Bryan at The-Digital-Picture has completed his exhaustive review of the brand new Canon RF 85mm f/2 IS STM. Canon's latest “affordable” fast prime.
As we've read and seen from other reviewers, this lens appears to be a big winner, especially once the price is considered. A lot of photographers will end up with this lens in their kit.
From TDP
The compact size and light weight make this lens comfortable to carry and use for long time periods. Image stabilization means the tripod can often be left behind, which also decreases the overall carry weight and setup time. While the RF 85mm f/2 IS STM does not get professional build quality or the ultimate image quality, it performs well with accurate AF performance ensuring this lens's sharp image quality is fully realized, even with the very shallow depth of field this lens creates at close focus distances with narrow apertures. Read the full review
I think my ideal RF kit would look like
24-105L (unless they drop a 24-70F4L)
20-700F4L
one of the 35,50or 85 F1.8/2 primes
The rest I will fill in with my EF stuff
100-400, macro, 135, 17-40
Damn, I missed the rumor of this 20-700 F4! o_O:ROFLMAO:
This kit looks really good, over all, being so portable.
Sometimes happens to everyone hahahah
I was a little underwhelmed by the image quality, especially the longitudinal CA, which doesn't appear to be much better than my EF 85/1.8. And sharpness also doesn't seem to be a big jump after 28 years.
I was looking to this lens to replace my 85/1.8, 50/2.5 macro and possibly my 100/2.8 macro...
I fear it will not replace a dedicated macro, longitudinal CA will kick in.
I would like to do some close focus focus bracketing experiments with this lens' open aperture.
No-one sane is going to try real macro photography with this. There are great specialist lenses (EF 100mm f/2.8L IS etc) for that already.
For a previous non-1:1-macro lens someone made a snarky "Great for those food bloggers!" comment, which turns out to be actually true, now that I spend more time on preparing food and taking pictures of it. I skip the blogging part and just eat it :)
Beyond that though he seems to be damning the lens with faint praise. The Tamron 85mm 1.8 still looks like a better choice particularly when you see the awful longitudinal CA and coma of the Canon lens.
TDP always grades on a curve, it takes some back and forth between reviews to figure out where a lens sits for performance. The underlying tests and resulting data are great, but it takes some effort and coffee fully understand.
Auto focus speed is, according to that review, “reasonably fast”, and “slow” at long focus distance changes.
Is Canon thinking that indoor sports is covered in RF world by 2.8 zooms, or will the RF STM actually keep up? Or is the segment too small to care about?
From my test with my kids running around, AF is slower but better. I get about the same number of keepers and the quality of the keepers is better. But for actual sports I'm tempted to say the EF is currently a better choice. But you'd have to try it yourself, it might work a lot better for your usecase.
I can definitely see extra sharpness in the RF 85mm f/2 lens wide open compared with the EF 85mm f/1.8 @ either f/1.8 or f/2. In every test image from TDP as well as Gordan Laing's comparisons.
In some scenes & tests the difference is more noticeable than others.
I also see a much higher CA in the EF 85mm f/1.8 than the RF 85mm f/2.
Here's the comparison page b/w the RF 85mm f/2 and the EF 85mm f/2 from The Digital Picture
https://www.the-digital-picture.com...6&Sample=0&CameraComp=979&FLIComp=0&APIComp=0
The addition sharpness of the RF over the EF is noticeable in the centre, mid-frame and corners.
And here's one of the most telling image comparisons (also comparing the huge RF 85mm f/1.2).
I have previously owned the EF 85mm f/1.8, but due to its CA it wasn't the lens for me.
(I know CA can be corrected in post - often automatically - but the EF 85mm f/1.8 is one of Canon's worst lenses in terms of CA wide open, and it does cause some colour bleeding and loss of sharpness at times).
I found that I used my EF 100mm f/2.8 L USM IS macro actually worked better for portraits than the EF 85mm f/1.8 for how I used each of these. (This may not be the case for everyone, of course).
However I can see me possibly buying the 85mm f/2 as one of my future RF lenses. I use that focal length for portraits regularly. That it can focus relatively close is a great bonus... and the AF speed and accuracy on e.g. a R5 is great for what I'll use it (I use other lenses for sports, birds, etc).
It's a GREAT time to be a photographer. (Maybe not so great for my bank balance.. lol)
PJ
The lateral CA looks phantastic and was my main hassle with the EF together with color and contrast.
IS and 1:2 macro for detail or insect shots during a walk gives the icing and makes it a no-brainer for me.
Exactly my analysis of the EF85/1.8.