Canon RF 85mm F2 Review for Portraits vs RF 85mm F1.2 (Free RAW Files)

foreign [Music] s on this amazing little Canon RF 85 millimeter F2 lens for a while so today I'm going to be putting it to the test on a portrait shoot this is just one of two 85 millimeter prime lens options on the RF Mount right now so I'll also put it up against its much bigger and more expensive brother the RF 85 millimeter 1.2 and as part of that comparison we'll look at things like sharpness and rendering as well as much more but first of all let's get straight into the photo shoot my camera setup for the shoot was the Canon R5 so it's 45 megapixel sensor we'll certainly test this lens I shot natural light portraits wide open throughout to get a feel for the lenses performance and after seeing the first images I was immediately impressed with the results from this lens more than enough really pop and the sharpness was apparent straight away [Music] perfect [Music] I positioned Darcy here where I could capture the leading lines from the windows on the left and the broker looks really nice and smooth here with great colors and contrast in the image so this is where I had my first issue with auto focus with this lens I like to include little bits of foreground interest in my portraits quite a lot and those little fairly in obtrusive leaves to the right of the frame in these shots just seemed to cause Havoc with the autofocus on this lens come on camera it just seemed to want to front focus on those leaves rather than the model's eye and I had to override the autofocus a few times in order to get the shot I shoot this kind of composition all the time on a range of different RF Mount lenses and never really have an issue so it's hard to say whether it was the lens or just bad luck with the camera but this was the only real issue I encountered in terms of autofocus with this lens Focus [Music] maybe stand like here maybe like quite like a monk strip there although I might remember this time yeah these are really good light's perfect [Music] [Music] shooting these kinds of portraits at 85 millimeter I like to find little pockets of foreground detail to help me frame the subject wherever possible so this gives a good opportunity to see how the lens renders out of focus areas in the foreground which can be a weak point for some of Canon's cheaper lenses but I see no issues on this 85 millimeter F2 it's rendered really smoothly no nervous or distracting bulking for a more close-up portrait I wanted to create a natural border around Darcy using this foliage maybe like if you're like stood there because I can frame you underneath with this and that comes above shouldn't pull yes it's literally awesome cool and I love how these images turned out this lens just provides so much depth to quite a simple image taking a quick close look at sharpness in a shot like this shows very impressive results tons of detail in the eye and we see that shallow depth of field provided by that nice F2 aperture foreign but we'll examine sharpness a little more later and put it up against that RF 85 millimeter 1.2 [Music] General although far from a challenging situation for portraits like this I found the auto focus to be reliable with little to no out of focus images yeah it is probably one of RF mount's slowest and noisiest STM motor lenses but autofocus didn't get in the way here at all oh maybe you can just stand like here right in front of me and face me I'll get a slightly slightly wider yeah [Music] let's take one last look at bokeh I placed Darcy in front of a colorful but very busy background to see how this fast aperture lens will render it cool amazing so these are real tight crop like headshots basically and in general it does an excellent job especially at this crop yes there are some hard lines around the flowers behind but in terms of Separation at f2 it is effortless to make your subject pop from a busy background like this [Music] and now taking a step back to a more mid-length crop shows the almost swirling characteristics of this lenses book which does look amazing this lens excels at taming busy distracting background and imparts a beautiful character onto the outer Focus areas so that's to shoot and after looking at and editing the results I have to say I am beyond impressed with this lens I've owned the rf-85 millimeter 1.2 for a long time now and looking at the results from this lens without putting it side by side against this I really didn't feel like I was missing that 1.2 aperture much at all and kind of felt like image quality seemed comparable to what I've experienced with the 1.2 lens but let's find out and put these two lenses side by side so here is the 85 millimeter 1.2 for a headshot and it absolutely obliterates the background as you can see here is the 85 millimeter F2 which at this crop gives a very similar result in my opinion side by side you can see the extra background blur you