Category: Reviews

This is a long post about a lens that almost no-one here (including me) is ever likely to buy, but we don’t stop watching Top Gear just because we’re not in the market for the latest Ferrari, so here goes anyway:

When you’re a kid there are some things you lust after with a passion beyond all reason. Like a Millennium Falcon to go with your Star Wars figures. The longer you peruse the catalogue, or hear your friends talk about it, the more you’re convinced that this thing is the best thing in the world, and having it it will make you happier than anything.

And then you get it. And it’s pretty good, and you can see why everyone likes it. But your life goes on pretty much unchanged – even with the new bauble given pride of place in your room, you still have to tidy up that room, and go to school, and get soaked at the bus stop on the way home. A bit of a let-down, then.

As photographers, we’re always told that we need to hold on to our child-like sense of play, our joy in being in the moment. Which is great, but I think that also means we sometimes keep that child-like irrational longing for an object. And when we get it, life goes on pretty much unchanged.

Canon L-series lenses attract a lot of that longing, and for me it’s the L primes that I’ve figuratively and actually ogled in shop windows. I’ve got a 24-105mm f/4 L, used to have the 17-40mm f/4 L and the 70-200mm f/4L and while I appreciate those L zooms, the compromises inherent in making zooms seemed to limit my enthusiasm for them. They’re fine, good even, but I’m not going to put a poster of any of them on my wall.

But the primes are a different breed altogether. Partly because I love primes of all stripes, but also because if you’re going to make a great lens, shouldn’t it be as uncompromising as possible – really excellent at doing just one thing? And what could be more madly committed than the Canon EF 85mm f1.2L II (that’s an Amazon affiliate link, if you think you’re man enough). That’s f/1.2, just to repeat it. It costs over $2000 and looks like a magic black grapefruit (with a little red line around the end).

Thanks to borrowlenses.com the 85mm arrived on my doorstep in time for this year’s Santa Fe International Folk Art Market, where I was due to be taking photographs of the amazing artists and their work.

85mm is my favorite portrait length, and it was with great joy that I unscrewed the lens’ back cap to put it on to my 5D II. Holy scratching, Batman! The rear element is so close to the mount that it seems impossible to attach it to the camera without gouging the glass. Luckily for me (and borrowlenses.com) I got it on OK, but if you’re cack-handed or have to swap lenses in a hurry, you’ll constantly be worried about dinging your beauty.

Once in place it’s heavy, but because it’s so short it doesn’t seem unwieldy, and on a chunky body like the 5D II, it lends the whole thing a nice balance. The weight is noticeable, but I found it much more manageable than the 24-70mm f/2.8.

Steady as she goes

Every review says it so you shouldn’t be surprised, but the first thing you notice in real use is that the 85mm f/1.2 focuses slowly. It’s smooth, but stately, like a luxury liner changing direction. It gets there in the end (more or less – see below) but if you’re shooting fast-moving things, then flat out, this lens isn’t for you. Manually focusing isn’t any faster, by the way.

Missed shots

At the Market, as with all portrait-style shooting, I make a point of getting at least two shots of each artist in each composition I wanted. This is normally to cover for blinking or weird micro-expressions from the subjects. In this case, it ended up being crucial in ensuring that at least one was in focus.

It was very strange. The artists weren’t moving, the light was good, I was using the center focus point only, and I’d wait until the camera told me it had focused. But more times than with any other lens, one of my series would be out of focus. It wasn’t always the first one, either.

The only thing I can think is that something happened while I recomposed after I’d focused – I normally do it all the time with complete confidence. But not with this lens. Maybe I’m doing something wrong and there’s a simple solution, but if you don’t have confidence that you’re going to get what you expect, then you’re in for a torrid time on shoots that matter.

Narrow depth of field

If a lens offers f/1.2, you’re going to want to use it. But the irony is that for the classic headshot – the bread and butter of the 85mm focal length, f/1.2 offers way too narrow a depth of field for most practical uses.

