Nice, considered review Ramon. I have the 85 f/1.2 II and had the 135 f/1.2 at the same time for a couple of years. My impression of the two was that the 85 had a little more "magic' that is hard to define, but that the 135 had a kind of relentless sharpness that was quite good for its speed and focal length.

As to build, my 85 came flawless out of the box and I haven't noticed anything negative - no mechanical weakness, unintentional disassembly or dust problems. As to focusing, yes, it's slow, but, as others have mentioned, the focus motor has to move a group of very heavy lens elements. In any case, hardly anyone seriously buys this lens for fast-moving low light sports (a few diehards to the contrary). Its best use is for slow considered portraiture and even some specially rendered product shots and other miscellany, all done in a style where ultimate focus speed is almost irelevant.

I find its bokeh to be impeccable, but I hardly ever shoot this lens tight at f1.2 (maybe for an occasional half- or full-body shot), due to its insanely narrow depth of focus; if your subject so much as twitches, your f/1.2 shot will be a mess of misplaced focus. I find that f/1.6 is a great aperture for my purposes with f/2.0 being not much less attractive. At f/2.8, you might as well be using less expensive glass, although this lens is still quite amazing through f/4.0, compared to most others. It's not just sharpness, it 's also the "character" of the image: a combination of designed-in flaws and aberrations from the purposeful trade-off demanded by such a wide maximum aperture, its bokeh, its color, its contrast and the super-high center resolution along with dimiinshed edge and corner results. This is supposed to be, above all else, a portrait lens, and all these characteristics make it a great one. For instance, when taking a good head and shoulders picture, it is the central area of the subjects face, around the eyes, that benefits from great sharpness, not the tips of the subjects' shoulders on the edge of the picture.

When I have to quickly shoot a lot of portraits of a lot of people, as in a day of corporate "gang" shooting on location at some headquarters conference room, I always use my brilliant 70-200 f/2.8 IS II. It get's the job done perfectly, and you can somewhat make up for f/2.8 bokeh by using a longer focal length when possible. But for those occasions when I can take my time to get a really impressive single "portrait" picture, I like to use the 85, and slowly vary the focus to see what I can make of the very narrow band of focus that it affords me. For this, there is absolutely no substitute.

All in all, a terrific lens I will keep indefinitely.

Regards,
David

Expect some new equipment announcements on the 8th. Their announcement of a presence at CES is carefully worded to avoid tipping off anyone about new products.

expatinasia said:

gkaefer said:

video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=A3PDXmYoF5U#

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Wow. Thanks for sharing that. Must be one of the very best marketing videos I have ever seen. It is long, but I watched it all, and I want one!! I have no idea what I would do with it, but it definitely has that cool factor! I am really looking forward to GoPro 4 coming out I can watch that marketing video.

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lol +1 - sure would have liked to have a gopro3 back when I was young enough to do crazy things rather than just document them
Granted, the OP might be trolling and granted, the GoPro is a one trick pony, but what a trick...
Only little more than 10 years ago, a 10$ dispossable camera seemed like such luxury faced with the alternative of absolutely NO way of documenting our epic failings in the alps...
oh well.... blabla and then some, when one resorts to reading these posts its too late or too bored better put the cap back on the bottle and hit the sack

Viggo said:

Well, it's not exactly the same, but I had decided I wouldn't buy another lens for quite some time, but saw a a 70-200 f2.8 L for $360 and just bought it, who would pass? ;D

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Where exactly did you find that deal? I'd cal that a "once in a lifetime" find.

Videoshooter said:

Then I'll see a tourist shooting video with their camera sideways, and I realise that everything is going to be fine!

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LOL

Axilrod said:

Use ISO's in multiples of 160 when possible

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I seem to remember something about this NOT being a fully reliable rule of thumb?
Anyways, Consider getting a picturestyle profile for video as well. When/If you get into more serious PP, you can benefit greatly from shooting with a flat profile (such as the CineStyle). Others (like the Marvell profile) are less flat and give a more pleasing result out-of-camera while still retaining some room for grading. It can be a little discouraging at first though, to browse through endless flat footage that youøll never bother grading
One of the perks of the Magic Lantern is that it alows you to use 2 profiles: 1 for what you see on the LCD, the other for the actual file. This can be very handy for ppl like me who lack visual imagination
Other than that, IS is great, simple accessories like shoulder rigs & LCD-VF Loupes are dirt cheap, ML rocks, convertible non-AF primes are cheap and so on and so forth - happy shooting!

dswatson83 said:

I just felt like Canon didn't even challenge themselves with the 35mm f/2. What prime doesn't look good at f/2, how hard is it to put IS in a prime if you can easily do it in zooms, and then lets charge double the amount as typically charged for this type of lens.

