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Canon EF-F 32f/1.4 - The lens that revitalized the M system

Started Jun 19, 2019 | User reviews thread
Marco Nero
Marco Nero Veteran Member • Posts: 7,582
Re: wider apertures and critical focus.

thunder storm wrote:

Waldemar wrote:

That would be it, for a little less DOF.

50mm equiv. is too long for environmental type of shooting and too short for portraiture. Everybody traditionally owns one and usually it´s just collecting dust.

I like 32mm or 35mm for portraits of 2 persons, sometimes 3. It is the ideal focal length of catching little funny interactions. Using f/1.4 is tricky as 2 faces are seldom both within such a thin DOF.

I agree. Two or more faces is incredibly tricky when shooting with some of the wider aperture (faster) lenses.  Some lenses are certainly more sensitive to this than others.  The worst lenses have the thinnest DOF - and of course the thin DOF is often why people buy these lenses in the first place.  I took this picture (below) with a DSLR and an f/1.2 aperture.   The girl's face on the right is absolutely and completely out of focus (doesn't show on the thumbnail here).  Enlarge the image to see what I'm referring to.  Normally I'd line up their eyeballs to get them on the same plane but in this case I failed completely when the girl with the pink hair leaned back slightly as I was taking the shot. 
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I had a similar result in another set with different people in the shot and I was able to copy a face from one shot to the other to get them both in focus in the final edit.  F/1.4 is fairly wide and fast yet its a lot easier to work with than f/1.2 - although I also note that it's a much easier aperture for the manufacturers to produce combined with Auto Focus (which is probably why there's so many 'clone' lenses out there with f/1.4.  All the f/1.2 lenses tend to be Manual Focus Only with just a few exceptions.  As you can see from this shot, I couldn't tell at a glance that this shot was out of focus on the LCD on the camera and only noticed when I got home.
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The problems I sometimes have with f/1.2 lenses - regardless of camera body (click to enlarge) - the girl on the right is completely out of focus. 
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Regards,
Marco Nero.

 Marco Nero's gear list:Marco Nero's gear list
Canon EOS M6 Canon EOS Ra Canon EOS R6 Canon EF-M 32mm F1.4 Canon RF 85mm F1.2L USM +20 more
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