My nifty iPhone depth of field app tells me that at 5 feet (about the right distance to fill the frame with the head and bit of shoulder) and a full-frame camera, the depth of field at f/1.2 is 0.07ft (near limit 4.96 ft, far limit 5.04 ft). How much is 0.07ft? 0.84 inches, or 2.1 centimeters. In other words, if the eye is in focus then the end of the nose will be blurred. If the subject turns their head slightly and you get the closer eye in focus, then the further eye will be out of focus.

Just to put your mind at rest, I wasn’t shooting at f/1.2 at the Market. But I could see how when the subject was further away so you had a workable depth of field (say, a depth of field of 8 inches at 15 ft), f/1.2 could get you shots you just couldn’t get with any other lens, especially in the pitch black.

So the impossibly narrow potential depth of field isn’t a criticism, just a caveat that you need to be careful with all that power.

On the Other Hand

So let’s recap – it’s heavy, it looks like you could wreck it if you’re not careful, it focuses slowly, still doesn’t focus accurately, and the crazy narrow depth of field is unusable a lot of the time. Maybe I should have just stuck to ogling it in shop windows (like the Millennium Falcon). Except that it helped me produce some great images.

When the heavens aligned, the pictures sung. Everything that I’d been trying to show in the picture was there, more pronounced and more attractive than I expected. From small details, like catchlights in eyes, to broad strokes like the amazing contrast and rich colors. Not forgetting the dreamy creamy bokeh.

It’s not often I peak at the LCD on the back of the camera and utter an audible ‘Woh.’ (never, in fact), but this lens got me like that a few times.

Some of the differences between this and my sturdy 85mm f/1.8 (lighter, faster and more accurate focusing, around 20% of the price) you could make up in processing. But not all of it.

Would I buy it?

If someone gave me $2000 and told me I had to spend it on camera gear (don’t tell me you’ve don’t think about that situation), the truth is I probably wouldn’t buy it. For me, the f/1.8 is more practical and reliable (and I already own it). The fantastic shots I got with the 1.2 that I couldn’t get with the 1.8 to me would be made up for by the shots the 1.2 missed with its weird focus that the 1.8 would nail every time. But I shoot a lot of fast-moving children and need bang-on focus.

With my $2000 I’d probably get the 35mm f/1.4 L (which I’m guessing is more obviously superior in more ways to the 35mm f/2 that I’m currently using), and most of the 135mm f/2 L. Although come to think of it, I’d actually be more likely to get the Fuji X100 and most of the 135mm f/2.

But that doesn’t mean I’m sad I rented the 85mm, or that I can’t appreciate it’s great strong points. If you’re going to make a crazy money prime lens, then I love the way it comes with impractical quirks. It’s capable of fantastic images, but it’s not an easy thing to use, and it has some annoying habits.

Much like a Ferrari (so I’m told) – it does one thing (driving in an exhilarating fashion) better than almost anything else in the world. But you can’t park it, the dashboard controls are unusable, you can’t see out of the back and the ride’s so stiff you’ll feel like you got beaten up if you drive it for a couple of hours.

But that one thing it does well, well that’s the effin’ ineffable, isn’t it? Just like with the 85mm f/1.2.

UPDATE Jan 2012: I reviewed a different copy of the Sigma 24-70mm over here, and liked it much more. For balance, you should probably read that review too.

I’m a big fan of prime lenses, and my ideal set up might be something like 2 Canon EOS 5D Mark IIs each paired with one of the following: 35mm f/1.4L, 50mm f/1.2 L, 85mm f/1.2 L or 135mm f/2 L, depending on circumstances. Shooting with 2 cameras would give me wider and close-up options without changing lenses while keeping the speed and quality I like about primes. But since that’s a $10,000 ideal world I’ve just described, I’ve also been looking for a replacement for my Canon 24-105mm f/4L lens that would allow me some flexibility in framing while doing portrait sessions.