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How did they not "challenge themselves" with the 35/2 IS? The new lens is dramatic improvement over the original 35/2 —
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?Lens=824&Camera=453&Sample=0&FLI=0&API=0&LensComp=122&CameraComp=0&FLIComp=0&APIComp=0

What prime lens doesn't look good at f/2? How about the original Canon 35/2? How about the Canon 28/1.8? How about the Sigma 20/1.8? How about the Nikon 35/2? Just look at the fuzzy corners on those lenses. The new Canon 35/2 IS is a dramatic improvement over those lenses.

The new Sigma 35/1.4 looks outstanding, but it's a much bigger and heavier lens that offers an extra stop of light. It's a direct competitor to the 35L, not to the new 35/2 IS. Not everyone is looking for the biggest, heaviest 35mm lens they can find. Canon has a unique offering with the 35/2 IS.

My 1D X came with Canon's 'randomly-distributed narrow aperture diffraction test pattern', and they didn't even charge extra. A blower didn't help, but my Arctic Butterfly 724 Super Bright removed the 'feature'.

lifilmmaker said:

Has anyone ever experienced a grinding sound when shooting video with the T3i?

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I have shot video with the 60D and the 5DII. On both cameras you can hear the IS. My solution is to turn off IS if using the internal mic, or the better solution, get an external mic. Just about any external mike will beat the in-camera mic. The key thing to look for is some form of isolation from the mic stand, or if hotshoe mounted, from the camera body. The lower picture shows details of a hotshoe mount... the green line points to the hotshoe mount, the red lines point to the elastics used to isolate the microphone from the mount, and the blue lines point to hair shed by Fluffy the cat. (cat hair is optional).

HoneyBadger said:

I am not going to put much faith on that test. First, both lenses need to be taken at the same focal length. Second, they should use a full frame so corner sharpness can be determined

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they have tested at the same focal lengths. of course they included the 105mm too.
you have to watch and understand the review video.

if you read the website, they are working on a FF review.

Who legitimately tests an L series lens on a cropped sensor anyways...?

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photozone for example.. and i did not hear complains about it.... :

http://www.photozone.de/canon-eos

i think they may had a bad sample. but that gives me not much faith either.
as roger mentioned the 70mm end showed quite a lot of variation.

SDHC Cards seldom write at more than 10 MB/sec once they have been used. The figures on Roger Gailbrathe's page only apply to a newly erased card, and that is not the same as a formatted card, its a low level format that can take 30 minutes or more. The 5D MK III can do a low level format on a SD card, but its a battery eater.
On the other hand, CF cards will write much faster, even if they have been used and filled with data.
Since the slowest card to write is going to limit you when writing to both cards, except for the unusual case of totally blank cards, 10 MB/sec is the most common limit.

Right from the beginning my 7d, 2 months old with firmware 2.0.3 had the freezing problem. No action possible after it went in sleep mode. Have to take the battery out. Is in repair now. So it is not true that the newest firmware tackles this problem, although canon claims that the version 2.0.3. "fixes a phenomenon in which the camera stops working when the auto power off setting takes effect.". No way!!! I think it is about time that canon solves this problem now for once and for all. It's really annoying that I had tot take back my 7d after 2 months.

Thanks for your input! I'm gonna either stick with center point or setup orientation-linked for portrait & landscape which both are NOT center. I'll compare my images over the w/e. But i definitely agree with u regarding having enough to worry about, LOL! My prob lately (& not even sure if it is one) but i actually FORGET that my camera has any other mode than M....i used to always shoot on AV or TV & since M i NEVER switch! Maybe ill try this too?

I've never used the MkI, but the MkII is stellar. TDP's charts show that I can put a 1.4x extender behind the MkII and still have better IQ than the MkI.

