Photo Plus - UK (2019-12)

The Canon Magazine 107

85mm PORTRAIT LENSES

3000

2500

2000

1500

1000

500

f/1.2f/1.4 f/1.8 f/2 f/2.8 f/4 f/5.6 f/8 f/11 f/16 f/22

Centre Middle Edge

Sharpness

CANON EF 85mm

f/1.4L IS USM £1379/$1599

Go steady with this relatively new Canon lens that

gives you freedom of movement

t’s perhaps surprising that

this is one of only two

85mm lenses for Canon

cameras that features

image stabilization, the other

being a Tamron. Naturally,

you could use a tripod, but

stabilization gives you more

freedom to move around and

play the angles, shooting

handheld without setup

adjustments interrupting.

Build quality is pretty epic,

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and rear elements. The ability

to shoot portraits in the rain

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wedding photographers would

disagree. Compared with the

Canon f/1.8 lens, the optical

path is much more complex,

based on 14, rather than nine,

elements and featuring

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Coating which further reduces

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Much larger and more than

twice the weight of the Canon

f/1.8 lens, at 950g, this one is

smaller and lighter than the

competing Sigma f/1.4, which

lacks stabilization. It feels

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excellent handling.

Performance

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from the Sigma Art lens, but

still extraordinary. The quality

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smooth blur and minimal

longitudinal or ‘bokeh’

fringing. The aperture

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when stopping down,

compared with Canon’s ‘EF’

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FEATURES

VERDICT

01

The 77mm filter

thread is larger than

that of the EF f/1.2.

02

Keep-clean fluorine

coatings are applied

to the front and rear

elements.

03

The ring-type

ultrasonic autofocus

system is both fast

and highly accurate.

04

Air Sphere Coating is

employed to

minimize ghosting

and flare.

05

Like most L-series

lenses, this one has

a weather-sealed

construction.

FEATURES

BUILD & HANDLING

PERFORMANCE

VALUE

OVERALL

01

04

02

05

03

I

here’s very little distortion to worry about with any of

the lenses on test, and some produce practically none.

The Sigma is virtually a distortion-free lens, and the

Canon RF 85mm comes very close. The Tamron produces very

minimal pincushion distortion, and the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8

gives very slight barrel distortion. The Canon EF 85mm f/1.2

and Samyang AF lenses score the worst, for barrel and

pincushion respectively. Even with these two, however,

the effect is minimal and will generally go unnoticed.

DISTORTION

None of these lenses produce much in the way of distortion

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Lens available to hire from Hirecamera.com

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Negative results show barrel distortion at the short end of the zoom,

positive indicates pincushion distortion at long end of the zoom range

-0.4 -0.96

0.85

-0.14

1.16 0.03 0.22

-0.37