Essential Sale 1-10
1 = I almost never use this thing.
10 = You had better own this, like yesterday. Essential Scale: 3
Creates stunning bokeh and is a very specific use lens. Offers shallowest depth of field of any of Canon‘s or Nikon’s lenses.
Technical Details
- High-speed CPU
- Ensures excellent imaging performance
- The high-speed AF and circular aperture create a shallow depth-of-field that brings attention to the subject and blurs the background
- This new medium telephoto lens uses a Ring-type USM
Description
Retaining the impressive optical performance and large aperture of the original EF 85mm f/1.2L USM, this new medium telephoto lens uses a Ring-type USM, high-speed CPU and optimized algorithms to achieve an autofocus speed approximately 1.8x faster than the original.
The high-speed AF and circular aperture create a shallow depth-of-field that brings attention to the subject and blurs the background. The floating optical system, which includes an aspherical lens element, suppresses aberrations and ensures excellent imaging performance.
Summary
This is a lens meant for very specific uses. It’s aperture is the widest of any of Nikon or Canon’s lens, apart from the discontinued Canon 50mm f/1.0. This lens is extremely huge and heavy for a prime, and produces beautiful bokeh.
Images are extremely sharp, even at f/1.2, and the entire background can be thrown completely out of focus. This lens is basically built for wedding photographers The AF is a bit slow due to how heavy the lens elements are. For low light shooting, this lens obviously excels.
Personal Experience
Shooting with this lens is fun, and you’ll be able to produce some awesome pictures. It take some practice getting used to the ultra thin depth of field. It is a specialty lens, meaning that it is best used with it’s wide aperture.
Who is this lens for?
- Portrait & wedding photographers will love this lens for the dreamy yet crisp pictures it produces.
Who isn’t this lens for?
- If you’re shooting in the studio with strobes, the strong points of this lens are useless.
Want to shoot on a micro level but don’t think you have a lens for it? Take a wide angle lens 18mm or so and hold it to your camera backwards, get close to the subject and control focus with your distance. You will have no aperture control so work exposure with ISO and shutter, but you will be now shooting with a micro scope!
