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Josef Isayo wrote:
Guys this lens is sharp!
It really isn't fair to compare this lens to the 85L as that focal lenght in general is sharper than 50mm....specially wide open.
I will be testing my new 50L against my friends 50 1.4 this weekend. I would also love to see how this 50L stacks up against Leica and the new Zeiss.
Remember even the Leica 50 1.0 Noctilux is not as sharp as the Canon 85 1.2L.
I very much agree with your well-reasoned perspective. First of all, the 85 L is simply an uncommon lens. It is unusually sharp, its bokeh is virtually unrivaled, holding its head high among the very best from the very best, regardless of format or mount; and its color rendition is so flattering for live subjects that it is uniquely excellent in almost every regard.
My only point of contention at all, and this is based upon differential from the proverbial "ideal", and not any sort of real performance and property defecit, would be the use the power assisted steering version of USM rather than a conventional ring USM. Though, to be entirely fair, I have no idea whether the element weight is a factor that precludes the standard ring USM, so it may very well be a case of it being different than what I am used to, and not a second-best choice on Canon's part, like Sigma seeming to always seeming to withhold one feature from a particular lens, like HSM from the 80-400 OS or OS from the 50-50 Bigma.
How I consider the 85 L amid the other Canon lenses is that it is separate and distinct. It's not a lens that one can point to as being typical of Canon's current EOS lens lineup. It's the Gretzky playing for the L.A Kings of lenses in that each may contribute some characteristics and abilities of the other, but neither draws its fundamental properties or definition from the other. With that in mind, I do believe that Canon makes some absolutely superb primes, including the 24, 35, 50 f/1.0, 50 f/1.2 (as it seems so far), 85, 135 and 200 f.2.8 L-series lenses, not to all of their big white primes. However, one need not seek-out the red strip to obtain a Canon prime with exceptional performance. No matter how much I love the 50 f/1.0 or will come to enjoy and depend upon the 50 f/1.2, neither will ever case me to lose any love for my 50 f/1.4 which is a permanent member of my front-line lens line-up. The 85 f/1.8 and 100 f/2 are near legends for their quality, and their pricing makes them exceptional values. Even the gimmicky 135 Soft Focus is a tremendous bargain and razor sharp to boot. It's worth owning even if one never choose to use the Soft Focus feature. The Canon Macro primes speak for theselves.
With specific regard to the family of 50's, I never understood those who look at a given lens and immediately leap to defining it by its performance at its widest aperture. I know of nobody who describes a high performance car predominately by its red-line performance or drives that car at red-line conditions all of the time. Stopping-down to enhance sharpness, even by as much as 1/3 or 1/2 stop is a long-known photographic principle and practice. The value of a lens like the 50 f/1.0 isn't just because it can reduce field depths to subatomic levels. One of its best characteristics is that one can stop down a full stop to enter the wide end of its sweet-spot aperture range and STILL be shooting at f/1.4.
The extent to which so many seem to treat lenses differently and by some special standard never ceases to amaze me; and whether it's the ability to control the field with surgical precision, avoid cheating ISO sensitivities (another benefit the "wide open corner crop" crowd so rarely seems to mention) or achieve faster shutter speeds without compromising exposure or depending upon a lens' "red-line" properties, I find tremendous benefit from each of the 50's I own (the 50 f/1.0, 50 f/1.2, and 50 f/1.4) for different reasons and do not consider any of them, or any of the other lenses I own, to be redundant. In fact, I derive a very real amount of confidence from knowing that I have the option of choosing the lens I believe will work best for the particular task at hand rather than simply defaulting to the one choice I may have and working within whatever range of outcome possibilities is may provide.
Finally, I wish there was some way to dispell the "sharpness uber alles" mania which seems to be so pervasive nowadays which seems to require critizing any lens that may be less sharp than a theoretical ideal at any aperture/focal length combination and almost dismissing any other characteristic in its entirety,
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