Lensrentals dismantled the Sony 85mm GM lens to see if the autofocus noise is there because of some construction issue. Some readers reported about scratches but the good news is that those aren’t:
Barrel Markings: About half of these lenses have some visible lubricant on the inner focusing barrel that looks like scratches but isn’t. It is not scratches. It may be that over some time every single one of these lenses will have some lubricant show up on the inner barrel. Or it may smooth out over time to a beautiful, lustrous sheen that makes your bokeh glow like a sunrise in Yosemite. Sony may change assembly procedures or lubricant in future batches and it won’t be there anymore. But for right now, if you buy this lens you may see some lubricant in the inner barrel that looks like scratches.
It might be that 6 months from now we find out that all of these lenses should be absolutely silent when focusing. I’ve looked at lots of them, but they obviously were all early production run lenses. There may be a fix Sony comes up with. I suspect, though, that a firmware fix will be slowing down AF to make it quieter.
In the meantime, optically this is a superb lens and a lot of people are making great images with it.
At the same time Lensrentals also published the full 85mm GM review and here there is only very good news to report:
The Sony FE 85mm f/1.4 G Master lens is pricey, but not much different than the price of other top-quality 85mm f/1.4 lenses. It delivers the image quality you would expect for the price and copy-to-copy variation is reassuringly low. Sony has definitely taken strides to fix the variation problem that we saw in some of the earlier FE lenses. Give them credit, and also give them some understanding. They are turning out lots of new lenses in a new mount with a bunch of new technology. There are always going to be some growing pains when a company does that.
GM lens store links:
85mm f/1.4 GM FE at BHphoto, Amazon, Adorama, BestBuy. Amazon Germany. Calumetphoto.de. WexUK. Jessops.
24-70mm f/2.8 GM FE at BHphoto, Amazon, Adorama, BestBuy. Amazon Germany. Calumetphoto.de. WexUK. Jessops.
Personal message: Sorry for the error in yesterdays 85m GM post title (I wrote” Batis” instead of “Sony” because of a freudian lapsus). It took almost 12 hours before I corrected the mistake because I was travelling accross Europe and had no Internet connection.
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