Canon and Nikon both make pretty good 85/1.8's. Nice, wide aperture, small,lightweight, affordable price. I like an 85/1.8. The Canon EF model is pretty handy. Nikon's I have not owned since the early 2000's, but the Nikon 85/1.4 AF-D is a nice portrait lens. Sigma has a "new" 85/1.4 that's ben out like a month...maybe somebody knows how good that is.
The Samyang/Vivitar Series 1/Bower whatever 85mm 1.4 manual focusing model with electronic contacts for Nikon, Canon,and Pentax is actually pretty decent for those who can see well enough to manually focus...it has been made in Korea for 4-5 years now and has been sold under a whole slew of brands, in North America, SOuth AMerica, Europe, the UK, and Australia, as well as throughout the Far East...those things are going for like $240-$265 used all the time--and the wide-open bokeh is pretty good, it really is.
Some people like shorter lenses for APS-C cameras, going strictly by FOV multipliers , suggesting 50mm normals for portraiture, but I don;t like the look that most 50's yield...rough bokeh on the cheap 50's from Canon, Nikon AF-D models only so-so, new Nikon 50 G nice but too expensive for what it does...85 keeps you pretty far away from people on 1.6x, but magnifies the background somewhat and keeps the angle of view behind the subject narrower than using a shorter lens from closer...
A cheap 2x or 1.4x on a 50mm is an alternative...softens the image a bit, makes the corners a bit softer and dimmer, often looks reasonably good...
Oh, I JUST posted, and see you shoot Sony: the Bower/Samyang/Vivitar and the new Sigma are available in Alpha mount, I think...
