Skin Tones – Sony 85mm GM vs Canon 85/1.2 L, Zeiss Batis 85, Fuji 56/1.2 & Panasonic Leica 42.5/1.2

This is a guest post from Rick Birt. To write a guest post follow the instructions on that page. Thanks!

By Rick Birt of Romeo Bravo Photo

This is a follow up to my previous posts:

My Take on the New Sony 85 GM

Like most serious photographers, I mostly shoot RAW.  However, both my wife and I have clients that just want jpgs straight out of the camera.  This wasn’t a problem with my wife’s old Canon 1Ds mkII that I first started with, but it was with my Sony a7R II.  The out-of-camera (OOC) jpg files produce less than desirable skin tones.  I’ve exchanged quite a few emails with Sony Pro support over this, and it turns out (after much testing), that my camera had an issue with either the sensor, or the software.  This has now been fixed, so this post is partly a test to see how the new camera is doing – with various lenses.  However, I also decided to rent a Fujifilm X-Pro2 with a 56/1.2, and an Olympus Pen-F with a Panasonic Leica Nocticron 42.5/1.2.

I wanted to judge skin tones in both OOC jps, and after processing RAW files in Lightroom (my version of Capture One doesn’t recognize the new Fuji RAW).

So, I grabbed my wife, and fellow photographer, Kelly Williams and we shot all Saturday afternoon.

First lets look at the OOC jpgs…

From the Sony a7R II using the “Standard” color profile (l did try all of the other profiles, but this seems to be the best)

OOCSony85GM

OOC Sony 85GM

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My Take – New Sony GM 85mm f1.4 vs Zeiss Batis 85mm f1.8 vs Leica Summilux 75mm f1.4 (by Rick Birt)

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[shoplink 48072]Sony 85mm GM f1.4[/shoplink] vs [shoplink 23448 ebay]Leica 75mm Summilux f1.4[/shoplink] vs [shoplink 45791]Zeiss Batis 85mm f1.8[/shoplink]

This is a guest post from Rick Birt. To write a guest post follow the instructions on that page. Thanks!

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A little background on me, and my style of shooting:

I love photographing beauty (close portraits), and I like the drama that comes with a narrow depth-of-field (DOF).  The type of lens required to attain these two things falls in the 75-90mm range, and must be relatively fast (f1.8 or faster).

I love the [shoplink 47718]Sony a7R II[/shoplink] because I can adapt almost any lens ever made, and over this past year, I’ve given a good go at trying ALL of them ;)

All of the images below were shot wide open.

The first portrait lens I had for the a7r II was an adapted [shoplink 48745]Canon 85mm f1.8[/shoplink] that my wife, Kelly Williams, gave to me.  It rendered very beautiful images, but since it was adapted, the AF was slow, and it was very prone to purple fringing.  Since I like to shoot backlit, this compounded both of these problems.

Canon 85/1.8
Canon 85/1.8
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