AstrHori AF 85mm 1.8 für Nikon Z

In terms of optical performance, the AstrHori AF 85mm f/1.8 Z struggles quite on a high-megapixel sensor. On the positive side, the dead image center performance is pretty good, even at f/1.8 albeit at a reduced contrast - which may be just fine for portraits where you don't necessarily want clinical sharpness. The center quality improves to excellent levels when stopping down to medium aperture settings. The same can't be said about the near-center and outer image field, though. The quality from the center drops rapidly to soft levels at large apertures. It does recover quite a bit once you reach f/4 - peaking at f/5.6. The corner quality is never great, tough. Lateral CAs are quite well controlled. Auto-correction isn't available for image distortions, but they are still moderate, so it's not a major issue. Auto-correction does help with respect to vignetting. Typical for such fast lenses, the light falloff is quite noticeable at f/1.8 in RAW images, but this is nicely corrected down to 0.7EV, which is just fine in most cases. A strength of the lens - and this surely relates to its classic design - is the quality of the bokeh. Especially the background blur and out-of-focus highlights are very smooth - ideal for portraits. As expected, there's quite some bokeh fringing (LoCA) at large apertures. We've also spotted a bit of purple fringing at harsh contrasts near the borders. The focus also shifts a bit when stopping down. It's a bit difficult to come to a conclusion about build quality. Typically, we only rate the physical impression - and that's where the lens shines for a lens of this price point. It's built like a rock thanks a thick metal housing and a smooth control ring. The AF may not be a speed demon, but it's fast enough to do the job unless you are into action photography. The other aspect that has to be discussed is the electronics/firmware, though. For most use cases - especially portraits - the lens works just fine. However, the odd clicking sounds at f/4 (and only at f/4) and the exposure being off from f/8 are a bit of a head-scratcher. We hope that AstrHori will fix this with a firmware update which is possible thanks to a firmware port on the lens. The AstrHori AF 85mm f/1.8 Z can't nor wants to compete with the Nikkor Z 85mm f/1.8 S. At $249, it simply resides in a very different market segment. The reality is simply that many users just can't afford Nikkors. The target audience certainly consists of people without deep pockets in emerging markets or students who simply have to shop on a budget. They are also more willing to accept some of the observed issues and won't mount it on a high-megapixel body, so the observed border/corner softness won't be as relevant. It's certainly just fine for images targeting social media where image sharpness doesn't play a major role. So, keeping all this in mind, the lens represents good value for use on 24-megapixel bodies - but don't expect it to compete on the maturity nor optical level of a Nikkor or Tamron/Sigma.