85mm 1.4 L IS preview

expro wrote:

its interesting you have already decided.... it's mediocre.

i suggest you try it first and i hope you are pleasantly surprised.

this forum has frankly lost its use since we were all enjoying learning about digital and now it is largely just beginners who come here, and its just turned into a litany of complaints and narrow minded views - not yours necessarily!

having owned and used almost all L primes over the last twenty years I have never had an AF issue, never had a 'mediocre' lens, so no longer relate to the views on this forum (and especially the FF forum).

friday night rant over.

You can spend your money the way you want, and let me spend mine as I wish. I simply choose to NOT reward a product that doesn't meet my standards. If by some stroke of luck it turns out to be better than the sum of its parts, I'll reconsider, but I don't see that being the case. I'm not here to discourage the purchase of a product, I just gave my 2 cents. I'm sure the Canon world will still spin well after my opinion has been given, but that's not gonna stop me from saying my peace.

While I think Canon does an excellent job on the bulk of their lenses, they have made some serious missteps along the way. And these missteps are not limited to cheap lenses. And yes... I do think an expensive lens that performs similar to a cheap lens is mediocre... at best. For me, the MTF charts and samples validate my opinion, I do believe I'll give it one more chance after its shipping date, but I simply can't expect the lens to do more than its theoretical best, MTF charts show that.

I honestly think the addition of I.S. hurt the optics in this case and that's unfortunate, because the formula did look great on paper. Personally, I like clinically sharp lenses, I also like lenses that don't have insane amounts of CA. In many case these two aspects are joined at the hip. Unfortunately for me, this lens doesn't fit bill.