Another one of my son

[Neil S.]

I have been talking a little trash about the 85 1.2L lately, and the lens is still a love/hate thing for me.

This is one of my better shots with it so far in my opinion, and I thought I would share it with you all.

For all its downsides and shortcomings it really is an outstanding portrait lens, and extremely sharp.

I had to stop down to f/2.2 to get the DOF that I wanted. If I had shot this wide open almost his entire face would have been out of focus, instead of just some of it.

Every day more and more I am thinking that 1.2 is just not necessary. Shooting wide open is just not very practical and results in a too shallow DOF.

That being said it is useful to have for special situations.

This is the JPEG straight from the camera with nothing but auto contrast/color done in PS.

I know the background is not really ideal, but this shot was not setup or anything.

EOS 7D/85mm 1.2L II

f/2.2
Iso-100
1/250th sec.
Handheld

I always welcome comments and critiques, feel free to tell me what you feel I could have done different/better.

- Neil

 

[Robin Usagani]

Still not deep enough i think LOL. But anyway... regarding f/1.2.. if you are shooting something far like a landscape or something.. think about it.. you can open it to f/1.2, hand held, ISO100 .. Once it is infinity doesnt really matter what the depth is right?

 

[Neil S.]

This is wide open for comparison.

Straight from the camera, didn’t change a thing in post.