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Overview of Milvus 85/1.4
The Zeiss Milvus 85mm f/1.4 Planar is an all new optical design, the first of two lenses to debut in autumn of 2015 in the new modernized Milvus line (the Zeiss Milvus 50mm f/1.4 Distagon being the other).
The Milvus 85mm f/1.4 Planar replaces the venerable but “classic” (optically modest performer) 85mm f/1.4 Planar, which exhibits considerable spherical aberration and its resultant focus shift to a degree that makes it troublesome for high resolution digital. The Milvus 85/14 is a major performance upgrade.
The Milvus 85/1.4 Planar is an entirely spherical-element optical design for exceptional bokeh. And yet is is very high performance. Its field is actually flatter (less field curvature) even than the Otus. Some may prefer it over the Otus for its lower micro contrast for applications like portraiture *and* for its extreme corners which do require some stopping down for sharpness (and so are nicely blurred for the first few stops). Ultimately, the corners are exceptional with some stopping down, as the aperture series demonstrate. The spherical design is likely part of the reason its micro contrast is substantially less than the Otus 85/1.4 APO-Planar at f/1.4 and f/2—again, some users may prefer that look.
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