AppleCanon wrote:
Actually, some people who "actually use their equipment" do care about pixel-level sharpness, and not just for testing. I appreciate the fact that many typical uses of the lens do not require corner sharpness (e.g. portraits) but you are misinformed if you think that "pixel-peepers" are uniformly people who test equipment and do not produce real photos.
As an example, I require lenses with good corner sharpness for astrophotography. With bright pin-point sources of lights (stars), a lens with the MTF published will be unacceptable. I am not one to complain about pricing, and I am happy for Canon to attempt to earn every penny they can. But for their flagship standard lens, the 50/1.2L's optical performance seems to be lacking from the quantitative information available so far.
In case you don't understand MTF charts and sensor resolution, the thin lines represent contrast at 30 line pairs per mm. At the corners, the lens wide open has essentially zero contrast (i.e. no definition) and stopped down has about 50% contrast (i.e. black and white look like dark gray and light gray, respectively). But now, consider that the sensor on the 1DsII (not to mention the possible successor) has 70 line pairs per mm! That means, in slightly oversimplified terms, that this lens won't even be able to resolve 1/4 of the 1DsII's pixels in the corners.
Now if you are happy with your camera being 2 megapixels effective in the corners, that's fantastic. But please don't call those of us who need more resolution "pixel-peepers" who don't "actually use their equipment".
Despite my wording, I'm not uniformly saying that, my apologies. What I am saying is that the graphs are only part of the equation. Depending on ones' needs, it can be a large or a small part. Generally speaking, I see way too much value being placed in charts, ratings, and 100% crops these days, so much so that some "can't see the forest from the trees".
As with everything else in photography, "Your mileage may vary".
They priced themselves out of getting 1600 for this lense when they made a 350.00 1.4. You would be insane to pay that much for the difference. I could see doing it if it was a stop of light but its not.
Brent Ward wrote:
Your not only paying for the 1.2, your paying for weather sealing, AF speed, and build quality.
Weather that would destroy the 50 f/1.4 is probably not something you want to bring the 50 f/1.2 or your camera body in either -- I mean be honest, are you really going scuba diving with a naked 50 f/1.2?
Differences in AF speed are measured in fractions of a second, and if you have a newer Canon body, esp a 1-series, the AF is extremely fast regardless of lens.
And as far as build quality goes you could destroy and replace the 50 f/1.4 five times and the 50 f/1.8 more than twenty times before equalling the price of one 50 f/1.2.
Water is not as much of issue. Obviously you would be an idiot to shoot outside in a down poor with no camera protection, but in dusty situations, weather sealing is invaluable.
And the 50 1.4 doesn't focus too fast on a 1 series body.
seriously I think the 1600 is the list price or MSRP and not the street price. The best I can find it the street price of the 85 f.12 is 3K, the 70-200 IS is 2899, the 600mm F4 is 11,999. Are we seeing a trend here? Canon routinely prices it's lenses much higher than what they sell for on the street.
Unless Canon has changed it's nasty ways since the releasing the 85 F1.2 II I'm doubting these prices. I think realistically in time this lens costs around the 135L or less once the demand falls off.
I haven't read all 34 pages of this, so I apologize if this has already been mentioned, but it appears that the 50 f/1.2L will be capable of shallower depth of field than the 85 f/1.2L because it focuses twice as close. Should be very cool for creative usage in a non-macro situation (obviously, telephoto macros have extremely shallow DOF)
Jman13 wrote:
I haven't read all 34 pages of this, so I apologize if this has already been mentioned, but it appears that the 50 f/1.2L will be capable of shallower depth of field than the 85 f/1.2L because it focuses twice as close. Should be very cool for creative usage in a non-macro situation (obviously, telephoto macros have extremely shallow DOF)
I do not think that's neccessarily the case. For the same aperture value as well as distance to subject, the 85L will have shallower DoF than the 50L. Now, I do not remember the minimum focusing distance with the 50L, however, if not much smaller than the 85L, it is possible that the latter still has a thinner DoF.
A DoF calculator could help here.
Either way, I think it is generally safe to say that most folks will find the DoF thin enough with both lenses. If anything, sometimes too thin for what is attempted to be accomplished with those lenses (as well as AF accuracy of your camera )
Jman13 wrote:
it appears that the 50 f/1.2L will be capable of shallower depth of field than the 85 f/1.2L because it focuses twice as close. Should be very cool for creative usage in a non-macro situation (obviously, telephoto macros have extremely shallow DOF)
I can tell you exactly:
85 f/1.2L -- closest focusing distance 3.2 feet
DOF at 85mm, 3.2 feet and f/1.2 is 0.02 feet
50 f/1.2L -- closest focusing distance is 1.48 feet
DOF at 50mm, 1.48 feet, and f/1.2 is 0.01 feet
So you're right that you get a closer focusing distance; as far as your DOF goes, the difference is 1/4 inch vs 1/8 inch total DOF, so I don't think that makes much of a difference. There are true macro lenses at 50, 60, 90, and 100mm that are optically outstanding, much cheaper, and have minimum focusing distances of inches. That said a 3 feet minimum focus distance isn't so convenient for the occasional closeup -- you'll need a bunch of extender rings to make that useful!
Sjhugoose wrote:
I think realistically in time this lens costs around the 135L or less once the demand falls off.
Scott
Realistically, you will be waiting one heck of a long time to get that lens, if $900 or less is your purchase point.
