Canon EF 135mm f/2.8 with Softfocus
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Review Date: Dec 21, 2016
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 9
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This lens is very sharp. At f2.8 it is very usable, but from f4 it is just great (very comparable results as from my 50mm f1.4). I love the bokeh you get, you can really isolate our subject while the background gets a nice pro-look. On my 5D I get spectacular portraits.
This lens is very small for a 135mm and light too.
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Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM
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Review Date: Dec 21, 2016
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 10
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Let's start with the bad news: for being an L lens its build quality feels a bit plastic. Having said that, the optics are great, sharp, IS works fine and price is not absurdly high compared with other L lenses.
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Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM
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Review Date: Dec 21, 2016
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
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f you get up real close and open the lens to 2.8 you will get a slither of field to play with, which works well for a number of things not just shooting bugs and stuff. You can get quite creative with this lens.
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Canon EF 100mm f/2 USM
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Review Date: Dec 21, 2016
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Very sharp, great color, beautiful bokeh, fast focus
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Cons:
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Features/Build:
This lens doesn't have IS, but that would cost more and would mean there's more to go wrong. It does have proper USM focus, so it's fast silent and should last with no little plastic cogs to break on you. Neither front nor rear element move at all, so dust ingress is going to be a slow process and filters don't spin round as you focus. The materials are a mix of metal and high quality plastic, with metal filter thread and metal mount.
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Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM
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Review Date: Dec 21, 2016
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Very very sharp lighweight price
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Cons:
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After having it twice I tested it side by side with the overpriced 85L, i'll keep the L and sold the 1.8. The L has way better colours, contrast, microcontrast and the legendary f1.2 dof/bokeh. Other brands don't make f1.2 lenses, so it's a legendary collectors gem for future allready. The Sigma 85 1.4 is probably also good, but sometimes you read about inconsistent AF copies. I would only buy the Sigma if they make a 85 1.4 Art (I have the 35 & 50 Art allready, they are the best glass ever!).
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Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L USM
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Review Date: Dec 21, 2016
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 10
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Its being used on a 5D II and really happy I re-aquired a 85L. The only difference is notice in actual use is a minor difference in autofocus speed and maybe a very slight autofocus accuracy advantage for the Mark II.
I'm extremely happy with the pictures I get with the Mark I and see no reason whatsoever to ever upgrade to Mark II.
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Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM
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Review Date: Dec 21, 2016
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Beautiful color, contrast and boken.
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Cons:
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One intangible benefit is that it makes you a better photographer as you learn how to use it to its full potential. It is not the easiest lens to master, but it has many properties that open up creative options for styles of photography that others don’t. It has beautiful lens flare, something that would be considered a fault on other lenses. The depth of field presents as many challenges as it does benefits, and the resolution makes you consider the lens for jobs you would not at first consider it a candidate (eg astophotography).
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Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro Photo
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Review Date: Dec 21, 2016
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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The Big thing is Magnification
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Cons:
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The lens offers really high magnification (1x - 5x), opens up a new world. The lens is not difficult to use. It is a matter of getting used to it.Since it offers high magnification the lens is sensitive to motion. There is shaking observed at high magnification especially above 3x when looking at the subject with camera being hand held. This is intuitive because same applies for lens that are telescopic, you need a tripod to avoid shaking. For some people tripod would be necessary for others it might not be the case. It depends how steady your hands are. But for high magnification you need a tripod, or some method to rest camera firmly.
It has very thin Depth of Field (Field that is in focus). So when photographing tiny subjects, back and forth movement can also causes subject to be out of focus (OOF).
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Canon EF 50mm f/2.5 Compact Macro
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Review Date: Dec 21, 2016
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Amazing IQ at a bargain price!
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Cons:
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I was hoping this little lens would be a standard lens, with the possibility of 1/2 macro. The vignetting on my 5D mark II is heavy, but correctable. Not a big problem, sometimes even beautiful. But the big disadvantage for me is the bokeh. I simple do not like it, never smooth. So I still take my Sigma 50 mm F1,4 with me, witch deliver very smooth bokeh. But a little big.
