The “portrait photography” designation is a broad one that covers a wide variety of potential still and video use including subject framing variations ranging from moderately-tight headshots on full-frame to tight headshots on APS-C to full body portraits on either system with a wide variety of potential indoor and outdoor venues.

Portrait subjects can range from infants to seniors, from individuals to large groups if sufficient working distance is available. Engagements, weddings, parties, events, theater, stage performances including concerts and recitals, families, small groups, senior adults, fashion, documentary, lifestyle … all are great uses for the 85mm focal length.

There is often adequate space in even a small studio for portraiture with an 85mm-provided angle of view. I have done entire senior sessions with a wide aperture Sony FE85mm Lens and subjects always love the results from this focal length.

That portrait photography is one of the best revenue-producing genres out there helps justify the acquisition cost of this lens (you cannot buy stock photos of most people). I also argue that there are no subjects more important than people.

Regardless of the camera format being used, the Sony FE85mm Lens focal length can be useful for landscape photography. Some sports, such as basketball, can be captured with an 85mm lens, and thanks to the ultra-wide aperture, this lens can capture such events in very poorly-lit venues including gymnasiums.

This focal length also works very well for products (medium through huge), commercial and general studio photography applications, and a wide range of other subjects. An 85mm lens is fun to simply take for a walk when looking for subjects, such as with street photography, if in the right environment. Or, just find subjects around the house.

Max Aperture

Each “stop” in aperture change (examples: f/1.4, f/2, f/2.8, f/4.0, f/5.6) increases or reduces the amount of light reaching the sensor by a factor of 2x (a big deal). At 85mm, most zoom lenses open no wider than f/2.8, giving the Sony FE 85mm f/1.8 Lens a 1 1/3 stop advantage.

Among the 85mm prime lenses, the f/1.4 option is readily available, yielding a 2/3 stop disadvantage for this lens. The relatively-wide f/1.8 aperture design choice gives this lens a significant size, weight, and price advantage over all of those other wider aperture options.

Image Stabilization

Sony FE85mm Lens is not optically stabilized, but Sony generally takes care of that omission with Steady Shot or IBIS (In-Body Image Stabilization). On a traditional DSLR with an optical viewfinder, IBIS results in an unstabilized view, meaning that stabilization was not helpful for composition or for providing a still subject to the camera’s AF system.

With EVFs being prevalent in Sony’s lineup, the viewfinder image is being read from the imaging sensor and that is stabilized. Therefore, the viewfinder image is very nicely stabilized and sensor-based AF takes advantage of the stabilized view for improved accuracy.

Image Quality of Sony FE85mm Lens

Prime lenses are praised for their image quality. However, just because it is a prime lens does not mean the image quality at that lens’s widest aperture is acceptable to you. The question is – is this lens sharp at f/1.8?