85mm f/1.2L II USM - Brilliant Lens...

Marco Nero wrote:

The OTUS lens is a nice piece of equipment and I like the attention to detail during construction. The only downside I can think of is that if you use on a Canon DSLR and then calibrate the lens on the camera, the camera only stores Canon EF lens Profiles (the 6D stores up to 40 lenses). So after you dismount the lens, you may need to recalibrate the camera in order to match the lens each time you put it on. As Fog Maker noted, the problem of calibration is a mixture of lens AND camera manufacturing tolerance differences. That alone will have me side-stepping the Otis lens because even if it's perfect straight out of the box, the cameras themselves have tolerance ranges... which are not adjustable (hence the micro-adjustment feature) so you may end up with complications either way. At almost two and a half times the price of the already expensive Canon 85mmL, I'm not sure I'd appreciate the differences because for me, the whole point of the 85mmL lens is to present most of your image out of focus. The reputation of the 85mmL is enough for me to feel no buyer's remorse. I can't imagine why anyone would be remotely disappointed with the Otus lens although I'm seeing prices well over USD $5250.00 for that lens (ouch!).

Micro Adjustment works just fine with both Otus lenses. That allows for easy focus confirm of every manually focussed shot, just by half pressing the shutter or back button AF as I do while manual focussing either Otus.. The lens is recognized by the body and does not require re-calibration of MA.

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You're right about people being impressed with "lesser" lenses though. Of course many haven't been able to use better lenses with their cameras or perhaps they don't notice the finer details and color differences between glass. It's interesting to see how different people like and dislike certain lenses. The main complaint (and the most consistent complaint) about the 85mmL lens was that it was "slow". But I find it more than adequate. I really did expect something dog-slow that took 5 seconds to lock focus... I was more than pleasantly surprised with near instant-to-1 second AF times. It's certainly not unusable at this speed.

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Regards,
Marco Nero.

The other aspect of the Otus lens that escaped most is its ability to shoot in backlit situations.

See tests by Lazio Bencze in the Link below and look at the comparisons of the man by the window. As he says it really is a game changer.

http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1337848

I had an 85MkII and the OP is right that f/1.2 is special and not available to either Otus. But It didn't take me long to realize the 85L II was not the 85 that was going to see any use.