02-06-2019, 05:11 PM
(02-04-2019, 11:21 PM)kevs Wrote: Thanks Wim, can you please define fringing and IQ? I been shooting on the 85mm for ages, I never notice a problem. Though I'm only shooting beauty/ headshots , so maybe it does not show for that use? (just double checked: the site gives it a whopping 4/4/5. rating.The fringing I meant was purple fringing. In the review here it states it only occurs at F/1.8, but I found that with the best copy I had (of 3), it still occurred at F/2.2 to F/2.5. Also, I found it to be so bad, that you could barely see what the fringed items were. Do note that purple fringing, unlike “ bokeh fringing”, is impossible to completely remove in PP. If you are shooting events like weddings with it, that is a problem, I found. Also, close focusing it is not very good at. First of all, I found it misses focus quite easily when focusing close to the MFD, and it is a lot less sharp at close distances too, almost as if it becomes a little hazy. Since I tend to use my lenses often as close as I can get with it, that is a problem for me. Fall-off at the edges when focusing closer was also quite noticeable, as was vignetting.
Never use the fixed 28 too much either, as I got 24-105 L.
That said what are you other favorite Canon lenses. And there is no filter on this site to quickly find the 4-5?
Also, this site, does not show many old lenses ratings from old Canon / Nikon era?
With my 28 I never had any of these problems, plus it was quite sharp over the whole field, at any focusing distance, with very little fall-off in sharpness over the field. I reckon my 28 was a 4-4.5, and teh 85s I had were no more than 2.5-3s, in the rating scales of Photozone/OpticalLimits. Maybe I had an exceptional copy, which is possible, but with the 85 I had 3 of what were bad copies IMO, so I wondered what the chance was. I did try another photog’s copy a few years later, and it was the same, so I wrote it off as being not such a great lens as people said. Not fo rme anyway.
I’ve had two 24-105Ls, which I did not rate too highly either. They were OK, but certainly not great. At MFD they were not so great either, and neither were they when shooting in darker, less contrasty environments. For general, outdoors shooting with good light they were ok.
For me, the best lenses so far are 24L (I or II, the latter being even better), the 50L (I have a copy that was calibrated by Canon with very specific instructions from myself, and speaking personally with the engineer who did the calibration), 85L, 135L, 180L, 100-400L (I was good, II is better except for the zooming system), MP-E 65, and any of the TS-Es (had old TS-E 24L, TS-E 45, TS-E 90, now still have TS-E 24L II, TS-E 17L, and plan to get TS-E 50L, TS-E 90L and TS-E 120L). I also had the 40 F/2.8, and I liked it, but it got almost no use because of the 50L, so I sold it again. Other lenses I liked a lot are the old 50 macro, just that the AF motor made such a terrible noise, and I eventually sold it. The 70-200 F/4L I liked a lot, as well as the 70-200 F/4 L IS. The difference between the two apart from the IS was that the non-IS was better when focusing close to MFD, while the IS version was better at distances a little further away. All of the lenses I still own I use regularly close to MFD, and all Do well well at those distances, from 50 mm even with extension tubes except the 85L, or close focusing lens adapters (500D Canon), the latter specifically with the 100-400.
As to searching lenses with 4 or 5 stars, no, that is not so easy here. But then, that is not always that important, as generally speaking, only a single lens is tested, at a specific focusing distance. The best thing to do is read the text with a lens, and see if the plus points are of importance to you, and if you can live with the minus points, and then test or try a lens to see if that is really the case.
This site does not test many old lenses, no, it is rare, and more out of curiosity, when such an old lens is tested. Rightfully so, IMO
![Smile Smile](https://forum.opticallimits.com/images/smilies/smile.png)
HTH, kind regards, Wim
Gear: Canon EOS R with 3 primes and 2 zooms, 4 EF-R adapters, Canon EOS 5 (analog), 9 Canon EF primes, a lone Canon EF zoom, 2 extenders, 2 converters, tubes; Olympus OM-D 1 Mk II & Pen F with 12 primes, 6 zooms, and 3 Metabones EF-MFT adapters ....