Tag: 85mm

Ever since Fujifilm opens up its X-mount protocol in 2020, we get to see more and more new third-party manufacturers releasing autofocus lenses for Fujifilm gradually. This is definitely a joy for Fuji photographers because we have more and more options to choose from.

Intro

This time, Meike is the manufacturer attempting with its new 85mm f1.8 but this is not the first autofocus lens from the manufacturer. Meike has manufactured another autofocus lens as early as 2018 but that is for another mount, another brand.

That said, Meike is not new to creating an autofocus lens. Let’s see how this X-mount lens performs.

Also, this is a full-frame lens that comes with E-mount and Z-mount too!

Before I proceed further, I would like to thank Meike for sharing this lens for the review. I appreciate their kindness!

Price Point

I place this section first among all. All for a reason, it is priced at 200 USD. For reference, Viotrox 85mm f1.8 II is priced at 399 USD. Let’s be realistic, we should not set the expectations sky-high for an autofocus lens with this price point and there will be some trade-offs. So it is dependent on the interested photographers willing to accept the trade-offs.

Design and Build Quality

The first thing I notice about the lens design is that it reassembles a lot to the Canon EF85mm f1.8 but is not 100% identical. The lens design gives a very simple, clean, and minimalistic look. Nothing fancy shout about. Since it gives a minimalistic look, this also means that it does not come with an aperture ring.

The lens comes with a polycarbonate build quality but I have to say that it is not the best one out there in the market. I can feel that it is more plasticky than other polycarbonate-built lenses but the 386 grams lens feels light to hold on my hand.

It comes with a 67mm filter thread size which is decent for the aperture value it gives. No comment on this. And it does come with a lens hood too! It does not come with a weather-resistance seal as well, and I think I can accept that.

Image Quality

At wide-open, the shots are acceptable. They are not clinically sharp with some lacking of contrast. The images look fine if you are not nitpicking or pixel-peeping. Vignetting and chromatic aberration are present but manageable. But if you step down to f2.8, the image quality shows improvement.

The background blur is a little harsh for my liking. The transition between the off-focused and the subject is not the best but still within my acceptability.

Focusing

All thanks to the STM stepper motor, the focusing is also pretty silent throughout my testing. Focusing surprisingly well. It gives excellent focusing speed and accuracy in most situations. I do encounter some hiccups but mostly under dim light situations and do note that some other higher price tag lenses also have very similar focusing behavior. So I think it is fair for Meike 85mm at this price point.

Minimum Focus Distance (MFD)

The MFD is 85cm and I think it is pretty okay for a 85mm lens. The image quality doesn’t get worse at wide open, it maintains the same characteristics and behavior of the lens. In my opinion, it is pretty usable for social media purposes.

Others

This lens comes with a Mirco-USB port that sits right at the rear mount where we can update the lens with future firmware for a better user experience.

Who is this for?

This is the second cheapest autofocus lens in the X-mount market. The cheapest one still belongs to TTArtisan 27mm f2.8 (149 USD).

With its affordable price point, I think this lens is very suitable for photographers who want a portrait lens but do not wish to invest in more expensive options or wish to attempt to try taking shots with this focal length (127.5mm in full frame equivalent). In terms of genres, it can be used in most of them, such as general street, product, portrait, and landscape.

Conclusion

It is not the best-built and best image-quality lens but not the worse in the market, and it is also not competing against the top tier lenses. We are coming to the end of this post, and we all know what the trade-offs are with this lens. But they are traded-off for a reason, to allow more photographers have access to this focal length at an afforable price tag. I know I have reiterate a number of time about the price tag with this lens but I just can’t help tying them together.

Based on my past experiences with Meike lenses (Meike 35mm f0.95, 60mm f2.8, 7.5mm f2.8, and 10mm f2), I believe Meike can do a great job and giving the best they have in terms of build quality and image quality if they want. But for now, they give one more option for budget-minded photographers.

Thank you for reading.

Disclaimer:
1. All the shots taken here are shot by me.
2. Most of the shots are straight out of the camera with some shots edited via In-Camera Raw Processing and Capture One 2023.
3. The opinions are based on my experience. If there is any mistake, please kindly drop me a message and I will gladly make the amendment.
4. I reserve ownership of these images, if you wish to use my images, please notify me.

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