Canon RF 85mm f/1.2L – review/comparison with EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM (on an EOS R5)
I’ve read/seen a number of reviews for these lenses and think it’s certainly useful to see others’ experience but if you do a comparison yourself you can better gauge how you feel about each.
1st impression: RF’s bigger! Both diameter & length are markedly larger than the EF version
Weight feels about the same between EF + adapter and RF counterpart. No real handling difference.
72mm filter Vs. 82mm thread size on the RF means the square footage at front is quite noteworthy
Shot types – although not shooting the exactly same subject, I had a lot of shots in the same environment, a Karate Dojo with windows for some natural light, and lots of fluro (flickering) light made for tricky & variable conditions. A few weeks ago I shot almost entirely the EF 85mm f/1.2L II that I own for a Kata tournament, then last weekend I hired a RF 85mm f/1.2L for the Kumite tournament at the same times of day in the same Dojo to see what the differences were.
Kata is essentially the students displaying various Karate moves in a number of choreographed routines, so reasonably easy to predict pose & position. Kumite on the other hand is basically two students doing their utmost to display their ability to hit their opponent & score points, so very unpredictable and fast-moving.
Focus method: - Servo AF with people & eye detect enabled. Perhaps in reflection this wasn’t the best, but figured keeping the same settings made for a better comparison rather than trying various combinations.
Results:
For the Kata tournament, I found the EF version was very slow, and hit-and-miss as to achieving focus when I needed it, even though the Kata was predictable and sometimes slow I found that often the camera either just failed to quite focus on the selected focus point, or found a person in the background far more interesting. When focus was spot-on, the results were excellent, but when not = meh. Either way a bit of a disappointment.
For the Kumite tournament I found the RF version focussing much, much quicker – but also prone to picking folks in the background rather than the main subject, so really not much change in behaviour. Some shots had focus point very specifically on the student with clear contrast to be able to use, and for some reason camera focussed elsewhere. Not sure why, but with the RF I found more shots that were underexposed due to lighting flicker
Conclusion: Both really great lenses although neither marketed as sports or action lenses, based on one day’s worth of shooting in relatively challenging lighting conditions I don’t think changing to the RF for me would be beneficial.
If I didn’t already have the EF version, the RF would be an awesome lens to have but at this stage I won’t be changing to the RF system.
(samples to follow - feel free to chip in with anything useful for the discussion!)
I’ve read/seen a number of reviews for these lenses and think it’s certainly useful to see others’ experience but if you do a comparison yourself you can better gauge how you feel about each.
1st impression: RF’s bigger! Both diameter & length are markedly larger than the EF version
Weight feels about the same between EF + adapter and RF counterpart. No real handling difference.
72mm filter Vs. 82mm thread size on the RF means the square footage at front is quite noteworthy
Shot types – although not shooting the exactly same subject, I had a lot of shots in the same environment, a Karate Dojo with windows for some natural light, and lots of fluro (flickering) light made for tricky & variable conditions. A few weeks ago I shot almost entirely the EF 85mm f/1.2L II that I own for a Kata tournament, then last weekend I hired a RF 85mm f/1.2L for the Kumite tournament at the same times of day in the same Dojo to see what the differences were.
Kata is essentially the students displaying various Karate moves in a number of choreographed routines, so reasonably easy to predict pose & position. Kumite on the other hand is basically two students doing their utmost to display their ability to hit their opponent & score points, so very unpredictable and fast-moving.
Focus method: - Servo AF with people & eye detect enabled. Perhaps in reflection this wasn’t the best, but figured keeping the same settings made for a better comparison rather than trying various combinations.
Results:
For the Kata tournament, I found the EF version was very slow, and hit-and-miss as to achieving focus when I needed it, even though the Kata was predictable and sometimes slow I found that often the camera either just failed to quite focus on the selected focus point, or found a person in the background far more interesting. When focus was spot-on, the results were excellent, but when not = meh. Either way a bit of a disappointment.
For the Kumite tournament I found the RF version focussing much, much quicker – but also prone to picking folks in the background rather than the main subject, so really not much change in behaviour. Some shots had focus point very specifically on the student with clear contrast to be able to use, and for some reason camera focussed elsewhere. Not sure why, but with the RF I found more shots that were underexposed due to lighting flicker
Conclusion: Both really great lenses although neither marketed as sports or action lenses, based on one day’s worth of shooting in relatively challenging lighting conditions I don’t think changing to the RF for me would be beneficial.
If I didn’t already have the EF version, the RF would be an awesome lens to have but at this stage I won’t be changing to the RF system.
(samples to follow - feel free to chip in with anything useful for the discussion!)