Also, I really like the convenience of being able to change the tilt and shift axes relative to one another on the fly. Having used it, I would not want a TS-E lens without that capability.

bdunbar79 said:

Oh lighten up everybody.

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Ha. Not a good idea unless we own Nikons, apparently....

I guess I'm lucky that my aesthetic preferences prevent me from pushing the dark areas of photos I take with my 5DII to the extent that I can see banding. (Nor could I see any difference in this regard between the 6D and D600 when I rented them last weekend.)

See the comparison in features
http://t4ivst3i.com

I remember us hoping that canon would use some line skipping tech in the 5D3 to make the video sharp like picture...too bad that never happened.

Thanks guys, both things worked.

Great low angle light this time of year for several hours. Hope you enjoy!

Well, it seems we finally have a positive resolution to this whole ordeal. Today my replacement lens arrived!

It had been so long since I last used it that I was convinced it wasn't the same lens! DWI used my same box and packing materials so it was a bit misleading in the end. At any rate, it is the right lens, and it is brand new. And most importantly, it seems to work correctly.

I'll use it over the next few days to get an idea if it really is all sorted. If it's not, expect to hear more from me. In the meantime, thanks everyone for your feedback and interest.

Cheers,

Michael

As soon as I came to fatal error for Nikon, I knew it was a troll. Nikon cameras take photos just fine. A "Fatal Error" would not let you take a photo by my definition. Lack of a feature is not Fatal, or even very interesting.

So what did you end up with? hows she like it?

user reviews on the nikon d600 and d800 are both below 4/5 stars from everywhere, except DXO of course. The 6d, 5d mkII and 5dmkIII are all above 4.4ish/5. I guess flinging oil around like a factory machine and left focus issues outweight the DXO scores and on-paper specs. I must say the d600 looks great on paper.

Respinder said:

Hi everyone..

I too am new to off-camera flash. I own a 5D Mark III and am looking to purchase a Speedlite 600EX-RT along with a Manfrotto 367B basic light stand ...

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Not an expert, just a hobbyist but here are some other options to consider. These are ideal for OCF and most are recommended by Syl Arena.

Perfect light weight stand for a single Speedlite http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001M4HXB2/ref=wms_ohs_product

Not the cheapest route but these small ball heads are really handy to connect your speedlite. (They were more beneficial before when I had my optical flash units making it easy to align) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002WN2114/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

1. To mount the flash onto the adaptor, I am assuming that the flash stand the 600EX-RT comes with will mount directly onto the adaptor spigot, or do I need to buy another part for this?

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The cold shoes that come with the Speedlite seem flimsy for mounting on a stand. I've only used those for table top mounting. Try these. I bought the plastic one just to avoid pin shorting but I like the metal best.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00009UTL1/ref=oh_details_o00_s01_i02
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004CBTCFC/ref=wms_ohs_product

2. If I use a wired connection between the flash and the camera, I am assuming I will need a male-to-male PC cord that connects the flash directly to the camera? I've found that the longest distance cords are only 12 feet

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Instead, use a OCF cable and you can maintain ETTL. http://ocfgear.com/cords-for-canon-ettl/ettl-cord-extra-long/ If you get a ST-E3-RT, you should be able to skip cabling altogether

3. Alternatively, I could just go wireless and get the ST-E3-RT Speedlite Transmitter for an extra $300 - my only concern is that this price seems pretty steep to me, especially considering that another flash is only $200 more.. any advice here? Is the transmitter really worth it, or should I just go wired for now, and get another flash later?

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I hesitated on the ST-E3-RT because of the lack of the AF assist light. I bought it anyway and absolutely love it because it is so small and light you can barely tell anything is connected to your hot shoe. That itself is worth it IMO. If I need a AF assist, I'll have to slap on a another 600.

Is it just me, or does the Canon not smoke the Panasonic on image quality in this review? The reviewer is touting the constant f/2.8 aperture throughout it's 24x (600mm) range, and granted that does give nicer background blur/subject separation, and of course that can give higher shutter speed and all...BUT. He never talks about the IQ differences in his own comparison shots.

http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/Panasonic_Lumix_DMC_FZ200/

It just seems like from his shots anyway that the Canon gives much sharper images.

.
One thing I forgot.

Polarizing filter and an ND filter or two. Lots of light out there!!