Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM - Review / Test Report |
Lens Reviews -
Canon EOS (APS-C)
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Review by Klaus Schroiff, published June 2005
Special thanks to Markus Stamm for providing this lens!
Introduction
The Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM is one of Canon's classic portrait tele lenses. In the APS-C DSLR scope the
field-of-view resembles a 136mm lens here.
The lens features a ring-type USM AF drive (rear focusing) with full-time manual focusing in one-shot AF mode.
AF speed feels extremely fast with this lens. The minimal focus distance is 0.85m resulting in a max. magnification
of 0.13x (~1:8). Manual focusing feels very smooth.
The optical construction is made of 9 elements in 7 groups without any special elements. This may sounds as a
drawback but at 85mm a conventional design is still fine as we'll see later during this review. The lens
features 8 aperture blades. The filter size is 58mm.
At 425g it is still a very light-weight lens and with a dimension of 75x71.5mm it's also quite compact - at least
when used without the (optional) hood. The outer barrel is made of solid plastic. There's no wobbling whatsoever.
As hinted above the lens itself is compact but when attaching the optional hood the sight is quite impressive.
The following image illustrates that you get quite a bit of glass for your money - this is a LARGE aperture lens!
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