I'm a commercial photographer and honestly cant be happier with this lens. That said lets deal with the gorilla in the room, it is a manual focus lens, and in my opinion thats a plus. The fact that it is manual forces one to pay more attention to composition and focus, which directly translates to more keepers on the back end. I know that in an automatic, USM and IS world this may sound strange, but this lens helps enforce one of the most important aspects of photography, intuition. I now compose and anticipate moments more and shoot only when I know I need to, (instead of street sweeping a scene at 8fps and torturing my future self in post selection).
Though not as sharp as the Canon 85 1.2, I feel Zeiss color range is more impressive, it produces images with amazing contrast and incredibly rich and elegant tones. As mentioned in other reviews, the half press focus confirmation is a huge help, and once the subject range has been found you can shoot and re-focus very fast as long as your subject or position hasn't changed much. As a point of comparison, I have used the Canon 85mm 1.2 L for years, and know for a fact that it's auto focusing is slow, very slow. I'd much rather be behind this manual lens in control of its movement than be waiting for a lens that costs almost twice as much that's trying to do the thinking for me (....slowly).
Bottom line, if you are looking into an 85mm focal length you've probably been shooting long enough to not need a baby sitter. It's not for the faint of heart but with some practice its manual process and stunning color contrast are worth every penny.
Build, look and feel are amazing too if you for some reason care about your lens looking pretty..
5 stars
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