Pro Photo Show

The Canon 50mm 1.2L lens was released late last year, and it becomes the first Canon L series 50mm lens released since the late 80’s (Canon’s 50mm 1.0L). This lens is also the widest aperture 50mm lens available (at the date of writing this).

When you take this lens out of the box, it screams just one thing: QUALITY. The weight of this lens is something that most people are not used to in a 50mm lens. Weighing in at about 1.2lbs, this lens is no small creature. The polycarbonate lens casing feels extremely sturdy, and looks like it could definitely take a beating. This lens is also physically a lot larger than the other 50mm’s that Canon makes. It’s dimensions are D:3.6″ x L2.6″, as opposed to the D:2.9″ x L:2″ of the 50mm 1.4 lens.

The lens comes with the Canon weather seals, but it is only completely weather sealed when using a UV filter. As the lens focuses, the inner barrel moves in and out and the seam it makes will let water in without the use of a UV filter.

Build & Construction:

Features:

Well, this lens definitely has a few advantages over it’s other 50mm counterparts, the first of which is the ring-type ultrasonic motor (as opposed to the MicroUSM in the 1.4, and none in the 1.. So what does that mean for us? What it means my friends, is option of a full time manual focus override! I’m not going to say that this is a very fast focusing lens, because I’d be lying. It is, however, quicker than the other two 50mm lenses available. Also, the lens has circular aperture leaves, which gives very VERY nice bokeh. I can not really say just HOW GOOD the out-of-focus areas look with this lens, but they look saawweeeet. With the 50mm 1.4 lens, the out of focus areas are very jagged looking in comparison, and with the 50mm 1.8 lens they look like pentagons. Now I know that some people out there LOOOOVE pentagons, and good for you if you do … but when it comes to bokeh, it’s not something you’re looking for.

Here is an image to show just what I’m talking about.

50mm 1.2L

50mm 1.8

Now for the bokeh, these next two shots (as horrible as they are) will hopefully give you an idea about the amount of background blur you can get with one of these lenses. The they were both shot with a subject to camera distance of about three feet. The first shot is at 2.8, the second at 1.2.

Now it is quite evident, just how small the depth of field is with this lens. In the second shot, even the back part of the first pole is out of focus… Amazing for portraits! If you focus on the eye, the nose it out of focus Perfect for those with exaggerated nasal regions.

Image Quality

Well, now I’m sure you’re asking “ROB!! What about the image quality?!” Please don’t get me wrong on this topic… the 50mm 1.2L is a very sharp lens, but maybe I was just expecting something a bit more. The lens itself is very sharp wide open, much sharper than the other two 50mm lenses, and it does improve through to about 2.8.

Light falloff on a full-frame camera is very noticeable at F/1.2 (as it is with most all super fast primes), somewhat noticeable at F/2.8, and is gone by about F/4. I really like the natural vignetting of these lenses, but it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

F/1.2:

F/2.8:

F/8:

Conclusion:

his is a very expensive lens, about $1800CDN. Whether it is worth the money is really up to you, but this lens is better in almost all aspects than the other two 50mm lenses. The only things that it doesn’t improve on are size, weight, and price . This really is an awesome lens for portraits, and if you have a 1.6 crop camera, you get a nice 80mm equivalent focal length (note: you will not get the compression, nor perceived background blur as an 80mm lens). Overall, this is a fantastic lens, which I give a 4/5!