The 24-105mm f/4L is a great walk around lens, but I don’t make any money walking around, and it’s not a very good portrait lens. I live in the area between f/1.4 and f/3.2 – partly to freeze movement during indoor shoots, but mainly for the bokeh (the background blur).

All the image stabilisation in the world won’t help when a three year-old is running at you along a dark corridor, especially if you want to blur out the distracting pictures on the wall behind him. So the 24-105mm is off to eBay (drop me a line if you might be interested in buying it).

I’ve had the Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM on loan from borrowlenses.com for a 3-week test, and I also got my hands on the Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX DG HSM for a comparison.

A few points before we start on the details. I was doing a subjective comparison, not a scientific one. I didn’t go looking for pincushion or barrel distortion, or measuring center and edge sharpness at different apertures and focal lengths. So don’t shout at me because there are no MTF charts.

Instead I shot real life things in the real life way I actually would.

The Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 – the heavy good news

First up, it’s huge. Heavy and unwieldy with a lens hood that looks like a bucket (and which you can’t turn round and then put the camera down anywhere). For some people this won’t be a problem, because they’ve got stronger hands and wrists than me, or they never ever shoot one-handed, or they want to bang in nails with their equipment.

But for me it’s an issue because I don’t want my gear to look super intimidating to children, I do shoot one-handed sometimes (with the camera away from my face so I can keep the interaction with the kid), and because my arm ached when I used it a lot.

But it’s also really good – definitely sharp enough for me at f.2.8, contrasty and with lovely colors. Auto-focus seemed acceptable even on my ageing 5D which is not very speedy.

The laws of physics mean that you get much more background blur at the 70mm end than the 24mm end (for the same aperture and distance from subject), so bear that in mind when setting up your shot.

The Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 – the lighter bad news

I really wanted to like the Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 for a number of reasons. One of them was the price – at $900 it’s $400 or so less than the Canon. Another was the size and weight – it’s by no means svelte, but it’s decidedly lighter and shorter than the Canon – aka’ the brick’. It definitely makes for a more comfortable shooting experience, and it’s a bit less daunting to be on the other end of (although the 82mm filter diameter is as large as I’ve seen, and means filters are expensive).

I’d heard good things about it, and I also liked the idea of not automatically going for the red-lined L lens without looking around at other options.

Which is all fine, but sadly the copy I got front-focused horribly. I’d read that this problem had afflicted some people, and it shows how much I’d come to depend on Canon reliabilty that I didn’t really think it would happen to me. I’ve probably shot with nearly a dozen different lenses (including one Sigma, the estimable 10-20mm for crop sensor bodies) and not had a single problem.

But it was when I was taking photos of Christmas tree decorations I saw how dispiriting a problem this is. You focus, you shoot and then the images look nothing like what you thought you got. Here’s an example grab from Aperture (which has a fancy overlay showing where the focus was) –  the focus point is market with the bold square. As you can see, where the camera actually focused was in front of that.

It seemed to do better when the subject was further away from the camera, and some of the shots it produced were very very sharp (see the individual hairs on our cat’s ridiculous white and pink nose below), but if you can’t trust the lens to focus where you want it too (especially when you’re using a deliberately narrow depth of field), then it’s not any good to you.

I’d read that sending the lens to Sigma to calibration often helped, and I actually called them to see about sending it in. But the uninterested guy on the phone told me I should send my camera too, and that because of where I lived, it was actually going to a repair shop in Arizona, not to Sigma USA itself. They also wanted me to tell them by how many inches I wanted it adjusted.

I had a few problems with this scenario. The first is that if I spend $900 on a lens, I’d like it to work out of the box. The second is that I’m not sending my main camera body anywhere if I can help it, and the third is I think it’s a reasonable expectation that I can use any of my lenses on any of the bodies I might have now and in the future – I don’t want it tied to one body. A further point is that asking me by how many inches I want it adjusted is a completely ridiculous question – it was clear that the distance the lens front-focused (or was accurate) depended on how far away the subject was from me. A single adjustment might cause more harm than good.