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Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II
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Review Date: Dec 21, 2016
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Lightweight, very sharp and very cheap!
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Cons:
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Two of the weaknesses that I found: in very low light or when the object distance is very small, the AF does not work very well. In order to still use this great lens, I switch to MF mode which not bother me as long as the the scene is static. By day with plenty of light, the AF works very well. The AF noise is overrated in my opinion as long as you don't shoot wildlife animals (but this lense is not made for that anyways). Another weak point is the plastic construction that seems fragile. The lens must therefore be used with care but with this price, you can not ask for too much either. Then again, I have never met anyone with a broken 50mm 1.8 either.
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Canon EF 50mm f/1.8
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Review Date: Dec 21, 2016
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
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Pros:
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Solid, quick enough, sharp.
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Cons:
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Image quality is really quite good. It's not any better than any other 50 I've had, but in the age of zooms it is easy to forget that this kind of IQ @ 1.8 used to be standard. I wish the DSLR kit lens was 30/1.8 version of this lens, instead of completely blah zoom.
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Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
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Review Date: Dec 21, 2016
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 9
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I've had several 35mm cameras over the years and the 50mm has always been a workhorse for me and my most frequently used lens and this lens is no exception. I leave it on my 40D most of the time. I had to return my first copy to Adorama because the chromatic abberation was horrible, but my second copy was pristine and perfect. It was no hassel at all to do this, they have great service.
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Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM
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Review Date: Dec 21, 2016
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 9
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I also shoot Leica and own both Leica's damned-close-to-perfection 50mm f/1.4 Summilux ASPH and an uncoated Carl Zeiss 5cm f/1.5 Sonnar made in 1937 with air bubbles in the glass. The Summilux is, by all measurable ways a vastly better lens than the Sonnar, but there is something magical about Sonnar portraits that causes people to hunt these lenses down and get them converted and adjusted to their modern Leica cameras. The Canon 50mm f/1.2 is not a Sonnar, but it is great for the same reasons the Sonnar is great.
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Canon EF 50mm f/1.0L USM
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Review Date: Dec 21, 2016
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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f1.0, build quality, image quality, colour rendition, low-light AF
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Cons:
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The lens becomes a diva if you open it up more than f/2.0. It can yield
stunningly sharp images and utterly smooth backgrounds wide open.
But if you don't pay attention to the scene you can get ugly
ghosting at highlight edges mixed with lateral ca and purple
fringeing which you cannot automaticaly fix in post because
it can be more than 20 pixels wide!
But more often than not this behaviour does not show. You can get
very crisp eye and hair detail at f/1.0 if you manage to nail focus. A
slight bump in contrast or clarity puts you in the ballpark even when
pixel peeping a 21MP file at 100% magnification. When you go down
to f2.0 everything becomes tack sharp and contrasty, CA's are also
very much absent in real world images.
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Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 USM
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Review Date: Dec 21, 2016
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
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Pros:
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great IQ from f/2.8, relatively small and light, ring USM is fast and accurate
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Cons:
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In very low light it battles to focus. But most lenses do that.
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I wanted a faster "normal" lens, either a zoom or a prime for my crop body (canon 550d). First I have tried 2 copies of the tamron 17-50 F2.8, but the first one had serious backfocus, and the other one was so soft at f2.8 that I would not use it at 2.8.
Finally I decided to go with a prime lens with a "normal" 50mm like view for a crop body. Just got this lens and did some indoor testing on my daughter and my dog and this lens gives me razor sharp images even at f1.8
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Canon EF 28mm f/2.8
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Review Date: Dec 21, 2016
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Recommend? yes |
Price paid: Not Indicated
| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Size, price, performance
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Cons:
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I was quite happy with this lens overall. It's small, light and serves as a decent wide angle on a full frame (works as a good general lens on a crop body). I carried this around on my 5D almost exclusively for about six months, never really had anything negative to say about it. It doesn't give the same strong colors that an L lens does, but it's also $200 instead of $1200, and you can boost your images in PP anyway.
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