Canon 50mm 1.4 and 1.2

treeman

treeman

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Ok, don't panic I'm not jumping ship, but I've a friend who's getting into photography, and he's asked me what the difference is between the two. Obviously half a stop more light, and a shed load of more cash, and a tad less DOF but is there anything else I'm missing?
thanks :)
 
I've had both lenses and currently have the 1.2L The 1.2 is big, beautiful and heavy.. Despite what I read to the contrary I don't have any problem focusing it at close range although you obviously need to be disciplined in your approach. It gives wonderful contrast and colour saturation and flare is virtually non-existent, even shooting into the light.

On the downside (apart from the weight) focusing is a mite slow, and it does suffer from CA in extreme contrast situations. Also it throws a huge imaging circle behind the lens which fouls the bottom of the mirror box and it cuts off the lower edge on round specular highlights as result, although the issue disappears as you stop down a little and it's a problem too with the 85mm 1.2L but they're extreme lenses by any standard.

The 1.4 is a great lens too and both produce nice round oof highlights by virtue of having more aperture blades than the 1.8.

He won't really go far wrong with either.
 
Will he be using it on full frame or crop sensor?
 
A couple of shots, both at f/1.2 to show the highlight clipping. It seems to occur the closer the highlight gets to the edge of the frame. In this first shot you can see that the central orange highlight isn't clipped while the white highlight at the top is clipped on the bottom.


highlight1 by tonky8203, on Flickr

Moving the orange highlight closer to the edge of the frame clips it on the top as you can see.


highlight2 by tonky8203, on Flickr

The phenomenon disappears at around f/1.8. I think its still an issue with a full frame sensor albeit less so due to the larger mirror box but it's something your friend needs to research. Personally I love this lens - it's hand holdable in virtually any light and it's little foibles don't bother me.
 
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I've no idea what body he's using, but thanks for the advice, Cedric, much appreciated.
As far as I know he wants it for night time, time lapse stuff, so the slow focusing won't be an issue, as I presume he's in manual anyway. Personally it seems the lens will be wasted for that sort of work and best to stick with the 1.4 or even the 1.8.
Thanks again :)
 
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