I love this lens

I bought this lens after reading so much about its fast AF, sharpness, bokeh and realistic rendering of colours. I also liked that it is black, so does stand out so obviously as one of Canon's white L lenses.

I am not disappointed. I don't know for sure what it is that makes its images look so good, but they are lovely. In comparison my 70-200 f/4 makes dead and clinical looking images, so it is very likely to be sold to cover the cost of my new favourite.

It is a shame that it lacks weather sealing and Image Stabilisation. If the 135 f/2 had those it would (for me, at least) be perfect.

Thomas Rose wrote:

I bought this lens after reading so much about its fast AF, sharpness, bokeh and realistic rendering of colours. I also liked that it is black, so does stand out so obviously as one of Canon's white L lenses.

I am not disappointed. I don't know for sure what it is that makes its images look so good, but they are lovely. In comparison my 70-200 f/4 makes dead and clinical looking images, so it is very likely to be sold to cover the cost of my new favourite.

It is a shame that it lacks weather sealing and Image Stabilisation. If the 135 f/2 had those it would (for me, at least) be perfect.

i originally bought this lens years ago, before i could afford a fast long zoom and had to use and fail shooting indoor gymnastics with the 70-200 f4, before the IS version and before i could afford the 2.8 version...

i saw someone using the 135 and splurged on it..   while to long for many situations it instantly became my favorite lens the minute i unpacked it and started test shooting IN the house...I would shoot my daughter from two rooms (45 feet away ...i still to this day call the 135 my candid portrait lens because of its ability to capture studio posed quality images from a far and unknown to the subject.... oh yeah its great for indoor sports too...lol..

always has been and remains one of my absolute favorite lenses to shoot with... and as i slowly move away from full size dslrs in favor of the M series, especially now with the M5s ability...it is a lens i will still use often....

i hope canon can make magic strike twice and pull off a mirrorless version that is as special.

mp

It's a wonderful lens, there's a reason it's been in production for 8 million years (not literally)

My favorite lens, for sure. It gets a lot of comments about being "too long" that I don't really get. It all depends upon what you are trying to do, on 35mm it's a good head/shoulders to 1/2 lens for indoors, and you can do full body with it, but you do need space.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/22781076@N03/albums/72157645361357696

The IS thing doesn't bother me, seems like we are a bit spoiled, fast primes with IS is a quite new idea. The weather sealing would be nice though, and rounded aperture blades would be nice in an update. Only trouble will be if they update it...it'll be super expensive, I'm sure.