Canon RF 85mm F1.2L
Canon RF 85mm F1.2 L on my EOS R @ F1.2
Approaching perfection. Thats the first thing that comes across my brain when I think of the Canon RF 85mm F1.2 L. As far as still lenses go this lens has just about everything and more going for it.
When it comes to the 85mm focal length there is a lot of considerations to make, one of which of course is size vs speed. It’s much generally easier to make a very fast 50mm lens because of the the optical nature of that specific focal length but when making an 85mm lens of the same speed there is a considerable more amount of glass involved in relation to the size of elements required to make a lens with a maximum aperture of F1.2. This lens is unashamedly huge by any standard. But with that size it creates images that are nothing short of amazing and features a build quality designed to protect the optics for years to come.
Canon RF 85mm F1.2 L on my EOS R @ F1.2
The quality that this lens affords is really something that I have never seen in any consumer product. The lens creates an entire new perspective when used wide open. It’s like its own little world that exists only when looking though this lens. The silky way this lens transitions from blur to sharpness is truly other-worldly in terms of its quality. There is absolutely no harsh edges created my any type of Chromatic Aberrations what-so-ever for your eye to get drawn to. It just a smooth bliss of blur in both directions. Do doubt this is thanks to the use of the still quite impressive Blue Spectrum Refractive Optics technology Canon is employing in this lens. What it does is essentially makes corrections for the wavelength of blue light being focused on a different point on the sensor. This is the first use of BS Refractive Optics since the EF 35mm F1.4 L II lens. See below for an illustration of how the BS Refractive Optic works.
A lens WITHOUT Blue Spectrum Refractive Optics
A lens WITH Blue Spectrum Refractive Optics
This helps the lens really “work its magic” by just simply obliterating backgrounds at F1.2. With the 85mm focal length combined with that super-fast aperture means that any location becomes a “shootable” location as if you just want to surround your subject, or should I say you’r point of focus, with a creamy blur of out of focus bokeh. The bokeh balls are just perfectly smooth with no concentric rings (aka Onion-balls) or longitudinal chromatic aberration visible even wide open at F1.2. Both directions of out of focus show no fringing at all which is know as Spherochromatism (a type of longitudinal chromatic aberration).
Canon RF 85mm F1.2 L on my EOS R @ F1.2
It has a fantastic rendering of high contrast edges which is especially obvious with highly colored subjects where the lack of any kind of colored fringing whatsoever pointing at fantastically well controlled aberrations in terms of longitudinal chromatic aberrations as well as spherical aberrations even wide open. There is super clear delineation at those high contrast edges yet no overaggressive contrast in the transitions zones due to overzealous micro-contrast not being present. The level of sharpness and resolution is plentiful from edge to edge even at F1.2, stop down and you can see even clear just how high resolving power this lens has due to having more in focus to evaluate.