All this shook my confidence in Sigma’s ability to make a good lens in the first place, and in their ability to fix a defective lens. If calibrating is required, shouldn’t the QC in the factory have spotted this in the first place? So I returned it to Amazon for a refund (great returns policy, by the way).

The upshot

So the copy of the Canon 24-70mm I got was definitely way better than the copy of the Sigma 24-70mm I got. Would Sigma have been able to fix the lens? Quite possibly, but I’ll never know, because I didn’t chance it. And I know other people have nothing but good things to say about their copy, so I can’t dismiss the whole idea of it.

But I still don’t completely love the Canon, partly because of its substantial bulk. There are rumours of a new version of the 24-70mm being in the works (possibly to be announced at or before the WPPI convention next month), so the prudent thing right now seems to be to wait and see.

Part of my underlying problem is the feeling of compromise I always get with shooting with a zoom. Sure it’s convenient, but that’s all it’s got going for it.

The Canon EF 50mm f1.4 and Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 are my bread and butter lenses – almost all the shots I take for clients are with these, and even though they’re not L-class, I seldom feel like I’m short-changing myself or the image with them.

I’d thought that the flexibility of the zoom would be liberating, but instead it feels like I’m getting pretty good versions of shots that I couldn’t get with the primes, but no fantastic images. Maybe I’d rather miss some OK shots to get more great shots.

If you’re a newspaper shooter (any of those left?) or you shoot weddings, then getting a pretty good version of a shot is often all you can do, given the rapidly changing circumstances. It’s a little like that shooting kids’ portraits, but things are often a bit more under your control. So you’ve got the chance to get the great shot that the prime will give you.

Which of course, brings me back to the ideal world setup with matching 5D IIs and a quiver of L prime lenses. Where’s that lottery ticket, again?

Tomorrow starts a week of shoots at Tumbledown Gymnastics Studio, and in preparation for shooting in pretty dodgy light, I ordered a little something from nice folks at borrowlenses.com – the Canon 135mm f/2 L lens.

To check it out, I accompanied my long-suffering daughter on her exploration of the arroyo beside our house, and grabbed some images.

This is far from a full review, but I really like it. It’s pretty small (at least on a 5D) and unintimidating (although the hood is a chunky addition), which helps in certain situations.

2011 Update – the Timbuk2 Snoop

It’s been a couple of years since I wrote this post, but as it’s still getting a fair bit of traffic, I thought I’d let you know I’m still happily using this combination, which is working well. However, Timbuk2 have come out with their own (similar) solution – the Snoop. It’s more or less classic messenger with a detachable insert for the camera stuff, but I’m not sure if you need a sleeve for a laptop if you’re bringing one of those as well. I’ve not seen one in the flesh, and I don’t get a cut of any sales or anything, but it’s worth a look.

The 2009 article

I’m a photographer and web designer and I work partly from home, and partly from my office. At least once a week I ride my bike to work. I need a bag that’ll help me do all this stuff, while not making me look like a dork who’s carrying a bunch of expensive gear.

And after a long search, I’ve found it: a Timbuk2 Medium Messenger, with a Waterfield Designs sleeve for my MacBook Pro, and a Tenba camera insert for the DSLR and stuff.

I have a LowePro Slingshot for when I’m only carrying camera gear, but I was looking for something that would work for day to day commuting – I almost always carry the laptop, and often a camera and a couple of lenses.

Meet my new favourite lens – the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM prime.

It’s fast, focuses quickly and seems to share with the 28mm f/1.8 a richness of color that makes ho-hum shots look good and good shots look great.

(If I ever take any great shots, I’ll be fascinated to see what it does with them).

(More after the jump)

A short post while I watch Heroes. Posting this from the couch using my iPhone and the WordPress app.
The lack of real full-size keyboard (I’d pay a fair bit for a folding Bluetooth option) limits the sort of blog posts you can really do.
But for emergency edits or updates (of dodgy photos of your daughter), it’s pretty handy.