Another cheap(ish) RF prime review/demonstration

Far be it from me to have an opinion different from Dustin Abbot or Christopher Frost, both of whose reviews I many times read and agree with, but I must say that my experience has apparently been different than yours and maybe their's. I own this lens for one reason - portraits. Perhaps a hint about its intended purpose is that when "experts" discuss their lens choices for portraits, they almost always talk about lenses in the 85 mm to 105mm range, because, well, most people portraits shot with these lenses yield the most natural looking perspective when shooting anywhere from "roomy" head shots to about 3/4 body shots. Yes, great portraits can be made using almost any focal length, but the 85mm to 105mm range clearly define the typical sweet spot.

That said, I have never used a lens in that range for sports, or fast action at all. For that, I have very expensive and extremely fast focusing zooms like the RF 70-200 f/2.8 and EF 100-400 f/4.0-5.6, while others may add the giant "big whites" to those two or, instead, replace of one of them. That's all the fast focusing stuff I need, along with my 24-70 f/2.8, which gives me a that same speed at wider angles.

So, why is the RF 85mm f/2.0 lens a very good and inexpensive one for me and many others? Because we don't use it for purposes for which it is not intended. It's meant to be a moderate high speed portrait lens with a great added feature of being able to close-focus up to 1:2, making it a good semi-macro lens as well. And a lens that obviously was not intended for, and in fact is not, great for sports or to memorialize your brother-in-law chasing your sister around their back yard. Really good portraits are more often taken at a slower and more contemplative pace, and this lens accomplishes just that very well, while focusing nicely on images with more moderate movement as well, I've never had it fail to autofocus precisely at distance or close up, and it only hunts, as I mentioned in a previous post, when the lens tries to focus over a very large portion of its focus range, like macro to infinity.

If you want to spend a fortune for the better RF f/1.2 lens, your options change dramatically. Or, if you opt for the EF 85mm f/1.8 or a third party one, you might find an 85mm that more suits your style. Go ahead and be happy. But, I'm fine with the RF 85mm f/2.0.