. You get the classic Sonar look, with crisp focus falloff, smooth backgrounds, and rich color, without having to go around town with just the studio brick.
Coming to you from Ted Forbes art of photographyThis full video explains what’s new Zeiss Otus ML 85mm f/1.4 lens Works differently from older DSLR Otus. Forbes shows real pictures shot at f/1.4 to show how the point of focus snaps and the background melts without onion-ring artifacts or blurred rails and double lines at the edges. He notes mild vignetting wide open and zero visible distortion, and profile correction in Lightroom dials it back if you want a flat frame. Color management remains intact without any strange transitions in mixed lighting during the evening, which matters when you’re balancing the warmth of ambient light with the cool light of the day. The emphasis is on image behavior first, uniqueness second.
This matters if you rely on the 85mm as your portrait anchor and want micro-contrast and texture that makes skin, hair and clothes appear clean at close distances. The Otus ML is manual focus, and the Forbes makes a case for long, buttery throws when tracking small movements at f/1.4 with no focus-by-wire lag. Ten rounded blades keep highlights rounded when you stop down to f/2 or f/2.8, so you don’t get stop-sign Bokeh in your frame. Compared to the previous Otus 85mm for DSLRs, the ML is still heavier but far more portable, which opens it up to location work rather than living on a studio shelf.
Key Specifications
- Focal Length: 85mm
- Aperture: Maximum f/1.4, Minimum f/16
- Lens Mount: Sony E,Nikon Z,Canon RF
- Lens Format Coverage: Full Frame
- Minimum focus distance: 2.6′ / 80 cm
- Magnification: 1:8.1 (0.12x)
- Optical design: 15 elements in 11 groups
- Aperture Blade: 10
- Focus Type: Manual Focus
- Image Stabilization: No
- Filter Size: 77mm (Front)
- Dimensions: ø 3.5 x L 4.4″ / ø 88 x L 113 mm
- Weight: 2.3 lb / 1,033 g
You see the sonar character in the way the foreground blur behaves, not just the background blur, which keeps the hands and hair in front of the plane from being crisp. This helps when you’re posing on stairs, near a railing, or in foliage where stray figures cross the frame in front of the face. Lenses pick up a lot of skin texture, so plan your normal cleaning routine if necessary instead of blaming the glass. The price is $2,999, which is quite steep, but notably lower than the $4,500 launch of the original Otus 85, and you’re getting the ML’s more practical size and native mount for E, Z, and RF without adapters. If you shoot hybrid, damping and throwing are also suitable for pulling controlled focus in video without stepping noise.
Forbes here compares the optical formula shift from the old 11-elements-in-9-groups design to the 15-in-11, with special glass serving to eliminate chromatic aberrations. This is why you don’t see purple/green edges on backlit hair and metal at f/1.4 in his tests. Like any fast 85mm, expect gentle cat’s eye compression towards the frame edges at maximum aperture, but without jittery outlines that draw attention away from the subject. The handling is all-metal, nothing plasticky, and the focus action keeps pace and repeatability as you punch for critical focus. You come away understanding the rendering, not just the numbers. Watch the video above for the full Forbes list.
