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32mm f/1.4 - Why it's so darned cool ...

Started Sep 5, 2018 | Discussions thread
gimp_dad Senior Member • Posts: 2,692
Re: 32mm f/1.4 - Why it's so darned cool ...

Thanks, Marco. Another compelling post!

I'm very anxious to see how the bokeh looks with this new lens.

Marco Nero wrote:

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Super Spectra Coating on the new 32mm lens...
This is a beautiful looking lens for the EF-M lineup. Visibly it's unmistakable from the other lenses here. It takes the same small 43mm filters as the 22mm and 28mm lenses which is great. And Canon even decided to add their amazing Super Spectra Coating to this new lens. SSC (Super Spectra Coating) is a multi-layered coating created by Canon to reduce lens flare and to faithfully reproduce color balance. The coating redirects light from the edges of the curved lens elements and forces it to converge onto the same location. Super Spectra Coatings even reflect incidental light. It's a marvelous thing for us to get and if I'm not mistaken, even contrast is improved by this coating.
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"Light travels in waves – since each color travels at different wavelengths, multi layers coatings are required to effectively reduce reflection. Each layer works on different wave lengths of light. Canon's multi layer Super Spectra coating allows up to 99.9% of light through to the CMOS sensor, over a range that extends from ultra violet to near-infrared light. As well as minimizing ghosting and flare, Super Spectra Coating ensures a consistent color balance across all EF lenses and plays a key part in delivering the sharp, high-contrast results that Canon lenses are renowned for." - Canon Inc

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The new EF-M 32mm f/1.4 STM lens delivers great image quality in a compact and lightweight form factor, allowing photographers to capture the images they envision when they pick up their camera.” - Kazuto Ogawa, president and chief operating officer, Canon U.S.A., Inc.
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"The EF-M 32mm f/1.4 STM lens is the second EF-M lens to feature a large-aperture, delivering stunning bokeh with a soft blurred background that helps photographers isolate their subjects. In addition, the 32mm focal length converts to approximately 51m in 35mm format, providing an angle-of-view close to the field-of-view of the human eye." - CANON inc
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For those interested, there's also a newly launched video below from Canon USA - and some samples taken with the new lens are shown...
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What to expect from this lens - visually...
We were talking about apertures yesterday in another thread and how many stops of light might be lost due to fitting the new lens to an APS-C EOS M camera. Adding a crop to apertures and calculating light transmission isn't going to be simple since the newer M-series has a more sensitive sensor than earlier DSLRs and the new lens has coatings that will affect the amount of light passing through. The original M had a sensor much like the 60D although I found that the 60D produced far more noise in the same environments. I think that a great way to demonstrate what to expect from this lens is to look at how much light is captured and how much bokeh is produced on any EOSM camera with the EF 24mm f/1.4 USM II lens. It's a lens I've often claimed was my absolute favorite lens on the EOSM if it weren't for the wight and size. The cost is also offputting for the EF lens. My experiences with the EF-M 22mm f/2 STM gave me something to compare with and I think the following images come VERY close to demonstrating the bokeh and color the new 32mm f/1.4 lens is going to give us.

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The Canon EF 24mm f/1.4L USM II lens.

EOS M6 + 24mm f/1.4L USM II lens

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* The EF-M 32mm f/1.4 STM lens equates to around 51.52mm on the M.
* The EF 24mm f/1.4L USM lens equates to around 38.64 mm on the M.
* Both lenses offer around the same amount of light transmission.
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The results are going to look quite similar although you might just get even more bokeh with the 32mm lens because of the longer focal length. The Minimum Focus Distance (MFD) is about 9 inches... it dawned on me that aside from being f/1.4, we can probably get a very accurate idea about the amount of defocus and light transmission involved if we view images taken with a very similar lens. Whilst there's about 12.88mm difference between the focal lengths, the added zoom on the 32mm f/1.4 STM lens might actually enhance Bokeh even further than these images here... (see below).
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32mm f/1.4 walkabout lens?
This new lens is going to be great for city shooting at any time of the day or night. It's clearly a superb portrait lens since 50mm (equiv) has always been considered to be the ideal focal length for portraits. It will be almost wide enough for some astro work in terms of field of view and it will certainly be suitable for indoor lowlight shots where there's only a candle or two for illumination. Video will be interesting with this silent lens because my EF 24mm f/1.4L lens makes a hell of a racket when its constantly focusing... and while you can't hear it, the camera sure can if you're shooting video.
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I almost hate to say this, but I may end up with this new lens (EF-M 32mm f/1.4 STM) on my camera as my main lens from now on instead of the EF-M 22mm f/2 STM lens. It's going to produce a very fine image with plenty of subject isolation. Indoor video in low-light will be lovely. I anticipate that the bokeh will be quite appealing. It's going to be great for portraits... but at 9 inches (MFD) it's going to be more flexible than my EF 50mm f/1.2L USM lens - which has an MFD of almost 20 inches. Again, this is going to produce more bokeh for closeup subjects. It won't be long until we see some early samples but here's what I'm getting on the M at the moment with the 24mm f/1.4L lens...
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EOS M + 24mm f/1.4L USM II lens

EOS M6 + 24mm f/1.4L USM II lens

EOS M + 24mm f/1.4L USM II lens

EOS M + 24mm f/1.4L USM II lens

EOS M + 24mm f/1.4L USM II lens

EOS M + 24mm f/1.4L USM II lens

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