Canon EF 85mm f/1.4L IS USM | Image Quality Breakdown | 4K

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I am here to give you a look at the image quality from the new
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Canon 85mm f1.4 LIS USM lens. Now, I want you to know that in this particular episode, I'm benchmarking against the only
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other stabilized 85 millimeter option that's available in a Canon mount, which is the Tamron
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85 millimeter f1.8 VC. So of course, note right off the bat that the Tamron doesn't have the same
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maximum aperture as what the Canon does. It is two thirds of a stop slower, the difference between
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f1.4 and f1.8. That being said, it is an apples to apples comparison in that they're both pro-grade
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lenses that have image stabilization. And so it means that if you want image stabilization
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and the reasons why you would want image stabilization is number one, if you have a
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high resolution body, 5DSR, something like that, even makes a difference on the 30 megapixels of
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the 5D Mark IV that I've got here. But if you have higher resolution, it means that every bit
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of motion blur that would come from a bit of camera shake, it occupies more pixels. What that
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means is it becomes more obvious. And so those of you that have shot with or own a high resolution
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body know that having image stabilization makes a big difference, which is the reason why this lens
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has image stabilization. Second reason, of course, you know, has to do with video production. And in
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a later episode, I'm going to show you the difference that it can make having image stabilization or VC
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in the case of the Tamron for shooting video. And so this is an important consideration because if
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you need an image stabilized 85 millimeter lens, these are your options. And so we're going to
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jump in and we're going to benchmark these two lenses in terms of a few image quality metrics
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things like resolution and the bokeh quality, chromatic aberration, flare, that kind of stuff
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And hopefully if everything plays out as it seems to be shaping out, I may have an opportunity
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in a week or two to a benchmark, maybe even a Zeiss Otis 85mm f1.4, possibly a Sigma 85mm f1.4
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art as well at different points there. And so I'm going to go ahead and release this episode and
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film it because I do know I can do this comparison. I can't promise you the other ones, but I'm going
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to try. Now, before we jump in and look at the photos, I do want to give you a warning, those of
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you that are faint of heart that you might be surprised by what you see as we jump in. But if
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you are feeling courageous, join me as we take a look at some images from these two lenses
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Okay, I thought I'd start with a framing example. I noted in the Sigma 85 f1.4 art that it was a
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little bit shy of 85 millimeters, and I compared it to a couple of options, including the Tamron
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which I've got here again since it's in my own kit, and then with the Zeiss Otis
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And certainly the Sigma was shorter than both of those. I'm seeing kind of a similar thing here with the Canon lens
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And so if we look on both sides of the frame, we can see the Tamron's framing tighter here
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compared to the Canon, which is wider on that side. And if we look at the opposite side, we see the same thing
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that the Tamron is tighter on both sides than the Canon is
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And so I'm going to guess at this point that the Tamron is actually a little bit long
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You know, it's in the 86-87 millimeter range. But I certainly think that the Canon is probably also a hair shy of 85 millimeters
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And if I get a chance to compare it with other lenses, I'll test it there again
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Now, before I actually do a resolution test, let's take a look at the vignette here as we stop it down
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So at F1.4, the Canon has vignette, but I wouldn't call it extreme compared to a lot of other options
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Stopping down to F1.8 definitely brightens the image. F2 shows a very, very minor lightening again
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F2.8 also extremely light there, and you couldn't even tell. I went from F2.8 to F4, and there's no real perceptible change
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And so basically by F2, a good portion of the vignette is cleared up
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At F2.8, it is essentially perfectly cleared up. Just to give you an idea of a more typical example
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here is the Tamron 85mm F1.8VC at F1.8. At F2, you can see there's a significant brightening
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F2.8 brighter still. But you can see some change at F4. and basically it's not till in between f4 and f5.6 to where there's no real difference
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Now with both lenses wide open, Canon on the left, Tamron on the right, you definitely can see that
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the Tamron's vignette is heavier. You look at this corner for example. Now what I'm about to show you
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is going to perhaps seem like heresy in that I'm comparing a $700 or $800 lens with a $1,600 lens
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However, it is what it is. We'll just have to let the results speak for themselves
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So with both lenses wide open, I think it very very safe to say that the Tamron is actually sharper of the two and it also definitely got better contrast You can see just a little bit of kind of a haze on the Canon that comes from some chromatic aberration
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whereas the Tamron is exhibiting greater contrast here at the center of the frame
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If we go out towards the side of the frame, that difference becomes even more pronounced
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As you can see, as we move up to the corner, the Canon starts to be softer there and that profile extends out a ways
