The Canon EF 135mm f/2L is one of the company's most beloved portrait lenses, but having been released in 1996, you might wonder if it can keep up with today's high-resolution sensors. This excellent video pairs it with such a sensor to see how it performs.
Coming to you from Christopher Frost, this great video review takes a look at the Canon EF 135mm f/2L lens and how it holds up on a modern high-resolution sensor, namely the one in the EOS R5. I have always had a soft spot for this lens. It was my first professional lens, and even many years later, I'm still very fond of it. It has a beautiful, contrasty rendering with good sharpness with no-fuss performance, and it is priced much lower than other L Series portrait lenses. It is definitely one of the best-kept secrets in Canon's lens lineup. You can watch Frost's original review for more on the lens below:
For a lens released 25 years ago, the EF 135mm f/2L does an impressive job of keeping up with a much higher-resolution demand than it was originally designed for. It certainly is not perfect, but I think few will be disappointed by its sharpness, and its character, autofocus performance, and value more than make up for the lack of clinical levels of sharpness.
Hands down one of my favorite lenses. I've been using it for years, literally used it this morning at sunrise for a commercial client. It's especially nice when you need a little more distance with the current pandemic situation. Even for compact landscape shots in the distance, it's wonderful.
"Modern sensors????" And then the tests are shot on a 6D (circa 2012) and a 70D (circa 2013). OK. never mind -- the embedded video isn't the review the headline is referring to... Sorry
Exactly. The correct one is rather short: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85XbSHv8v9U
Thanks for the video link
A superb lens that earns respect from even the newest crop of lenses.
Canon will no doubt introduce an RF version fro a lot more money and a bit better performance.
I used to shoot with this lens a lot. The way it renders a background is beautiful, but I honestly stopped caring about background blur quality a few years ago and started caring more about ease of use and versatility, so switched to more affordable 85mm and 100mm lenses instead. I could never say anything bad about the quality of the images this lens renders though, I'm just not a big fan of the limitations imposed by longer focal lengths and personally don't find background blur quality to be a legitimate reason to spend over $1,000 on a lens. I feel like the 85mm f/1.8 and 100mm f/2.8 macro USM do the same job and offer high quality results at a much more reasonable price range.
I agree. For me the 100mm lens is the sweet spot for portraiture and I use the 2.8 macro for that.
Also, as commercial photographer, the need for fast lenses is nearly nonexistent. I rarely shoot wider than f8 because the images need to look natural with just a soft blurring of the BG.
The answer is yes, at f4. It is no slouch at f2, but newer designs (sigma 135mm f1.8) are slightly sharper wide open. I think it is a great portrait lens, and I loved the sharpness and blur. The only reason I exchanged it for a macro, was that I really need weather sealing, and the IS is a nice bonus.