Panasonic Lumix S 85 mm f/1.8 review - Chromatic and spherical aberration

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Panasonic Lumix S 85 mm f/1.8

11 October 2025

Maciej Latałło

5. Chromatic and spherical aberration

Chromatic aberration

Taking into account the fact that optical construction of the tested lens features two low dispersion ED glass elements, and also you don't get here an aperture as fast as f/1.2 or f/1.4, I expected a very good correction of longitudinal chromatic aberration. The Panasonic managed to surprise us a bit here and not in a pleasant way because this aberration remains visible quite well. In the photos below you can notice it especially at the maximum relative aperture in a form of blue colouring before the focus and yellow colouring of areas positioned further away.

The performance improves noticeably on stopping down the aperture but it's small consolation. You buy such a lens in order to take a lot of photos by f/1.8 and f/2.0 apertures and here the problems are the most pronounced.

Panasonic Lumix S 85 mm f/1.8 - Chromatic and spherical aberration

Now let's check how the Panasonic S 85 mm f/1.8 deals with lateral chromatic aberration – an appropriate graph can be found below.

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Here the performance is brilliant for a change. No matter what detector you employ and what aperture value you get results below 0.03% so such as we consider to be very low. This type of aberration won't be bothersome at all.

S1R II, 85 mm, RAW, f/1.8	S1R II, 85 mm, RAW, f/2.8

Spherical aberration

First photos from this chapter don't show any focus shift effect. Any spherical aberration symptoms are also difficult to find in out-of-focus circles of light we produced before and behind the focus. In this case, and it's an interesting tidbit, both circles feature a brighter rim that differs just in its intensity. If you add to that good image resolution in the frame centre up from the maximum relative aperture you can say that the Panasonic S 85 mm f/1.8 corrects spherical aberration in a proper way.