get with the 1.2 sure but both look great to me the extra separation you get from the 1.2 aperture gives that image a more painterly dreamy look whereas the 85 millimeter F2 looks just a little more flat in comparison if we zoom in then sharpness is surprisingly comparable sure the 85 millimeter 1.2 is the slightest bit more crisp for lack of a better word but sharpness will not be an issue on either of these lenses the RF 85 millimeter 1.2 is the king of 3D pop when it comes to full length portraits in my opinion so let's see how this F2 version Compares in this scenario here is the 85 millimeter 1.2 and there's so much background separation here Rachel almost looks like a cardboard cutout the background is rendered so smoothly now here's the F2 version which also looks really nice but of course we are seeing that reduction in background separation side by side it is crazy how much more bokeh you get at 1.2 and on the F2 image you can see a branch to the right of the frame which is completely obscured on the 1.2 lens thanks to that extra blur taking another close look again a slight Advantage for the 1.2 lens wide open but these lenses are close of course by the time you've stepped down the RF 85 millimeter 1.2 to F2 then it does pull ahead but if you're spending thousands and thousands of dollars on this lens then I think you probably did that to shoot It Wide Open so after comparing them side by side I am even more impressed with this F2 lens but it doesn't stop there and this lens is the gift that keeps on giving because it has one more trick up its sleeve and that is macro functionality sure it is not true macro but let's take a look at the minimum Focus distance on both the 1.2 and the F2 lenses to see exactly what this means here is an example on the RF 85 millimeter 1.2 of the closest you can focus on this camera now let's see how much closer the 85 millimeter F2 can focus that is a whole lot closer and really useful for things like product photography here is another example of the RF 85 millimeter 1.2 focusing as close as it can on this watch and here is the RF 85 millimeter F2 look how sharp these macro shots are this is really impressive performance so in my opinion the macro functionality on this lens makes it a really versatile option for somebody like a wedding photographer for example as it may mean you do not need to carry a dedicated macro lens anymore here's the 85 millimeter 1.2 focused as close as it can on this ring and now here is the 85 millimeter F2 amazing so that macro functionality is no joke and makes this lens seriously attractive autofocus is not a exactly great when shooting macro it's very slow and very very noisy but to me that is a small price to pay for such a useful function now let's take a quick look at handling where the RF 85 millimeter F2 feels well built and at home on Canon's full-frame RF Mount cameras where it balances really nicely it features a mostly plastic build and has a 67 millimeter front filter thread the rf-85 millimeter F2 has a few switches one to limit the focus distance to help presumably in macro situations want to toggle autofocus and one to toggle image stabilization that's right this lens also features lens image stabilization which will help you get those steadier shots in both photo and video now here's a look at the RF 85 millimeter 1.2 in comparison just to show how much bigger this lens is it's longer it's wider and much heavier weighing in at 1 200 grams compared to the F2 version's modest 500 grams that's more than twice the weight I suffer a little bit from wrist pain and I have found that the RF 85 millimeter 1.2 is one of the more uncomfortable lenses to use on the RF Mount because it is so front heavy this is not a problem that you'll have on the rf85 millimeter F2 thanks to its smaller lighter design and the weight is distributed nice and evenly so final thoughts on this F2 lens I was very impressed as it is sharp it's lightweight and it is well built whilst still being relatively low cost at least in the world of RF Mount lenses anyway at 85 millimeter for portraits I really believe that F2 is more than enough background separation for most people and something like the RF 85 millimeter 1.2 really is a specialty lens it's five to six times higher price tag in my opinion is not worth it to 90 of people but once you do own it and you see the results it is hard to let it go even if you know in the back of your mind like me that you probably don't need this lens I've uploaded a few raw files so you can check out the performance of the F2 lens for yourself and there is a link in the description to download those anyway that is my review so thank you so much for watching and I will see you in the next one foreign [Music]

Channel: James Reader

Views: 57,807

Keywords: canon r5, rf 85mm f2, rf 85mm 1.2, rf 85mm

Id: E_OY7Mo5Afs

Length: 11min 22sec (682 seconds)

Published: Sat May 27 2023