Canon R5 – RF 85mm f/1.2 USM
Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II
My love affair with medium telephoto began as soon as I mounted my first nifty fifty, an EF 50mm f/1.8 MkII to my crop-sensored Canon 1000D.
Affording the user an 80mm equivalent focal length and more depth of field control than I’d had in a digital camera before, I was immediately moonstruck. My 50mm f/.1.8II got me hooked on medium telephoto and it laid the groundwork for a love of prime lenses.
It wasn’t long before the nifty-fifty morphed into the EF 50mm f/1.4, which gave me sharper subjects and softer backgrounds. When I went full-frame 50mm and the associated field of view would eventually become my favourite focal length, but I’ve didn’t lose my love of medium telephoto.
The melodrama that is my history of 85mm lenses, the closest standard prime to my lengthened 50mm lens is a saga both long and boring. It is one that has been told episodically over the course of the last ten years, both on this blog, and on its predecessors.
It is one I shall bore you with at length, now.
EF 85mm f/1.2L USM II
In December of 2014, having lusted after one for a what felt like a long time, I managed to get my hands on an EF 85mm f/1.2 II.
This is a sexy lens, it’s heavy, gloopy, and smooshie, these are technical terms. It and I had a love affair that lasted about four years.
When I made the move to the 5D MkIV to from the 5D MkIII however the increased resolution highlighted some of the EF f/1.2L’s weaknesses. I was already aware that I was missing pictures because of the slow auto focus, and the higher pixel count made the edge softness wide-open seem more soft, and the chromatic aberration (CA) all the more visible.
EF 85mm f/1.4L IS USM
In March of 2018, I began a rebound relationship with EF 85mm f/1.4 L IS USM. It was new to the market and I was convinced it was the last lens I would ever need. It was gloriously sharp, had reduced CA, and focused super quickly. Problems solved.
Except that I didn’t like its lack of character and found its perfunctory brilliance underwhelming.
Looking back now at the images I made with this lens camera I can only assume that I just wasn’t over my ex, and was grieving for my lost f/1.2 rather than engaging with the f/1.4 properly.
Sigma 85mm f/1.4 Art
After reaching for something that I thought would fix everything, I tried again. I decided to cheat on Canon with a Sigma lens. The 85mm f/1.4 Art was sharp, fast and characterful, which seemed like the perfect lens. Unfortunately part of its exciting character profile was that you could never tell where it would focus. Sometimes in front, sometimes behind, sometimes the ear, sometimes the nose…
Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM
The Sigma and I broke up, and I finally got together with the only Canon EF 85mm lens I hadn’t tried yet. The EF 85mm f/1.8 USM. This was a lens I’d ignored, passed over, bypassed, because it was always a bit meh. After all the chromatic aberration and crazy focusing, meh was just what I wanted. I just wanted to make make wide aperture headshots with something that didn’t take up too much room in my bag.
It was adequate, and I kept it after I transitioned to the RF mount. I had one slight issue that I thought was due to the IBIS being weird in portrait mode on a project and I shopped it for a…
RF 85mm f2 Macro IS STM
I was eager to move as much of my glass over to the RF mount as quickly as I could, (I’m not sure why) and I couldn’t afford RF 85mm f/1.2L USM. It made way more sense to start dating its cheaper f/2 cousin. Small, fast to focus, and with a native mount and £2200 cheaper than the RF f/1.2? Deal done, I have everything I want and I’ve grown as a person.
For a bit there it was great, it replaced and improved upon the EF 85mm f/1.8 and I was convinced I’d done the right thing, right up until I borrowed the RF 85mm f/1.2L USM from those nice people at Canon…
RF 85mm f/1.2L USM DS
Even as I typed the words I could see myself with an RF f/1.2 in the future I knew that this wasn’t over, that I’d leave the F/2 Macro in a heartbeat if an f/1.2 came calling…
Then one did. It was back in February when my Camera Wizard (Gareth at LCE Oxford) fixed me up with newly single RF 85mm f/1.2L USM DS, (this required my breaking up with a number of lenses).
I was excited to finally have the 85mm lens problem solved. I was aware that all this excitement and chopping and changing had consumed more time and money over the last decade than was socially acceptable. It was over. It was done. I had the best 85mm lens that Canon make and I could relax and just enjoy the embarrassment of riches that I had accrued.
Except that I was irked by something.
For the uninitiated, the DS in the listing above is the Defocus Smoothing version of the lens. It’s a more expensive and relatively rare subspecies of the standard 85mm f/1.2, like the snow leopard to the boring leopard.
The lens features layers of Bam Shazazz on its Foomwhistles* that make the out of focus areas in your photo extra smooth and delicious. (*Special coatings on some of the lens elements).
The downside is that the Bam Shazazz is hungry and eats some of the light that passes through the lens when you shoot wide-open. It eats a stop and a half’s worth. It also effectively deepens your apparent depth of field.
I like shallow depth of field (DOF), what can I say, I just haven’t grown out of it, I also shoot a bunch in low light. Buying the lens that offers the low light performance, and extreme DOF control is my thing. So why have the DS version of this lens? It’s counter intuitive. Do I want to make my DOF deeper? No. Do I want my lens to crave more light? No.
The DS version of the RF 85mm didn’t get a fair chance. I used it for a few bits and it performed as one would expect a £3300 lens to perform, but I didn’t give the relationship a chance. I didn’t take it places, which meant that we didn’t get to make many pictures.
I was still thinking about the ex I still wasn’t over. (I have nearly re-bought the EF 85mm f/1.2 so many times, but you should never go back… )
It took six months, for me to decide what to do. I considered selling the lens and just being without an 85mm prime. I could just use my very good RF 70-200mm f/2.8 to make headshots when I need to. Money saved, bag made lighter, win win.
RF 85mm f/1.2L USM
I didn’t do that. I looked back at all the images I’ve made with my 85mm primes and realised that I need one on my arm. This week I took delivery of my seventh 85mm prime in a decade, an RF 85mm f/1.2L USM.
I’ve restructured the interior of my roller bag so that it can travel alongside my 50mm f/1.2 and the Trinity at f/2.8 (15-35, 24-70, & 70-200). This means that it should actually get to go places, which is going to make making pictures together much easier.
Circle of Conclusions
Aside from underlining my idiocy, what can we learn from this exercise? While I might be a little obsessive, confused or stupid when it comes to gear, that fact is that these are my tools. I use them, I trust them, after a while I know them and come to love them. They enable me to make the things that I want to make, that makes them precious.
Often when I part with a lens or a camera, it’s the (memories) that I’ve made with them that I mourn, not because I can’t keep the images, but that I can’t make more of them.
Saying goodbye to some lenses is saying goodbye to the wherewithal to make those memories, and finding the right replacement, brings it back.
All this lens has to do is last 18 months and it will have beaten the average, and then it’s just a further 2.5 year to outlast the ex I never got over. I have high hopes.