Hey I think it's important to let all our viewers know, that I love the Lord of The Rings. Read the books before the movies. Think they are all fantastic. And was a D&D fan of Gygaxian proportions well before that. Bought the first MtG cards when they first came on the market.
This lens is something really special. I worked with an advertising photographer whos number one lens was the 200mm f1.8. Everything looks some kind of a stage with it. The compression of the image is really unique. It totally prefer the look over every 85mm.
I love that this format is back! It may get less views than reviews of the hottest new cameras and less traffic from non-subscribers but for photo geeks this is golden content!
I got my hands on one used for 500€ (absolute bargain) a couple of years ago and it's become my favourite lens. Not the one I use the most, but certainly the most unique one I have. I use it for sports (great for indoor athletics where a 300 is actually too close to subjects) and the images are pretty special. But you have to know what you can use it with. If you need that particular shot and only get one chance at it, it sometimes misses, so I wouldn't risk it in that case. I wouldn't actually call it miss, because a 70-200 2.8 might be as precise but the shallow DOF of a 1.8 needs to act really quick. Looking forward to use it with an R5 or R6 and see how well it performs. On the downside, really hard to find replacements if anything goes wrong at any given time. I guess I will just enjoy it as long as I can and take good care of it.
I really liked how this review also demonstrsted the practical working distance of a lens like this. That's not something you can easily realize without actually shooting with said focal length.
The Eye of Sauron is one of my favourite lenses that I've ever shot with when teamed up with an EOS1 or the EOS 3 with its eye control ... Hand holding was so easy with these combos.
Love that you invited Irene, her feedback was honest and coming from someone with a lot of experience. Seeing how old glass compares to new tech is fun, stuff wasn't always better in the good old days.
Not quite. It's "mirrorless" tech that makes this revitalizing of old lenses possible, not Canon in particular. This lens works superbly on Sony bodies with the MC-11 adapter, too (see my main comment somewhere in here between all the LotR jokes, and sites like phillipreeve.net for more). Truly accurate focussing, because the focus is being measured and nailed by the main camera sensor itself, is a very welcome improvement when these old lenses are used on mirrorless, especially given the extremely fragile depth of field.
@@GH-gn6vu No, my comment is spot on and attests to the lens design. Try grabbing a 30 year old Nikon lens, or any other really and adapting it to a Sony and let me know if auto focuses. You will understand that it does not. I have shot with an EF L lens on my 35mm film camera, my DSLR for photo and video, and at the end of summer tried a couple adapted on an R5...talk about backwards compatibility. Engineering and commitment behind the EF mount is the reason there is high faith and expectation of the RF mount for years to come.
@@nubscrub Canon are an excellent camera company and the RF mount is a good camera mount with a bright future. Yet they do not have a special/unique wisdom as you seem to be implying. Were you aware that Sony acquired Minolta back in 2006? They are one and the same company. Minolta's autofocus lenses go all the way back to 1985, and they can be adapted with good functioning autofocus to the newest Sony mirrorless bodies with, for example, the Sony LA-EA5 adapter. So, yes, in answer to your assertion, not only Canon can do this. Nikon can adapt many of their old lenses to their new Z mirrorless bodies. As to whether, or why, they release an adapter that offers all AF functions with *all* of their oldest AF lenses, you'd have to ask them: they can do it if they wish to, and the adapter is the necessary component. You can't presently adapt Nikon lenses to a new Canon mirrorless camera with autofocus, either. And likewise you can't presently adapt Canon lenses to a new Nikon mirrorless camera. To be able to do so would require someone to work on producing the necessary adapter, which does not yet exist. When it happens, it is the producer of the adapter who is to be praised, not an engineer from 35 years ago. It's a fine thing when someone does it: it's nice for example that you can adapt all Canon AF lenses to Sony thanks to third-party companies like Sigma and Metabones... it's nice that you can adapt at least a few Nikon AF lenses to Sony with good autofocus thanks to Commlite... it's nice that Sony-Minolta AF lenses all the way back to the 1980s can be adapted to Sony E... the key technological development was mirrorless itself, and the hard work of those, in the present day, who design adapters. Every company that introduces complex tech products to the market, now or in the 1980s, makes their best guess as to the right engineering choices for their present day and the foreseeable future. Some decisions turn out right, some turn out wrong, obsolete, or simply not-in-demand. Canon were not unique in designing an AF system that still works with new cameras in 2021 as, like I said, Minolta (now Sony) did it too. Every camera company screws up occasionally and every camera company gets it right occasionally, designing a product to the best of their ability for the present and near-future that sometimes, to everyone's surprise, turns out to still be functional and useful decades later, with the right added work on backwards-compatibility. It isn't unique. You imply the infallibility of Canon and refer to their EF mount as evidence of the infallibility of their RF mount. I note you did not mention Canon's EF-M mount, a mirrorless mount introduced less than a decade ago which looks likely to end up being a technological dead-end in the near future, as it supports APS-C only. The wiser, more farsighted choice, made by Nikon with their Z mount and Sony with their E mount, was to use a single mirrorless mount specification for both APS-C and full-frame. I mention this only as an example that Canon is neither unique nor infallible. I believe Canon's RF mount will last a long time, but so will Sony's E mount, their product is not unique. Nikon's Z mount is also a sound design, and the only question mark over its future is financial, not technological: will Nikon, as the current third-placed competitor in mirrorless, be profitable and have enough market share for years to come, in order to continue making products that work with it? (hopefully, yes) To me, it's just nice that new tech happens to be able to work with old tech in interesting ways. I praise the ingenuity of those who provide the new tech today and the new, clever adapter designs today to make old tech relevant once again - not the long-since-retired engineers of 30+ years ago whose choices and guesses back then, while perhaps admirable, have long since been paid for, and tell us nothing about corporate culture today, and shouldn't influence our opinion on the wisdom of a new generation of engineers. Brands aren't special and we shouldn't be too loyal to them or boastful about them, we only encourage them to rest on their laurels by doing so.