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Whereas the Taron's definitely got a lot more contrast and resolution pop
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It's really only at the very extreme corner where it loses that
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It's basically very consistent across the frame in terms of the resolution there
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And if you look like at this kind of grout line here, it's a pretty marked difference
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I'm surprised too. So what happens if you stop the Canon down to f1.8
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and you compare it to the Tamron, which is still wide open at f1.8? So one thing that is very clear
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and that is that the Canon is delivering a much brighter image across the frame
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So, I mean, no question there. It's not just Vignette, but if we look at the very center of the frame
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the Canon is delivering a lighter looking result, but even stopped down
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it's also not delivering as much resolution and contrast as the Tamron lens in the center
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If we go over and look at the side, I mean, what can I say? That's a pretty significant difference
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And if I look up in here in this corner, we see that the Canon is still pretty soft here at the
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edge of the frame, much, much, much more than what the Tamron is. Okay, moving both lenses to
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F2 at this point the Tamron is only stopped down a third of a stop it's a full stop stop down for
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the Canon definitely still center of the frame brightness and just kind of general illumination
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across the frame does favor the Canon but at the same time resolution and contrast no question
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it favors the Tamron let's look at the other side for a change but the results here are the same
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Even with the Canon stop down a full stop, it's not nearly as sharp or particularly doesn't have as much contrast as what the Tamron lens does
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And we'll look at the extreme corner here. And it's not necessarily majorly different here, but looking in this corner, we can definitely see there is better resolution and better contrast for the Tamron lens
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and so you know that is what it is. By the way just looking here on this side our framing
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it's roughly the same however if we look at the other side and this is from a distance of about
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six feet roughly you can see that at this distance also that the Canon is framing wider than what the
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Tamron is. Stop down to f2.8 we can see that the Tamron is delivering closer light transmission but
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still not equal. There's no question that the Canon delivers a brighter image, and I'm going to get
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back to that in a second because it does have some important bearing. However, resolution-wise
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our story is basically the same. I mean, the Tamron has higher resolution
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and it has better contrast, and that is particularly true out in the extreme corners
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middle of the frame you know it's just there's no question Tamron is sharper. F4 let's see if
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anything has changed here looking at the center of the frame I'll let you judge for yourself I'm
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seeing pretty much what I've seen all along here once again I do think that things are closer here
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this is at the very bottom but the contrast still favors the Tamron in this corner you know
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the same is true you know there's there's just more resolution packed in there and certainly
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better micro contrast out of the Tamron lens and at this point at f4 we've already noted that both
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of them are essentially clear of vignette but we'll look at f5.6 just to be sure and and so once again
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I mean basically the one thing that the the Canon has got going over the Tamron here is that its
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light transmission is noticeably better. And you can probably think the advantage of a, you know
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a wider in diameter lens. It has a 77 millimeter front filter thread instead of the 67 millimeter
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on the Tamron. So if you're not sick to your stomach at this point, let's take a look at some
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more positive news here. And I noted a few minutes ago that the light transmission of the Tamron
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or of the Canon, excuse me, is kind of a big deal. And so when I shot both lenses in the exact same
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kind of portrait setting, this is with the Canon lens. This is wide open f1.4. And we can see that
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while a resolution here isn't mind blowing, you know, we could, the focus could be just a hair
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in front of the eyelash. I'm not sure there, but there's enough resolution there certainly to
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give you a very compelling result. Out of focus area is beautifully creamy on this lens and we'll
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see that that's certainly a huge strength for the lens. And here, you know, this is processed to
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taste with this lens and you can see that, you know, once I've added some, you know, kind of
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targeted contrast and then also you know less contrast in other areas I got a portrait image that I really like and one that was quite popular with those I shared it with So here another example here This is straight out of camera a single light here I using a ring light
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LED ring light, custom white balance set here. And so we can see that, you know, on the point of
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focus, which in this case is the lashes, that we have got, you know, good sharpness with a, you know
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a little bit of that lack of contrast that we saw in our test. There's just a little bit of haze there
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The resolution's there. The contrast isn't necessarily, but again, the image taken as a whole
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it looks great. An f1.4, by the way, at this distance is tough, tough, tough. I mean, the
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depth of field is so tiny that even the slightest bit of movement by your subject means that, you
