[Smolk]

I originally posted this question in a thread more than 10 years old (!), but it is better here:

What I miss in all these comparisons is sharpness at infinity. This focal length is often geared towards portraits. It is hard to distil the distant sharpness from the images online, but my tentative impression is that the 70mm does very well there. I'm not that sure about the 77mm in this regard.
I also have the Tammy 90mm Macro, a great lens but sizeable, but as a macro I suspect it may be less well at infinity (haven't tried, waiting for a digital camera . For me, it would be important to have one lens at least that is good at this distance. With 645, the FA 150 and 120 were not so great at infinity, the 135mm was visibly better. As far as I know, MF-charts often are based on distances in a number of meters, so these do not tell the whole story either.

[Pål Jensen]

I originally posted this question in a thread more than 10 years old (!), but it is better here:

What I miss in all these comparisons is sharpness at infinity. This focal length is often geared towards portraits. It is hard to distil the distant sharpness from the images online, but my tentative impression is that the 70mm does very well there. I'm not that sure about the 77mm in this regard.

The 77 Limited is great at infinity. It is not optimized for portrait distances like the FA* 85/1.4. It has fixed rear element design to ensure this.....

[Smolk]

The 77 Limited is great at infinity. It is not optimized for portrait distances like the FA* 85/1.4. It has fixed rear element design to ensure this.....

Thanks for this - I had not been able to find this information. But I thought it was used for portraits especially? Perhaps not when the head fills the frame?

[Sandy Hancock]

What I miss in all these comparisons is sharpness at infinity.

FA77 at long distance. Lake Como is about 500m wide at this point

[UncleVanya]

Thanks for this - I had not been able to find this information. But I thought it was used for portraits especially? Perhaps not when the head fills the frame?

The A* 85 like the FA 77 is good for portraits but both are essentially good at all distances and each offers excellent sharpness at all distances. The FA* 85 was designed with a different optimization. The FA* is softer at portrait distances wide open to make it more flattering as I understand it. But I have never owned the FA* 85 so my 3rd hand understanding may be mistaken. I can however clearly refute any idea that the FA 77 isn’t sharp at non portrait distances.

[Smolk]

I should perhaps clarify that all the lenses I tested seemed more than sharp enough - only when I compared them on a line of single trees at long distance did the differences suddenly show, otherwise it would have been far less noticeable.
Still, it is reassuring to hear, and perhaps to be expected: the lens design was in part based on that of the 1.4/85mm * lens which has a very sharp reputation.
Thanks for the responses.