 The STF (Smooth Transition Focus) 135mm lens is a manual focus lens renowned by Alpha shooters both for its sharpness and for the smoothness of its out-of-focus highlights. While the subject stays sharply focused, the lens can emphasize blurring of the foreground and background by use of an apodization element inside the lens. The lens is most commonly used as a long portrait lens. Because of the apodization filter, the lens actually transmits less light than f/2.8 would imply—it is actually around T4.5, meaning it transmits about as much light as an f/4.5 lens normally would, although it has the shallow depth of field of an f/2.8 lens. But don’t worry about it—the camera takes care of figuring out exposure. Roger’s Take: OK, I am really irritated about this. You see the 135mm f/1.8 Zeiss owning the 135mm trophy. It was my favorite lens, better than the superb Canon 135 f/2. And it was so good I wasn’t even going to stock the 135 STF (until people started demanding it). So I couldn’t wait to write this up and say it was a nice lens if you couldn’t get the 135 f/1.8. But it didn’t turn out that way. This lens is spectacular. Spectacularly sharp, but with an amazingly smooth background blur that lets the subject stand out in a unique 3-D look. It’s much easier to use than I expected, the learning curve was about 20 shots for me to feel comfortable. And it is a lot smaller than the lens-formerly-known-as-the-best 135mm. Actually, the f/1.8 is still my favorite, but not by much after trying this out. And not at all after I’ve carried it around for a few hours. The one downside with the STF is that it does need good light, either outdoors or in a studio. While it states its an f2.8 lens, the apodisatic elements (the part that makes it soft focus) loses a full stop of light so it acts like an f4 lens. It’s not going to be very useful inside without some lighting. Specs:
Links:MTF Chart:
If you are bored and don’t understand MTF charts, you can read about them HERE Lens Diagram:
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