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know your depth of field is going to move on you so I mean that's that's the reality of shooting f1.4
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I was kind of surprised to read in a review from a reviewer that I respect that he he thought that
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the lens was this new Canon 85 LIS was was quite good in its flare resistance unfortunately that's
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not really what I have seen myself and so here's a flare example and a still shot wide open also
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throw up this video that I shot just to let you see what I'm talking about in terms of the veiling
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and ghosting. I think you can probably agree with me that that's a little bit more pronounced than
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what I would like, but at the same time, not unexpected for a wide aperture medium telephoto
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prime. It's something fairly common that I've seen. Of course, you know, a lens like the Otis
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manages to deal with this, but I mean, to be fair, we're talking about an extraordinarily expensive
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lens, a $4,500 lens. And so that might be the difference there. Okay, in this series, I wanted
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to give you a look at, you know, kind of the aperture performance and, you know, maybe consistency
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of circles across the frame. This kind of cat eye or lemon shape effect is, you know, I've never
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seen any medium telephoto lens solve this. So this lens isn't going to be the first. At the same time
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it's not the worst performance that I've seen. I want you to look however at the bokeh circle here
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and there's a couple of things that we're going to bring up out of this but first just kind of
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direct your attention at this kind of you know more perfect bokeh circle here. A few things you're
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going to see is number one it's quite a smooth result in the center of the frame. You can see
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just a little tiny bit of busyness in there but not at all pronounced and this is at a pixel level
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The inner line here is quite subtle. What this usually tells me is that when I see a circle that looks like this
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that I see a lens that's probably going to produce some smooth real-world bokeh
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without a lot of hard edges. And we'll think we're going to see in a second that that is exactly what we see from the lens
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Now on the negative side, while this lens does not really suffer from lateral chromatic aberration
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it does unfortunately suffer from a fair bit of longitudinal chromatic aberration. And that shows
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up when, as you can see here, it's in areas where focus is just a little bit off. And so, you know
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the two different colors are not focused identically. Some lenses will just show one or
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the other. They'll show the green fringing or they'll show the purple fringing. Unfortunately
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we get both with this lens and we get both the green fringing beyond the plane of focus. We get
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the purple fringing before the plane of focus. You know, something I'm not thrilled about
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So since we have the Tamron on hand, and obviously these two lenses are not focused in the identical
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place, you can see here compared to here. So this is both of them wide open. Comparing these
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Bokeh circles, I have commented previously on how nice and smooth the inner circle is on the
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Tamron which by the way was a huge relief after having reviewed the 45 millimeter f1.8 vc which
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you know while in a lot of ways a lot of situations the bokeh rendering is nice in this kind of
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setting I hate it it's got very pronounced inner circles concentric circles kind of that onion bokeh
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so it was a relief when I saw how smooth this was like the the canon here but you'll notice one
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difference is that the Tamron has a more pronounced inner line here than what the
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Canon does. And so again, what this tells me is that very likely in real world situations
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the Canon is going to produce slightly smoother bokeh with a little less hard edges than what the
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Tamron does. And I think that we could probably see that to be true. Now, looking at this chromatic
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aberration situation, you know, there's kind of some give and take here. The Tamron, I find
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has a little bit more pronounced purple fringing, and of course, as you can see, it's even a
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different shade. It's a little more purple, and this is a little more pink kind of hued
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But whereas the Canon has both variations, you can see as we move to defocus on the Tamron
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it really only has the purple fringing before the plane of focus. After the plane of focus
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it's pretty neutral and so you know in some ways it's more pronounced here but it doesn't really
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have the green fringing after the plane of focus. I noted in my review of the Sigma 85mm f1.4 art
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that by f2 it delivered really nice circular bokeh highlights across the frame. Unfortunately the
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Canon doesn't quite do that good but by f2.8 we can see that it definitely does deliver very clean
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bokeh circles across the frame And if we take a quick peek at that chromatic aberration situation we can see that most of it here is solved There a little of that purple fringing and a little of the green
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fringing. It's not nearly as pronounced. We can see here that by F4, however, it is completely
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eliminated. And you can see now we've got, as a result of that chromatic aberration being gone
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our contrast is looking pretty fab here at this point and none of that fringing. As far as
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the smoothness of the bokeh circles yeah the inner line has started to emerge and you can see
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a little bit of the non-agonal shape of the aperture blades but this is actually still quite
