RF 85mm f/1.2L USM lens on the EOS Ra (PICS)

Canon's relatively new RF 85mm f/1.2L USM lens with Blue Spectrum Refractive Optics.

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RF 85mm f/1.2L USM lens - First Thoughts:
I'm not ready to review this lens yet for the forum but I'm able to offer some initial feedback and comparisons.  I've been using this lens for less than two weeks but I've only taken around 90-110 pictures with it - so that's not enough time to be able to render anything of value to others.  But I can certainly pass on my initial observations.
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* It's somewhat obscenely heavy.
* It's expensive (buy one when it's on sale or trade in a lens or two).
* It makes a terrible plasticy sound when you tap it with your fingers.
* It takes astonishingly beautiful photographs.
* The Canon Blue Refractive Optics make it GREAT for Astro work.
* The Air Sphere Coating technology reduces ghosting and flare magnificently.
* It comes with a Lens Hood (gee thanks, Canon).
* It's wider than the EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM lens.
* It's longer than the EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM lens.
* You'll be buying expensive 82mm filters for this lens.
* The Auto Focus nailed every single shot I took.
* The Manual Focus system on the EOS R is very easy to use.
* Merely touching the surface shell leaves marks (these can be wiped away).
* If you have an appreciation for lenses, you'll appreciate just how good this lens is and how it's worth the price, regardless of what you end up paying for it.
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I put the lens onto my EOS Ra camera body in the store and took a single shot of the text on a bottle of water without bothering to steady my hands.  The lens clearly nailed the focus (see image below) and I then tested it on more complex scenarios.  Obviously I can't post too many examples here but I was really impressed at how consistently this lens nailed the focus time and again. I use a small AF reticule for this reason but I can't complain.
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It's faster and far, far more reliable than it's parental model (the earlier EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM lens - which I traded in).  I had a beautiful copy of that lens too. But that type of lens was still unpredictable and the slightest of human errors could ruin the shot. It made no sense to keep that EF lens though giving it up was painful.  But I'm happy with the decision to move to the RF equivalent.
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A quick test in the camera store (with my EOS Ra) to see if the AF was accurate with this lens.

The original EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM lens would have struggled with this.

EOS Ra + EF 85mm f/1.2L USM lens - I'm using the "small" AF reticule.  Every shot was dead-on.
Canon EOS Ra with the RF 85mm f/1.2L USM lens + Protage Lens Heater

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Using the RF 85mm f/1.2L USM lens on the stars...
I took the EOS Ra out last-night for the first time as an astro lens ...and drove up to the mountains where the air would be clear.  This is still considered a rural area so the Bortle Dark Sky index was about 3.  The first shot with the RF lens was literally breathtaking on the LCD screen.  The EF 85mm lens was quite different to the EF lenses I had used previously on the Ra.   When connected to the camera and focused on the stars, the camera's LCD came to life with what seemed like thousands of visible stars.  It's likely that my Focus Peaking settings (Blue highlights selected) became active and contributed to the effect.  Focusing wasn't a problem.  The first image I viewed seemed over-exposed until I realized the Milky Way was a bit too close to the horizon and I was still picking up plenty of light-pollution from Sydney.  I gave it another 60 minutes for the sky to shift and for people to turn off their lights... and the results were much better. After reviewing a few of the images on the camera I was ready to leave again. I edited two images (below) but my favorite shots haven't been touched just yet.
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EOS Ra + RF 85mm f/1.2L USM lens - an incomplete panorama of the Carina Nebula below the Coalsack Nebula.  (stitched horizontally from 2x JPEGS side by side).  *Slightly edited for hue and contrast.

EOS Ra + RF 85mm f/1.2L USM lens - The colorful Rho Ophiuchi structure. (JPEG was edited).

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The experience shooting with this lens for Astrophotography was different to any other lens I have used in my life.  There was one star that bloomed at little at f/1.2 and that was  Antares... but this was like a subtle ghosting so it was very easy to correct.. Gone was the Chromatic Aberration that plagues Canon's fast EF Primes. The ability to lock focus on a star is made easy via the 30x magnification on the LCD of my EOS Ra, but the screen itself was sparkling with stars - thousands of stars - which shifted smoothly across the screen whenever I panned the camera.  The Core of the Milky Way showed up in color-accurate detail.  Turning the camera to the South-East, I could easily see the crimson magenta hue of the Carina Nebula and some of the Milky Way's southern structure on the LCD screen (see video below).  At one point I managed to capture a shooting star on camera while filming the EOS Ra LCD with the EOS M6 camera.  You can see this meteor just after the 4 second mark.  Turns out that rotating the camera South resulted in a shift in the focus ring.  So even if I'd caught the meteor with the 85mm lens, it would have been out of focus.  But it was amazing to catch it on the live view from the LCD.
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Loads of FALSE COLOR from Chromatic Aberration & Color Fringing  can be seen on the image from the older 50mm EF lens (left).  Both shots were taken at f/1.2  Both images have been edited. The RF 85mmL lens (right) produced more accurate color and non of the false color blooming that the 50mm lens did..
Editing the images was fairly straight forward.  Any light-falloff was dealt with in Lightroom and colors were adjusted and bumped if needed.  Blues were fainter and needed a stronger bump to raise them to the correct intensity and shadows and highlights were pushed in Levels and Curves (in Photoshop).  In all, since no stacking and no RAW was involved, the resulting images gave the impression they'd been aggressively edited.  The sample directly above shows two nearly identical shots that were adjusted to match the same scale.  The visible difference shows a profound different between the two lenses in terms of resolution, color accuracy and CA related issues.  These two photographs were taken with the same wide-open f/1.2 aperture and the RF lens demonstrates excellent control.  You simply cant correct for blooming stars and all that color fringing.  Even the colors themselves are false on the 50mm lens (see cluster of stars towards the lower left of each image... true color should be pale blue, not crimson-cherry-violet. The amount of resolving power and clarity that the RF 85mm f/1.2L lens is capable of at f/1.2 is profound.  I can only put this down to engineering combined with the Blue Spectrum Refractive optics combined with the Air Sphere Sub-Wavelength Coatings.
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I am going to shoot something commercial with this camera and lens shortly and that ought to add to the experience a little more.  I was talking with some astrophotographers this evening and sent them some recent stills.  These guys have been shooting astro for years but I could tell they were skeptical of any of the results from the 85mm RF lens.  I was able to show them some footage of the Live View as the images were captured and then resulting unedited images - followed by the edited ones.  I think they were as surprised as I was at what the sensor on the Ra was capable of when combined with this lens. These guys are used to staking 60x shots of 150 second exposures at high ISO to capture shots that I took with a JPEG in just 6 seconds (with this lens).  Even without editing and corrections for light-falloff, the results look good. I'm probably not going to shoot the sky again until I can get my hands on a decent EQ Mount (which I'm told is in transit).  In the meanwhile, I'll continue to use this lens for terrestrial applications.
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EOS Ra with the RF 85mm f/1.2L USM lens - and the light of a passing car.

That Articulared-LCD is handy.

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