Arguably so. The Canon 85mm f/1.2L Mk II is the most recent version of this nearly holy lens. When photographers are given a choice this has to be on everyone’s short list for portrait or low-light photography. Not that Canon’s other 85mm lens (85mm f/1.8) isn’t good. In fact some may prefer the f/1.8 because of its faster focus speed and it is about 1/6 of the price.
The portrait lens of choice.
Back to the lens in question. The lens will set you back a few $$$$, but the results can’t be matched with any other Canon lens. I used this for a number of portrait shoots, and it’s never failed to please clients. Even to the untrained eye there is a special quality about the images shot with the 85L. The bokeh is unbeatable and the sharpness even wide open is impressive (Although I have to say Canon’s 135mm f/2L is sharper wide open, but that’s another story).
Can't get enough of all that glass.
Besides shooting portraits, the lens naturally excels at low-light photography. Wide open @ f/1.2 and the ISO set to 800 you can walk around any downtown street and shoot with only ambient lighting. It’s almost surreal the amount of light the lens captures. If you want to use it during the day wide open, be sure to throw on a good neutral density filter in front of it. Otherwise you’ll be shooting with some outrageous shutter speeds. My body is maxed out at only 1/4000th which is easy to hit on a sunny day.
A look at the rear.
Are there any drawbacks? Sure, there are a few. Mentioned earlier, it is relatively slow at acquiring focus. Yes, the price is steep, but keep in mind the demand on the used market keeps this lens’ resale value high. The speech I always give my wife is that, “I can always sell it for almost what I paid for it.” At just over 2lbs it’s heavy too. Finally, there is some vignetting at f/1.2. Vignetting is the least of my concerns though since it’s automatically corrected on some of Canon’s newer bodies or easily corrected through just about all editing software.
This image was taken at f/1.2 as an example of the shallow DOF you'll be playing with.
I’m not sure if this is a drawback. When you’re shooting at f/1.2, and why wouldn’t you since you got this lens over the f/1.8 version, the DOF is extremely thin. At times it’s almost too thin. If you’re shooting a portrait at f/1.2 you will often have one eye in focus and the other eye out of focus if the subject’s eyes aren’t exactly on the plane of focus. Most likely you bought this lens for the razor thin DOF, but it can bite you if you’re not careful.
Color reproduction, contrast and sharpness are outstanding.
Beautiful bokeh in every image.
GNAR Rating: 5-Stars
*As a side note I wanted to add that I’m not one to sit around in my basement and shoot resolution charts all day. I have fallen victim to that in the past and it quickly lost its novelty. My preferred method of assessing if a lens is performing as it should is to actually use it. I realize that there is a whole community of people that enjoy shooting test charts and analyzing the data with 100% and 200% crops. If you are looking for a lens review that has countless MTF charts, graphs, numbers,data there are plenty of sites to choose from. I just won’t be providing any here. I hope you understand.
