SLR Geek

If these are the types of photos you love to take and you want to enjoy a real world different kind of review then please read on.

Low Light:

You can get away with very little noise all the way up to 3200 ISO on the 5D Mark II. In fact I wouldn’t hesitate to say my 5D Mark II photos have less noise in them at 9,600 ISO then my 40D at 1600 ISO. That’s nothing to sneer at if you need low light performance! And with the Canon 85mm F/1.2 II L’s maximum aperture you can literally shoot in the dark often with a much lower ISO.

The 85mm F/1.2 is your low light monster on the 5D Mark II, I don’t have to harp too much on what an F/1.2 aperture and an ISO 25,600 can do for you at night. Let’s just say you can go out into what appears to be a dark night and do hand held photos.

Painting with light:

Now here’s one of the cool side benefits of a full frame sensor. Take a portrait wide open with the Canon 85mm F/1.2 lens at an aperture of F/1.2 and the background turns into a dreamy painting. NO Photoshop or fake background required. I shot this pirate girl at the Arizona Renaissance and normally the background is very distracting. With the full-framed 5D Mark II sensor and F/1.2 aperture bingo instant painting! Who has time to doctor a bunch of backgrounds when you can automatically create them. And yes you do get some Bokeh with a cropped sensor camera but it’s about half as much. With the 5D Mark II you can get twice as much Bokeh at a given distance.

The Canon 85mm F/1.2 II L, looking through the window:

I’ve never had the pleasure of owning a Camera this demanding of the lens you use, it’s an instant ultimate lens test.

And without a doubt this lens is a look through the window lens. It delivers the: clearest, sharpest and most resolving power onto any photograph you care to take with a Canon 5D Mark II. The clarity has to be seen to be believed. At F/1.2 the Depth of Field (DOF) is razor thin, the center is sharp and edges are soft which is great for female portraiture. The super soft creamy dreamy Bokeh at F/1.2 is smoother on my 5D Mark II then my 40D at a given distance, although get close enough an it looks sweet on it as well, see Blonde photo below. Stop this lens down to F/1.8 though and it gets scary sharp and clear. Step it down to F/4.0 and it’s at its sharpest and the only lens I have that gives you 100% pixel peeping razor blade edge to edge top to bottom perfect clarity in every single area of the photo.

Looking at a photo on my iMac taken with a 5D Mark II with this lens stopped down to F/4 is like standing there looking through an open window at the actual scene!

Not all is perfect as it’s: expensive, heavy, and hard to focus wide open, focus lock does not work and it eats camera batteries at twice the rate of my other lenses. Also it doesn’t focus as close on the 5D Mark II as it did on my 40D, you can’t get head filling close ups but you can come close enough for a shoulders up shot. This isn’t really a problem though, as with 21 Mega Pixels I can crop no problem. All is forgiven though when I get back to my iMac and view the results. This is the very first lens I will reach for when using the 5D Mark II.

Pros:

Great lens hood

Super fantastic Bokeh

Super low light event lens

Sharp edge to edge by F4.0

Best portrait lens for women and girls ever made

Shoot outside at night with no tripod at 3200 ISO!

Amazing looking photos that say professional all over them.

Sharp wide open in the center with wonder halo effect around outside

Auto Lens Vignetting correction using peripheral Illumination control see Auto Vignetting comments below:

Chromatic aberration correction when shooting Raw using Canon’s DPP to process see below for more.

Cons:

Price

Heavy! 1,025 Grams

Exposed rear element

No focus lock and recompose! It will always be out of focus always focus and shoot with one continuous motion or you will never achieve focus especially wide open.

Install procedure (carefully line up without seeing red dot and protect rear element)

Some CA (Chromatic Aberration) wide open totally gone when stopped down to 1.8

Removal procedure (1 manual focus, 2 focus to infinity, 3 camera Off) no manual focus with power off

Auto Vignetting peripheral illumination control:

Canon’s Auto Lens Vignetting correction works with this lens both in camera with JPEG’s and in RAW using peripheral Illumination control in DPP. No more Vignetting when shooting wide open!!! When shooting Raw open the file(s) in DPP and click on NR/Lens Lens Aberration Correction / Tune and click on Peripheral illumination. You can adjust the amount under Peripheral Illumination if you don’t like the amount automatically suggested.

Chromatic aberration correction when shooting Raw:

This lens does have some Chromatic aberration when shooting between F/.1.2 and F/1.8. Example, bright contrasty subjects such as a white shirt with a dark background. DPP can correct Raw photos by clicking NR/Lens Lens Aberration Correction / Tune and click on Chromatic Aberration to choose correction needed. Sweet!!!

Summary:

The Canon 85mm F/1.2 II L in the right hands is a fantastic look through the window lens that’s made even greater coupled with the Canon 5D