AstrHori releases affordable 85mm f/1.8 AF lens for Sony e-mount

Chinese lens maker AstrHori has released a new 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens that’s compatible with Sony E-mount cameras with full-frame sensors. The company claims that its new optic delivers superb results despite a very affordable price tag.

According to AstrHori, its new lens comes with a stepping motor that lets it accurately and quickly focus on objects even when tracking them during high-speed movement.

This optic even works with Sony’s own extremely fast Eye-AF in-camera technology. This possibly makes the lens ideal during high-speed action shooting for street and nature photography.

Internally, the lens comes built from nine elements in eight groups. Details about the specific nature of its internal optics are scarce, so we don’t know if it includes any special designs or chromatic aberration-countering features.

AstrHori does however claim that the lens comes with a multi-layer coating for flare and ghosting suppression.

What’s more, the new lens doesn’t come with internal optical stabilization, but its overall performance is designed to deliver high contrast in “strong lighting conditions” and the stepping motor inside it supposedly works smoothly.

This lens model’s aperture range is f/1.8 to f/16 with a nine-bladed diaphragm. It also delivers a viewing angle of 28.4 degrees and a minimum focusing distance of 79 centimeters, or 31 inches.

According to AstrHori, the f/1.8 aperture makes the lens useful for low-light photography and for shallow depth of field. The low-light capacity can nicely complement Sony’s own in-camera technologies for high-quality low-light shooting.

AstrHori has built the lens with an apparently simple design that doesn’t include external buttons switches or dials. This probably means that adjustments for aperture, focus type and other settings need to be done in-camera.

As for photographic quality, images taken with the lens indicate solid quality, though the underlying camera certainly helps.

The AstrHori 85mm f/1.8 lens is compatible with multiple Sony cameras, including the brand’s whole range of Alpha-series editions and its FS7 and FS5 camcorder models.

The new optic even works with Sony’s APS-C model cameras such as the NEX lineup, the a6000 and its successors like the a6600. With APS-C it offers a 127.5mm-equivalent focal length.

AstrHori is now selling the 85mm f/1.8 Autofocus Portrait Lens for Full-Frame Sony mirrorless cameras through Pergear’s website for a low price of $276.

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