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a nice performance here bokeh quality is pretty great from the lens and that shows up in the real
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world here if you look at this wide open example this is just a cat laying on a bed but notice how
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beautifully both the foreground and the background has disappeared i mean that is a lot of cream
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right there. And so certainly something that Canon has done really well on this lens is the overall
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rendering from the lens. It has pretty beautiful rendering. If it just had a little bit more
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micro contrast and a little less chromatic aberration and maybe a bit more resolution
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it would be a true Otis contender as it is at least the bokeh is a nice contender with the Otis
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So as you can see, the outcome is maybe not what you might have expected. It's certainly not
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what I expected. In fact, after I had shot my image quality comparison, I thought, this can't
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be right. And so I went and looked at Brian Carnathon at the digital picture, at his image
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resolution comparison. And so he's got the two lenses tested on a 5DSR there. And I was surprised
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to find that his results were pretty much exactly what I saw in my results. And that the two lenses
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are close, but there's no doubt that the Tamron is the sharper of the two. And so I know that that
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might have shocked some of you. But I do want to say in my wrap up here that we have reached a
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point, and I keep saying this, I hope that people are getting the message, that we have reached a
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point that for the moment there really is a lot of parity across the field when it comes to these
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new lens releases. There's not a whole lot that separates them in terms of, you know, kind of raw
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resolution statistics. And so I want to encourage you to look at photos. If you're trying to choose
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which lens to buy, to look at photos, and you need to look at a wide variety because obviously a lot
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of what's shared out there is from people that have applied some post-processing. But if you
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look at enough images, I think that you get a sense of kind of the character of a lens. And you have
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to really decide based on the look of the images. Because if you're worried about having enough
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resolution or this metric or that metric. Basically, all of these lenses, they do a pretty good job
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and in fact, provide typically enough resolution and image quality is pretty much what anybody
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needs. But there is differences in their strengths and their weaknesses, and you need to make an
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evaluation based on your own shooting style. If you're looking for really beautiful bokeh rendering
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that's something that this lens does really well. And, you know, I will say that while
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you know, obviously I own the Tamron and, you know, while I'm impressed that it keeps up as
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well as it does with this lens, I will say that I instinctively, I think I do slightly prefer the
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look of the images from the Canon. I do slightly prefer the way the actual rendering from the lens
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takes place. That being said, if you actually watched all the way through this comparison
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I keep seeing from people that the Tamron is not a true competitor at this focal length
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Let's really, let's put that to bed at this point. The reality is, is that the Tamron on a number of metrics, it actually outdid this lens
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If we're just being objective and straight up honest, it outdid this lens, even at equivalent apertures
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And so if you consider this to be a professional grade lens, well, the Tamron has got basically
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just as nice of image quality, more metal in the outer construction at the very least
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It's got image stabilization. And as you're going to see in a later episode, its autofocus is
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actually just as good. And so the build quality is as good. The image quality is good. And the focus
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is as good. How is that not a pro grade lens? And so if you're getting stuck on the F1.8
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maybe that is a big deal for you. But for most people, to be honest, it actually really isn't
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They think it is, but it's not. And so, you know, that's certainly an option. And despite some of
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the things that might be perceived as negative about the Canon, I really do like this lens and
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I like the images that it produces. But if you were expecting it to, you know, kind of beat up
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all the competition, I'm afraid it's not going to do that in an absolute optical sense. That doesn't
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mean that you should dismiss this lens because it has a lot going for it. And I'm going to continue
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to explore that in later episodes. But at the same time, understand you need to have realistic
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expectations. And if you think this lens is going to be absolutely sharper than any 85 option out
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there, not going to happen. I'm Dustin Abbott. You can take a look in my description down below
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and you could find my ongoing image gallery there. Maybe look at some of these images for yourself
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and help to draw some conclusions. You can also get some buying links there if you'd like to
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purchase the lens. And of course, if you haven't already, you can follow me on social media. You can
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become one of my patrons and please click that subscribe button. Thanks for watching. Have a great day

Canon EF 85mm f/1.4L IS USM | Image Quality Breakdown | 4K

Dustin Abbott

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Canon EF 85mm f/1.4L IS USM | Image Quality Breakdown | 4K

Dustin Abbott