What on earth can make you believe that the lens will retail for $200 less than the 24L and 35L, to use those as examples ?
handheld wrote:
Realistically, you will be waiting one heck of a long time to get that lens, if $900 or less is your purchase point.
What on earth can make you believe that the lens will retail for $200 less than the 24L and 35L, to use those as examples ?
Umm have you ever compared MSRP or list prices to street prices?
Check it out and then compare. Many lenses sell for 50-60% their MSRP or list. Actually most sell in that range!
Furthermore list on the 35L and 24L are both $1899. Maybe thats why!
Edited by Sjhugoose on Aug 25, 2006 at 06:51 AM GMT
handheld wrote:
Realistically, you will be waiting one heck of a long time to get that lens, if $900 or less is your purchase point.
What on earth can make you believe that the lens will retail for $200 less than the 24L and 35L, to use those as examples ?
Generally, after 1 or 2 years, canon lenses end up with a street price of about 60-70% of their MSRP.
MSRP for a 85 f1.8 is 570--they go for 350.
The original MSRP For the 70-200 F4L was 1350--Now it is about $700.
400 f2.8L 12,000 MSRP, goes for around 7,000 now.
I forget what Canon's invoice usually is on most lenses when I worked at the camera store.
I do remember, however, that all fender guitars are purchased by music stores for exactly 50% of what the MSRP is. Of course, there are always M.A.P.s on all that stuff. In fact, almost all music equipment from drums to amps to guitars are purchased for exactly 50% of MSRP with the EXCEPTION of new models.
bad_doggie wrote:
1/8 inch DOF! think of the possibilities! u can really isolate that zit, keeping the rest of the face in an anonymous blur.
I hope you are not saying that just to propel me into my fave diatribe about the expressive value of your dog's (or girlfriend's, baby's, pet chicken's or whatever) portrait whereby their left eye is the only thing in focus (if that).
oh please do! i don't think i've heard one of your diatribes yet.
there was another thread just yesterday with examples of the 85L @ 1.2 used for portraits on a 20d, with different results (more DOF! yay!)
whoa! ur already "poised to order" a 50/1.2? kinda looks like u have to have them all.
but hmm, u don't have a 14L either!
so tell the truth, aren't the 17-55 and the 60 and the 135 your best lenses? oh okay, and the 85.and probably the 200/2.8. (200/1.8 doesn't count, cuz it no longer exists.)
I’m a little confused by looking at the MTF chart for the 50mm f/1.2L and comparing it to the 50mm f/1.4. I ought to be able to directly compare these charts as they are both 50mm lenses – correct?
Here are my impressions; do I have this close to correct?
The contrast reproduction of the new 1.2L looks to be excellent since the 10 LP/mm (thick) lines are very near the top of the chart. The f/8 (thick blue lines) performance looks outstanding (above 0.95) and appears the have better edge-to-edge performance than the 1.4 lens which exhibits dropoff in contrast reproduction at the corners. The wide-open f/1.2 performance (thick black lines) seems roughly comparable but slightly better than the wide-open f/1.4 performance of the 1.4 lens.
The resolving power of the 1.2L seems to be very good as the 30 LP/mm (thin) lines are near the top of the chart, especially at f/8 (thin blue lines) where the sharpness does not seem to drop of at the corners (at ~21.63 mm from the center) as it does on the 1.4 lens. The wide-open (thin black lines) performance of the 1.2L seems to be comparable to the wide-open performance of the 1.4 lens. The performance of both lenses looks questionable here. The wide open sagittal (dashed thin black lines) performance looks particularly bad on the 1.2L. What the real world significance of this means remains to be seen.
In summary, from the MTF, the IQ ought to be better than the 50mm f/1.4 at f/8 but will be roughly comparable wide-open (although wide open means f/1.2 as opposed to f/1.4). Of course again, real world performance remains to be seen.
bad_doggie wrote:
as noted in another thread recently, the crop factor and pixel density of the sensor also matters.
I plugged the values for both APS-C and full frame into the calculator, and the biggest difference it made was +/- 0.01 feet (1/8 inch).
The pixel density doesn't figure into the equations that go into DOF. It certainly matters if you're taking a full frame image and cropping to a smaller image, though.
The fast lenses help 35mm achieve the "look" of a larger format. That look works when getting shallow DOF at normal working distances of 3 ft + and wider angles that why the 35mm f1.4 is so cool. The 85mm f1.2 is magical in that aspect
Sneakyracer wrote:
The fast lenses help 35mm achieve the "look" of a larger format. That look works when getting shallow DOF at normal working distances of 3 ft + and wider angles that why the 35mm f1.4 is so cool. The 85mm f1.2 is magical in that aspect
I certainly agree with respect to the wide angles, which have such a big DOF.
But for an 85mm lens? It doesn't need to be fast for a shallow DOF -- if you're wielding an 85mm lens on full frame and focusing on a subject 10 feet away, even at f/8 your DOF is less than 2 feet.
bad_doggie wrote:
so tell the truth, aren't the 17-55 and the 60 and the 135 your best lenses? oh okay, and the 85.and probably the 200/2.8. (200/1.8 doesn't count, cuz it no longer exists.)
As a matter of fact they are in a general sort of way ! Add the 24L and the 300 f/2.8 to that as well. Hope the 50L will join them.
(The 60 has NEVER let me down. The 17-55 f/2.8 is evolving in that direction too. However, we are digressing.)
