Carl Zeiss Milvus 85 mm f/1.4 review - Introduction

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Carl Zeiss Milvus 85 mm f/1.4

30 December 2015

Szymon Starczewski

1. Introduction

The following chart allows you to follow the history of 1.4/85 Zeiss instruments. It all started with a 6-element Planar with Contax and Yashica mounts which evolved into the contemporary model sold in Canon (ZE) Nikon (ZF) and Pentax (ZK) versions.

Meanwhile, after Sony entered the market of digital reflex cameras, Zeiss started to offer a construction with 8 elements positioned in 6 groups. In 2014 the Otus beat it all with its 11 optical elements. The Milvus, presented in 2015, features 11 elements as well but without aspherical ones.

As you can notice, contrary to 1.4/50 models, here the producer consequently follows the Planar-type construction here.

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We would like to thank the Fototechnika company for lending us one specimen of the lens for testing purposes.

You are also invited to get acquainted with our test procedure, described in the article "How do we test lenses?" If you feel it’s still not enough, please go to our FAQ section where you can find some further explanation.