The
EF 85mm 1.2L USM is a professional
L series lens. Canon markets it as their "definitive portraiture lens". The lead optical engineer at Canon who led the design team for this lens was a fashion photographer, and his intention was to design a lens that would be the definitive lens for fashion photography. This required a completely new design that would take a new direction from Canon's previous 85mm lens designs. A new element was placed in the lens to give
bokeh that was unlike any of the other lenses that fashion photographers had used before. This new large element required a new clutched electronic manual focusing mechanism that was only used on Canon's
50mm f/1.0 to handle the large specialized element. When it finally hit the market, it was the only lens in the industry that was explicitly designed for fashion photography. It is the longer of the only two 1.2 lenses Canon makes, the other being the
50mm 1.2L USM. This lens is constructed with a metal body and mount, and with rubber gripping and plastic extremities. It features a wide rubber focusing ring and a distance window with
infrared index. Featuring a circular 8-blade diaphragm, and a maximum
aperture of 1.2, this lens is capable of maintaining sharpness and image quality at low apertures. The lens'
depth of field allows distinct focus on the subject, while providing a beautiful
bokeh. The optical construction of this lens contains 8 lens elements, including one ground and polished
aspherical lens element, which makes this lens extremely sharp when stopped down to about 2. This lens uses a floating front extension
focusing system, powered by a ring type USM motor.
Auto focus speed of this lens is on the slow side when compared to most ring USM lenses, and photographing fast moving targets can be quite challenging with this lens. Manual focusing is done by wire: this lens does not have a direct mechanical connection to the focusing ring, but instead detects the rotation of the focusing ring and uses the autofocus motor to drive the lens elements. While full-time manual focus is available, the lens cannot be focused when the camera is off. The front of the lens does not rotate, but does extend when focusing. ==EF 85 mm 1.2L II USM==