mjg79 said:
I think we might be in danger of reading too much into Canon's claim that the new 85L doesn't replace the 1.2 version. It might just be the case that they are saying that while they run down stocks of the old lens.
That's what I'm assuming is the case. I caught wind of the 24-105 mk I being discontinued (replaced by the mk II) 18 months prior to the official public announcement that it was discontinued. In all the time leading up to the announcement of the mk II, Canon said the mk I was still in production (it wasn't, they'd already switched to making the mk II in preparation for that release). After announcement of the mk II they said they were still going to make the mk I for a while (they'd already stopped). By the time they finally told the public the mk I was discontinued it had actually been out of production for a year and a half by my own count, and quite possibly longer than that in truth.
Fuji keep doing it with their bodies, too. And Canon did it with the 1D/Ds/Dx lines. So, yeah, my assumption is they're only saying this isn't replacing the 1.2 for as long as existing 1.2 stock lasts. I can't see them still actually producing new 1.2s once the 1.4 is on shelves.
hne said:
Your text almost made sense until this sentence. Then I stopped reading and just skimmed through the rest.
Have you actually tried an 85mm lens on a 35mm body?
You mean like how I wrote, in this very thread, that I've had both versions of the 85 1.2? And the 1.8? And the Sigma? And the Samyang, the Canon FD 1.2, the Fuji equivalent one, several equivalents for medium format systems... yeah, I've used it.
Viggo said:
"No reason the f1.4 will be sharper at f1.4 than the 1.8 at 1.8" ??
First off, its new, it's an L and it's like 5 times more expensive. It will destroy the 1.8 for both sharpness and CA.
New does not always equal better; the 1.2 mk I is optically better than the mk II, for instance. Being an 'L' doesn't mean it's optically better; there are plenty of L lenses which are total dogs and optically beaten by regular lenses. (The two non-IS 70-200s say hello, as well as the mk I 70-200 2.8 IS, the previous 24-70, both versions of the 24-105 which are optically worse than the cheaper Sigma version, etc.) Being expensive does not guarantee optical quality; they could price the 50mm f/1.8 to three grand, doesn't mean it'd suddenly be on par with a Zeiss.
You're mistaking marketing for technical build. All the 'L' means is that the lens requires more complicated manufacturing than typical; it has absolutely nothing to do with optical quality, although that frequently happens to be coincidentally along for the ride. (e.g. It's been long-rumoured that Canon has frequently thought about relaunching the 100mm f/2 as an 'L' lens just by adding minimal weather sealing, without touching the optical quality or focusing; it's expected the new TS-E 90mm will also be along these lines as the non-L TS-E 90mm is already Canon's 2nd-best-resolving lens.) That complication of course also results in a higher price tag. That's really all there is to it. Just because something is expensive and has a red line drawn on it doesn't mean it's mechanically better, just mechanically more advanced. That advancement can—and most usually does—take form as features such as weather sealing, IS, closer focusing distances, and faster or more accurate auto focus. Those things may aid you in getting better pictures as a matter of utility, but they suggest nothing of the raw optical quality of any given lens. If you take a non-L lens and put IS in it and a rubber gasket around the mount, you've got yourself an L lens you can charge 3x as much for, without having touched the optic quality.
As it so happens, the existing Canon 85mm f/1.8 is an unusually well-corrected lens. It has the same resolving power as the 1.2 mk II but with less aberration. In order to beat that kind of resolving power, Sigma have had to make a radically different design. The new Canon isn't that much of a departure from the existing Canon lenses. If one company can only make a marked improvement in actual image quality by shifting the fundamental design greatly, then it stands to reason that another company sticking with more-or-less the same design
isn't going to see the same jump in optical quality.
Which is not to say that it's utterly impossible for the new Canon to surpass the older lenses. (Actually, it'd be shocking if it didn't at least beat the 1.2.) But it's not
guaranteed and people should be waiting before actual testing is completed, before they throw down their money on a pre-order.
