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Canon EF 135mm f/2 USM L (full format) - Review / Test Report |
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Lens Reviews -
Canon EOS (Full Format)
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Page 1 of 3
Review by Klaus Schroiff, published April 2009
Special thanks to Rainer Temme for providing this lens for testing purposes!
Introduction
The Canon EF 135mm f/2 L USM is one of the medium tele lenses in the Canon lineup and a member of Canon's prestigious "L" (Luxury) class. A few years ago we performed a test in the APS-C scope already and it turned out to be a superb performer here so it's naturally interesting to check its qualities on a high resolution full format body as well now.
The mechanical quality of the lens is truly excellent thanks to quality materials, tight build tolerances and a smooth and well damped rubberized focus ring. The lens has a "true" IF design so it does not change its physical length and the front element does not rotate during focus operations. The lens accepts all Canon EF tele-converters resulting either in
a 189mm f/2.8 (135mm + 1.4x) or 270mm f/4 (135mm + EF 2x) combination. This resulting max. aperture is still fairly large so AF is retained on all EOS cameras.
The AF speed is very fast so the build-in focus limiter isn't really necessary. The AF of the tested sample was highly accurate during the field tests. Thanks to the ring-type USM drive the AF operation is near silent and full-time manual focusing (FT-M) remains possible in one-shot AF mode.
| Specifications |
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| Optical construction | 10 elements in 8 groups incl. 2x UD elements |
| Number of aperture blades | 8 |
| min. focus distance | 0.9 m (max. magnification: ~1.5) |
| Dimensions | 83 x 112 mm |
| Weight | 750 g |
| Filter size | 72 mm (non-rotating) |
| Hood | barrel shaped, supplied |
| Other features | - |
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