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.
8 Comments
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.