Meyer Optik Görlitz Biotar 75mm f1.5 II Review

I spent quite some time with the Meyer Optik Görlitz Biotar 75mm f1.5 II lens for this review. For people like me who are sticklers for sharpness, this lens tested my patience thoroughly. It frustrated me to no end at times until I realized that using this lens to nail sharpness was an uphill battle. Once I embraced its quirkiness and didn’t take it as seriously as I did when I first received it, I began to enjoy it more. I can’t quite say this will be my first choice of lens for portraits, but I do think it can give some of you a range of interesting results if you aren’t quite as finicky with it as I was.

Declaration of Journalistic Intent

The Phoblographer is one of the last standing dedicated photography publications that speaks to both art and tech in our articles. We put declarations up front in our reviews to adhere to journalistic standards that several publications abide by. These help you understand a lot more about what we do:

• At the time of publishing this review, Meyer Optik Görlitz is not an advertiser with the Phoblographer. Regardless, this has nothing to do with our reviews and brands understand that our reviews will always be transparent. In the past few years, we’ve had to reteach brands that journalists shouldn’t be treated the same as YouTubers.
• None of the reviews on the Phoblographer are sponsored. That’s against FTC laws and we adhere to them just the same way that newspapers, magazines, and corporate publications do.
• Meyer Optik Görlitz gave this lens to the Phoblographer for review. There was no money exchange between Meyer Optik Görlitz and the Phoblographer for this to happen. Meyer Optik Görlitz and several other manufacturers trust the Phoblographer’s reviews, as they are incredibly blunt.
• Meyer Optik Görlitz knows that they cannot influence the site’s reviews. If we don’t like something or if we have issues with it, we’ll let folks know.
• Meyer Optik Görlitz sent the product to Phoblographer in Dubai. Our home office is based in New York.
• The Phoblographer’s standards for reviewing products have become much stricter. After having the world’s largest database of real-world lens reviews, we choose not to review anything we don’t find innovative or unique, and in many cases, products that lack weather resistance. We’ve also steered away from Micro Four Thirds and APS-C as they’re dying formats. This is a conclusion that even the other members of TIPA agree on. Unless something is very unique, we probably won’t touch it.
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More can be found on our Disclaimers page.

The Big Picture: Meyer Optik Görlitz Biotar 75mm f1.5 II Lens Review Conclusions

This is a lens for those who want something that’s not clinically sharp at all times. Be prepared to tear your hair out the first day or two as you find its sweet spots (yes, I found more than one), as this can be a lot harder than you can imagine. When you get it right, you’ll find that you’ve nailed the sharpness on your model’s face. This is more easily achieved in landscape mode than portrait mode, or at least I felt so during my tests. But depending on the distance between you and your subject and the aperture you’re at, you can find parts of the subject’s face oddly dropping focus. This was sometimes observed even at narrow apertures, especially if the subject is off-centre.

If you can deal with all of this, you’ll find that the swirly bokeh coming out of this modern avatar of the once-legendary lens is unique and interesting. This bokeh, of course, requires you to seek out backgrounds best featured by this lens to observe said bokeh. Otherwise, it just feels like any other manual-focus portrait lens. I just wish they had a black version of the Biotar 75mm f1.5 II lens too. The all-silver body can seem like an eyesore on a black camera and attracts attention when you want to be unobtrusive. Headshot photographers, though, will really enjoy the depth of field falloff. It’s kind of like what you can expect from medium-format sensor cameras.

The Meyer Optik Görlitz Biotar 75mm f1.5 II Lens receives 3 out of five stars.

Pros

• Excellent metallic build. Maybe the smoothest exterior of a lens you’ll ever see
• Interesting and uniquely shaped bokeh when shot at shallow apertures
• Available in 10 lens mounts at the time of writing this review

Cons

• Very expensive for a manual focus lens at €1,399.00 / $1,470.00
• Why doesn’t a silver lens come with silver lens caps?
• Sharpness is a real pain to tackle. And visual aids like focus peaking can’t always help either
• This really should have been an autofocus lens by now to help deal with nailing focus
• Wish it came in black, too

Who Should Buy the Biotar 75mm f1.5 II lens?

Portrait photographers with infinite patience and deep pockets, who often shoot against backdrops that look good when out of focus, can take a stab at this lens. Or anyone who feels this lens has enough individuality in its results to bring a smile to your face. Just like it did for Nick Compton seen above, who really enjoyed the way the out-of-focus areas were rendered. This is a lens that needs you to shoot wide open in order for that swirly bokeh to really stand out. Enjoy “character” in your lenses? Be sure that no other lens, not even another Biotar 75mm f1.5 II unit can give you the exact same results.

