Canon EF 135mm f/2.0L lens

see also:

• Canon EOS camera system
• Canon EF lenses
• Canon EF telephoto lenses
• portrait lenses
• Sigma 135mm f/1.8 DG HSM Art full frame lens

• one of my favorite Canon lenses
• introduced in 1996
• on my 1.3x crop Canon 1D Mark III digital SLR it gives an even longer effective focal length (176mm) but I love it for 3/4 length fashion shots when you want to blur the background and you have 3m or so to spare from camera to subject, but it also works very well as a portrait lens with its shallow depth of field (DOF) and lovely bokeh
• it is very susceptible to flare so using the big lens hood is almost mandatory in any light!
• sharpness improves as you stop down so by f/4 the 5D sensor resolution is limiting sharpness, no longer the lens.
• a great portrait lens, especially for indoor performance photography but too long for the cropped sensors for indoor portraits
• it can be used via adapter on an Olympus OM-D E-M5 camera to give an effective 270mm f/2.0 image stabilised manual focus lens (yes I know the DOF is more like a 270mm f/4 lens but when shooting at 270mm focal length you don't generally want shallower DOF than f/4)

• $A1879; 750g; 72mm filter;
• NOT weather sealed!
• min. focus 0.9m ⇒ 0.19x magnification on full frame
• USM rear focusing AF with full-time MF
• focus limiter switch - full range or just 1.6m to infinity
• 10 Elements in 8 Groups, two UD elements, internal floating design
• designed to be used with EF extenders - 1.4x or 2x with “minimal” loss of image quality
• at 3m focus distance, at f2.0, depth of field (DOF) is still only ~6cm on a full frame camera
• supplied with ET-78 II bayonet lens hood which is indispensible with this lens
• Canon Australia website: 135mm f/2.0L USM

• similar resolving power as the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L see here
  • has more CA than the 200mm f/2.8L II, and CA is worse with tele-extenders
• http://www.wlcastleman.com/equip/reviews/85_100_135/index.htm
  • at f/2-4 it is sharper than the 100mm f/2 or the 85mm f/1.8, with more micro-contrast on full frame sensors, and has better background blurring for the same subject size
• http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/classics/eos/EF-lenses/EF135mmf2LUSM/index.htm
• http://www.fredmiranda.com/reviews/showproduct.php?product=34
• http://www.photodo.com/topic_32.html
• for astro work see:
  • http://www.astrovalerio.altervista.org/canon-ef-l-135mm-usm/index.html - best moon detail shots are when used with 2x plus 1.4x teleextenders (ie. 378mm f.l.) and stopped down 1-2 stops.
• Roger Cicala's LensRentals.com comparison with the Zeiss ZE 135mm f/2.0
  • as sharp as the Canon lens is, it is not as sharp as the Zeiss, particularly across the frame at f/4 or wider, however, the Zeiss lens is only manual focus and is twice the price

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