DPReview.com is closing April 10th - Find out more

Feedback: EF 85 mm f/1.8 USM sharpness for handheld shots

Started Jun 20, 2015 | Questions thread
(unknown member) Contributing Member • Posts: 650
Re: Feedback: EF 85 mm f/1.8 USM sharpness for handheld shots

It depends on your own abilities, so it is hard to tell. Got shooting technique is not hard to learn, but it takes time to make a habit out of it. Standing steady, a secure grip, breathing, pressing the shutter button without moving the camera. It a like marksmanship. With an IS lens, you can be sloppy, tired, full of caffeine and it won't matter as much.

I mostly stopped using my 85mm 1.8 when I got the 100mm IS L. IS was a big reason. Camera shake does degrade image quality. Without IS, some images are perfect, some are slightly blurred, a few are ruined. With IS, it is very rare that a shot is not good.

You can see for yourself with your zoom lens. Set it to 85mm and use it (without IS) at reasonable shutter speeds. 1/60s to 1/500s. Take lot of pictures. Check the images for sharpness. If you can get a good image at slower speeds most of the time, you don't need an IS lens.

The 85mm is a great, affordable lens. The pictures you can get at f/2 will look very different (and awesome) than anything you can do with a slow zoom lens. So IMHO it is worth a try.

Post (hide subjects) Posted by
(unknown member)
Keyboard shortcuts:
FForum PPrevious NNext WNext unread UUpvote SSubscribe RReply QQuote BBookmark MMy threads
Color scheme? Blue / Yellow