Be prepared to tear your hair out the first day or two as you find its sweet spots (yes, I found more than one), as this can be a lot harder than you can imagine.

Gear Used

I used the Meyer Optik Görlitz Biotar 75mm f1.5 II with my Nikon Zf and a Nikon Z8 borrowed from Nikon for a few days. On occasion, I also used various lights and light modifiers.

Innovations

It saves you from having to DIY a projector lens in order to get swirly bokeh. But it really would have been innovative had this lens been an autofocus version. Those who want to challenge themselves using manual focusing could just use the focus ring if they wanted to.

Hardware

Could’ve, should’ve really had weather sealing. And matching silver colored lens caps. But still, it’s as smooth a lens body as you’ll ever see in your life. So smooth that I was afraid it might slip out of my hands when I grabbed it from my camera bag. Sealing really can mean all the difference as we saw with the 58mm f1.5 when we reviewed it.

As one might say, this lens is a usual suspect. There’s a depth of field scale, focusing ring, aperture ring, and a silver exterior.

Protect Your Camera Gear

For years, here at The Phoblographer we’ve done tests on cameras, lenses, bags, computers, lights, and more. And we know that your warranty doesn’t always cover the damage. Plus, accidents can happen on set.

This is why we’ve created a Photography Care Program in partnership with Full-Frame Insurance. Now, photographers across the United States looking for extra security can get various protections to cover their craft. The Photography Care Program provides peace of mind; now you’ll know you can bounce back from a photoshoot gone awry, on-site or inside. We’re making it super easy to get it done, too! Better yet, there is coverage outside of the US and Canada when the photographer is traveling for short periods of time for business.

We’re able to do this through our partnership with Full-Frame Insurance, a company specializing in Small Business Insurance. Are you a Freelance Photographer? We’ll cover you. What about a freelance multi-media journalist? We’ve got you. The Photography Care Program will protect you.

Ease of Use

The Biotar 75mm f1.5 II lens is anything but easy to get excellent results from. It really makes you work hard for your results, maybe the hardest I’ve ever worked (using a manual lens) in all these years of photography. You, and often the subject you’re focusing on, need the patience of a saint living in the Himalayas. Multiply that exponentially every time you widen the aperture towards f1.5.

Focusing

Even with focus peaking turned up to max level, at f1.5 it’s super hard to get absolutely perfect focus without using the magnifying aid of your camera. Shooting at f1.5 with this thing is like walking a tightrope in a sandstorm. There were times when I almost gave up, as even if it seemed like the eyes were in focus, but ended up not being so. If the model wasn’t parallel to the plane of the sensor, it gave very unpredictable results. If you’re the kind of photographer who thrives on this kind of pain-for-pleasure ideology, there’s a lot of gains you’ll get out of this lens. For the rest of us, it’s mostly a lot of pain and cursing after reviewing the photo.

I will say this, though, if you have the luxury of shooting models that can pose for you patiently over and over again, you could find yourself getting some stellar results from the Biotar 75mm f1.5 II lens. It’s like those hikes that don’t have a straightforward climb, but no matter how much you graze yourself on the way to the top, the scintillating view from there makes you feel it was worthwhile. And you’re ready to do it again and again

Image Quality

Is it sharp? It sure can be when you understand how quirky the lens can often be. When I was doing headshots in a controlled environment, I found that the sharpness really popped out at you. So much so that if I were to print images like that, you’d be hard-pressed to tell it was from a manual focus lens. It almost had a medium format kind of quality to it. But the hit rate for such results was almost between 15 and 20%. You will simply adore this lens as a headshot lens if you shoot at f1.5. The falloff of the depth of field is something you’d repeatedly crave.

Blur and Bokeh

The swirls and whirls in the out-of-focus areas are what really make this lens unique. I’ve deduced that how much is sharp depends a lot on how close you are to the subject. And to make the results really stand out, you need some colorful, almost reflective backgrounds. The 15-blade aperture ensures that these results are achieved. Flare is very well controlled with the use of AR coatings that also help in improving contrast while preserving the classic rendering feel of the original. This lens is unique, make no mistake, but you need to put in some work to get that individuality.

If you want to nail sharpness on your subject’s face, you absolutely have to have them in the centre of the frame, else as you’ll see in the image above, the off centre swirls take over

Extra Image Samples

The Phoblographer has been huge on transparency with our audience since day one. Nothing from this review is sponsored. Further, many folks will post reviews and show lots of editing in the photos. The problem then becomes that anyone and everyone can do the same thing. They’re not showing what the lens can do. So, we have a section in our Extra Image Samples area to show edited and unedited photos. From this, you can decide for yourself.

Unedited

Edited

Meyer Optik Görlitz Biotar 75mm f1.5 II Tech Specs

These specs are taken from the product page: