jjjwolf7722 wrote:
If we are worried about a little rattle maybe we need to rethink everything about what we are doing. This lens is light, compact, weather sealed, fast focusing, somewhat cheap and well built. All the minor subjective things are silly to debate (distortion, flare, bokeh). Is it Sony price, no. I just carried the lens around for a hour taking photos of kids and it seems similar to Sony 35mm 1.4GM which I would say is the best 35mm lens made. Maybe Tamron 35mm 1.4 EF a close runner up.
I'm not so much worried about the rattle as someone else asked you about it above. I would be more worried about the wear and tear of moving parts inside with constant heavy travel. I'm sure I'll find the lens to be decent, but it looks to me like Canon missed the mark with pricing on this lens. It would be a great lens around $899-$999 and at that price point there would be no reason to focus on its shortcomings. But at $1499 it should be much better IMO.
According to Rudy Winston, who took considerable pains to explain this in the Canon USA launch video, the rattle is entirely normal and is NOT (emphasis his) a sign of a problem.
Images listed below. Lens looks to be similar to Sony 35mm 1.4 GM. Lens does seems to focus better than Sony option. Quiet, quick and smooth focus which is what im looking for. Photos below, sorry not paying for upload photo option. Hopefully this helps some people out.
jjjwolf7722 wrote:
Images listed below. Lens looks to be similar to Sony 35mm 1.4 GM. Lens does seems to focus better than Sony option. Quiet, quick and smooth focus which is what im looking for. Photos below, sorry not paying for upload photo option. Hopefully this helps some people out.
Great examples. Lens looks really sharp (though Google Photos compression is pretty crunchy). I don't think I've seen such extreme cat's eyes bokeh swirl in the corners from a Canon L lens before. Kind of unfortunate, but it's a tradeoff for other features at that size. I get the feeling cat's eyes is somewhat of a low priority for Canon whereas it seems recent Sony lenses have been effective at minimizing it with similar size constraints and a smaller mount diameter. I don't think I'll be giving up my 28-70 (admittedly a much larger lens), which I think does a better job at 35mm in respect to cat's eyes.
Looks like my eyes weren't failing me earlier in the thread, this lens actually manages to have some character! Not as clinical as the Sony, but is it worth almost $1000 more than the new Nikon?!
The rendering doesn't seem worthy of the L badge to me, but I guess RF glass having anything but sterile rendering is uncharted waters for Canon.
Currently I’m more impressed with how fast the autofocus is. Seems similar to Sony 135mm 1.8 gm which I thought was the best auto focus lens made. Tamron EF 35mm 1.4 being close second.
This cats eye thing seems insane. Personally I don’t see it. I’m a normal non photo pro though. Even my wife things images look same if not better than Sony 35mm GM.
jjjwolf7722 wrote:
Images listed below. Lens looks to be similar to Sony 35mm 1.4 GM. Lens does seems to focus better than Sony option. Quiet, quick and smooth focus which is what im looking for. Photos below, sorry not paying for upload photo option. Hopefully this helps some people out.
Greatly appreciate the samples. Any chance you have any shots from mid and longer distances to subject/s? More curious about the rendering of environmental type portraits, personally. Thanks in advance.
As a side note, I agree with Scott. Lens definitely appears to have character, at least up close. Interest is piqued.
rscheffler wrote:
I don't think I've seen such extreme cat's eyes bokeh swirl in the corners from a Canon L lens before. Kind of unfortunate, but it's a tradeoff for other features at that size.
Yeah, I think it's a tradeoff for the smaller entry pupil. It certainly adds some character to the lens. Looking at the samples that @jjjwolf7722 posted, I think it looks rather great. Sharpness in the center at least looks really crisp.
I also think it looks great, except the cat's eyes in the periphery. Once I have seen it, I can't un-see it. There will certainly be tons of background situations where it will be less obvious or prevalent.
Relatively low cat's eyes is an aspect that attracted me to the 28-70/2, but then there's probably a reason why it's a 95mm filter size... So maybe there is room for an RF 35/1.0 'halo' bokeh king statement lens (take that Leica 35 Cron IV "bokeh king" ).
JohnDizzo15 wrote:
Greatly appreciate the samples. Any chance you have any shots from mid and longer distances to subject/s? More curious about the rendering of environmental type portraits, personally. Thanks in advance.
As a side note, I agree with Scott. Lens definitely appears to have character, at least up close. Interest is piqued.
Will see if I can get some posted tomorrow. Have not had time to use lens today.
RoamingScott wrote:
There is a ton of "swirly bokeh" with subjects well away from MFD which you don't see a whole lot in modern, highly corrected lenses. There is also cat's eye bokeh very near the middle of the frame.
It's actually refreshing to see a lens with some character vs all of the modern stale options out there. I'm not sure that optically this lens is up to the legendary EF 35/1.4 L II, but to be fair, that was one of the finest 35mm lenses made IMO.
We use the RF 50mm 1.2L as it's one of our favorites, but I do prefer the character of the EF versions, especially the EF 35mm 1.4L.
My rental is going back tomorrow, and I'll miss it. After using it at a bunch of distances and against busy backgrounds, the swirly bokeh hasn't been a practical issue (and is easier to anticipate than the GF 55's busy transitional zone bokeh). For people and events, the distortion (though very obvious) hasn't been an issue either.
EDIT: To address one of the questions raised earlier, I am not a habitual against the light shooter and the weather has not been cooperating anyway, but the one time I managed to get some sun and put a subject's head against it for backlighting, I thought the resulting images were perfectly fine although there was a distinct loss of contrast. I haven't done any comparisons vs other lenses as this just isn't a situation I find my self in much, and when I do I think I am less bothered by the loss of contrast than others, so YMMV.
Will I buy one...I'm not sure it does enough to displace the 28-70 f/2 as my "default" lens. It would be nice to have around as an alternative to the 28-70 when I know I won't need the flexibility of the zoom, but that's a bit niche to justify the spend and slot in the bag. I've got an R5 II pre-ordered so it might be that I re-test it on that to see if my views change in a month or two...or whenever the R5 II actually ships.
I would need to be educated in optics on how this lens can ever work as an L lens. Just look at the size of the front lens for a f1.4, it screams lemon shape specular highlights together with heavy mechanical vignetting. And it shows at the images linked to photos.google above. The bean counters at Canon can’t yet bend physics and one can’t unsee it.
And then the huge loss of contrast in backlighting shown at the German review. And the undisputed extremely poor distortion correction. To me as a photographer, it is an insult to carry the L badge and the associated price tag.
BokehBeauty wrote:
I would need to be educated in optics on how this lens can ever work as an L lens. Just look at the size of the front lens for a f1.4, it screams lemon shape specular highlights together with heavy mechanical vignetting. And it shows at the images linked to photos.google above. The bean counters at Canon can’t yet bend physics and one can’t unsee it.
And then the huge loss of contrast in backlighting shown at the German review. And the undisputed extremely poor distortion correction. To me as a photographer, it is an insult to carry the L badge and the associated price tag....Show more →
Couldn't agree more. It would be fair to price it similarly to the new Nikon 35/1.4. Maybe a couple hundred extra because it's a Canon and it got VCM, but it's insane to ask $1500 for this lens. I assume it's even more in Europe.
BokehBeauty wrote:
I would need to be educated in optics on how this lens can ever work as an L lens. Just look at the size of the front lens for a f1.4, it screams lemon shape specular highlights together with heavy mechanical vignetting.
I posted the image below back on page 4. Is it acceptable cat's eyes vs. the Canon? The image below is from Sigma's website - their 35/1.2 image gallery. It's a lens with a huge front element and just overall a huge lens. Yet still suffers from significant cat's eyes. I suspect there's more to it than the front element size. As you likely know, Leica's 35/1.4 for the M system takes the diminutive 46mm filter size and IIRC does not have extreme cat's eyes problems. I think the Voigtlander VM 35/1.4 is even smaller.
Clearly Canon chose certain tradeoffs in exchange for other benefits. Who benefits can be debated and as somewhat of a traditionalist, I don't necessarily like significant dependence on software corrections. Nor do I like the strong cat's eyes. It does make me a bit concerned about the other 'hybird' fast primes that are supposed to follow the 35/1.4; that they'll likely be designed with similar tradeoffs.
Sure there are far more elements in the optical path that make up mechanical vignetting, the front element was just the obvious which sprang to my eyes right away.
Also didn’t Canon highlight with the introduction of the RF mount that we need a large flange to overcome sensor vignetting and aberrations of the sensor surface lenses. Then we shouldn’t get such obvious limitations in the rest of the optical path.
rscheffler wrote:
Clearly Canon chose certain tradeoffs in exchange for other benefits. Who benefits can be debated and as somewhat of a traditionalist, I don't necessarily like significant dependence on software corrections. Nor do I like the strong cat's eyes. It does make me a bit concerned about the other 'hybird' fast primes that are supposed to follow the 35/1.4; that they'll likely be designed with similar tradeoffs.
This is exactly what worries me so much. 35mm doesn’t interest me much, but 28mm f1.4 and 50mm f1.4 at a more reasonable price do.
docusync wrote:
Couldn't agree more. It would be fair to price it similarly to the new Nikon 35/1.4. Maybe a couple hundred extra because it's a Canon and it got VCM, but it's insane to ask $1500 for this lens. I assume it's even more in Europe.
Yes, in Germany it is €1899. Considering our VAT and Euro to $, it is net $1.661 <- €1899 * (1 - 19%) * 1.08 exchange rate. To $1499, plus 11% before tax, pretty cheeky.
There will certainly be tons of background situations where it will be less obvious or prevalent.