Anurag Yagnik

View Original

Winterfresh: The magic of 85mm

winterfresh
[1/80 f/2 ISO800 85mm]

I'd heard a lot about the magical abilities of Canon's 85mm f/1.2 lens. Last year I rented it for a week and checked it out for myself. I can easily report that it is the most amazing lens I've ever used. The quite easily blows the 100mm Macro out of the water. It is a bit hard to handle. Extremely heavy and can be hard to focus and the focus is slow. And yet, when you get it right - it is pure joy. Almost no post-processing is needed. The colors are brilliant and sharpness is near perfect.

Here is one taken using that lens. No post-processing (other than RAW conversion, of course) was done. This lens could save one a wealth of valuable time.

Now that it generally sells at a discount for under $2,000 it is some sort of a bargain. However, it is a very special-purpose lens useful almost exclusively for portraits. And yet, in its own way, it does what no other lens can do.

This photo is from week #272 of the 300-week photo project.