.

It was nice of you to post the pics you had, Phil, because there is a lot of interest in this comparison.

Phil Bonner wrote:
....it would take a practiced eye to distinguish the photos between the two....

No, it would take a psychic. When resized for posting here, it would be physically,optically, scientifically impossible to discern a difference between shots from these lenses taken at the same FL and f stop. (A clever FM'er might go into the EXIF data, but otherwise it could not be done :-)

I once used both lenses side-by-side to shoot lined resolution charts at 135mm and could only tell the difference pixel peeping the f/2.8 shot at 100%.

This was just an informal fun comparison of some real world shots rather than trying to compare line charts on line.

To the contrary, these shots are examples of how I actually use both lenses together in real life shooting: Swapping the 135L for the zoom, back and forth, then picking out the best overall shots from them both.

Edited by Phil Bonner on Feb 25, 2006 at 11:31 PM GMT

Phil Bonner wrote:
I actually used both lenses side-by-side to shoot lined resolution charts at 135mm and could only tell the difference pixel peeping the f/2.8 shot at 100%.

Me too, exactly :-)


This was just an informal fun comparison of some real world shots rather than trying to compare line charts on line.


I hear ya. It is a fun "poll"

The 135l is the middle one.

EnCapture wrote:
bokeh and spearation makes it obivous (to me) that the bottom one is the 135L

Most of you agree that photos taken with 135L and 70-200L are hard to distinguish in this type of shooting. What would the results be with portrait? Zoom has big advantage over fix lens so if results are almost indistinguishable in print when is 135 better than zoom? Only when you need 1 extra stop?

Yes :-)

135L is cheaper and it is much smaller, lighter, easier to handle. On 1.6x crop, it's great for candid shots at events and action in more confined areas.