Canon announces the RF 85mm F1.2L USM – its best portrait lens yet?

Canon RF 85mm F1.2L USM

Portrait lenses are all the rage right now, but the new Canon RF 85mm F1.2L USM beats the rest with a maximum aperture of f/1.2. This captures 50% more light than rival 85mm f/1.4 lenses, and Canon claims its optical design also produces the highest resolution yet.

Wide-aperture portrait lenses are especially popular with commercial and wedding photographers because they give a very distinctive ‘look’. The 85mm focal length lets the photographer stand back a little for more natural facial perspectives, while the fast maximum aperture gives razor-thin depth of field that makes your subject stand out sharply against a blurred background.

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Rod Lawton
Contributor

Rod is an independent photography journalist and editor, and a long-standing Digital Camera World contributor, having previously worked as DCW's Group Reviews editor. Before that he has been technique editor on N-Photo, Head of Testing for the photography division and Camera Channel editor on TechRadar, as well as contributing to many other publications. He has been writing about photography technique, photo editing and digital cameras since they first appeared, and before that began his career writing about film photography. He has used and reviewed practically every interchangeable lens camera launched in the past 20 years, from entry-level DSLRs to medium format cameras, together with lenses, tripods, gimbals, light meters, camera bags and more. Rod has his own camera gear blog at fotovolo.com but also writes about photo-editing applications and techniques at lifeafterphotoshop.com