| Field-test of the Canon EF 85mm
f/1.8 USM Telephoto lens. The Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM is a large-aperture medium telephoto lens featuring compact size for superior portability. A newly-developed rear focusing system optimized for medium telephoto lenses achieves fast AF operation and allows a concave-convex two-element focus lens construction which minimizes the sagittal halo and astigmatism that commonly occur in this type of optical system.
Sharp, clear images are obtained even at maximum aperture. And a wide manual focusing ring is provided for smooth, precise manual focusing at any time even in AF mode.
Medium telephoto EF lenses are single focal length, large-aperture models that make it easy to obtain sharp images with soft, natural-looking backgrounds. This lens class offers an angle of view similar to that of the human eye when focused on a single subject, thus allowing for easy shooting with a natural-looking perspective and relative distance between objects. Generally called "portrait lenses," this class offers excellent natural perspective and allows for softly-blurred background effects. When shooting portraits, some professional photographers recommend 85mm for female portraits and 100mm for males. But personally speaking, you can use either lens for both male and female portraits. If you wish to shoot naturally-lit photos at dusk or indoors, medium telephoto lenses have two important advantages over zoom versions - lens speed and portability. Furthermore, medium telephoto lenses provide many opportunities for abstract shots using the very narrow depth-of-field, possible at full aperture. I have never used the EF 85mm f/1.8 USM telephoto lens until this field-test evaluation and have heard of a lot of news concerning the less-than-favorable optical quality when shooting at its full aperture of f/1.8. Now that I have the opportunity to test it out on the field, I found that those news items are merely nonsense, spread by people who lack the confidence of using this lens effectively. As a professional photographer, I was trained to make full use of any piece of equipment, including overcoming any setbacks to get the assignment done. So basically, if there really is a problem with this EF lens, I am sorry to say that I have not experienced any so far. However, I may offer a theory as to why some users say that the images captured with this lens at its maximum aperture were soft - they could have accidentally turned the FT-M focusing ring during exposure, thus resulting in less-than-optimum quality photos. << Back to Main . 1 . 2 . 3 . |
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