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

Started Jun 20, 2015 | Questions thread
OP pilou1253 Regular Member • Posts: 139
Re: Feedback: EF 85 mm f/1.8 USM sharpness for handheld shots

Alastair Norcross wrote:

I have had the 85 F1.8 for about nine years, and used it on the 20D, 50D, 7D, and 7DII, all crop cameras. It's a very sharp lens, and great for portraits. I find I need to use at least 1/125 to have a good chance of avoiding camera shake, and preferably 1/200 or faster. Outdoors, that's easy. Indoors, without flash, you might need to crank up the ISO a bit, but the 70D has good low light performance, so that shouldn't be a problem. As someone else said, if you shoot fairly wide open (F1.8-F2.2), you'll have a very narrow depth of field, which is really the point of a lens like this, but it also takes good focusing technique. In particular, try to place the chosen focus point over the closer eye, and don't use focus and recompose, which can shift the plane of focus.

I got the lens today... Going to family weekend and I thought it was worth it having it before that, since all the posts here kind of convinced the tiny part inside of me that was still hesitating... !

After some tests, yes, I can see that below 1/150s it's almost impossible to get very sharp images. I just have to train myselft now!

Regarding focusing and DOF, I already experienced that with the 28 mm and 50 mm, both f/1.8.

 pilou1253's gear list:pilou1253's gear list
Canon EOS 1000D Canon EOS 70D Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 USM Canon EF 50mm F1.8 II Canon EF 85mm F1.8 USM +7 more
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