This lens was quite popular with astronomers, used as a telescope for doing ground-based wide field exoplanet transit surveys. I remember the focus by wire was a nuisance because we were running them on a scientific CCD camera without the camera body electronics needed to provide power for focus, the focus was adjusted by painstakingly swapping back and forth with a cheap film body at least on the project I was involved with. At the time this lens was the best compromise for large field of view and aperture while keeping cost down (compared to, say, custom optics, which is what the NASA TESS spacecraft did).
SuperWASP. I own a 2nd version and want to try wide field with it. Took some great photo of the total lunar eclipse in Squamish with moon rising against the Chief
This lens was one of my old housemates dream lenses! He finally got one after I moved away and so wish I could have had a plan with it! It looks fantastic! Brute of a lens!
Hey guys. Great review. As I was watching this review my wife chimed in to say that I have the same lens. I froze because I did not want her to know how much it cost me!
shot with one this weekend, its a cinderblock, set your expectations about that weight , I shot all hand held for the music event, but I didn't move around as much as I would with a 70-200 2.8
You guys keep bettering yourselves! Loved this review, not just for the technical aspects but also from an application point of view. My partner really wants me to get better at portraits (I'm a landscape/wildlife kind of guy) so anything that can help me there is good.
I used this puppy on my XPro2 and man I produced fracking amazing frames. Now balancing this juggernaut with the XPro2 was like making Frankenstein run!!!! Lol
I had the chance years ago to shoot a soccer match between the goal & corner flag with this lens on my EOS-3 and 1D (the original). The lower contrast on this lens paired well with the Kodak & Fuji E6 film I was shooting with, and also got good results out of the 1D jpgs with reduced highlight blowout.
Loved Confederation Park when I lived in Calgary. It was where my daughter took some of her first steps. One of the most beautiful park I've seen in Canada.
I own this lens and have used it on Sony camera bodies (the a9 and a7Rii) with the Sigma MC-11 adapter. On 3rd generation Sony bodies and up (the a9, a7iii, a7Riii and up) everything works well*, including eye-autofocus. So that's what I wanted to mention first: this isn't only a lens for consideration with the new Canon mirrorless cameras, it's a fine lens on Sony bodies too. On the older a7Rii the eye autofocus doesn't work unless you change the camera's setting to only contrast-detect AF instead of phase-detect, which is a very slow focussing mode. Of course, autofocus and other features work, but not eye-autofocus. Secondly... At 9:07 and at 11:08 it's mentioned that the reviewers found some inaccuracy in the eye autofocus. I'm not sure what I think about that. I've mostly used the Sony a9 when shooting people with this lens and I haven't noticed the same thing, but I am not at the same level as these reviewers. I wonder whether the focusing accuracy issue is really down to the lens - it's interesting that the reviewers mention that this happens with other Canon EF lenses on RF bodies too. Perhaps the extremely thin depth of field (much thinner than any native RF lens you can get) is revealing a slight lack of precision or update-speed in the current Canon bodies' eye autofocus processes? Not saying this to have a dig at the Canon bodies, I just don't know whether the issue is inherent to the lens or to the camera it's being used with (given the extraordinary DoF, it's the hardest test possible) and wanted to raise the question. Maybe the a9 is doing the same thing when used with this lens and I just haven't been attentive enough to notice? That's quite possible. Or maybe the a9's uniquely, absurdly responsive autofocus performance/sensor readout is helping? Maybe later Canon bodies will do better, if so. I have no idea. Incidentally the a9 can certainly drive this lens hard - the old lens' AF motor is not silent, and it sounds very busy when tracking a moving object. I'm sure a brand-new, native Sony lens would track better with the a9, but the focusing speed is fairly good nevertheless. *Thirdly: Oh, one caveat. I said earlier that "everything works" when this lens is adapted to Sony bodies with the MC-11. Not quite completely. There is one small glitch I'm aware of: if you change some of the physical switches on the lens body (like the AF/MF switch) while the camera is turned on, I've seen some weird behaviour - just not switching from AF to MF as requested, for example... I forget exactly. So if I want to switch one of those settings I turn the camera off, switch the setting on the lens, and turn the camera on. This is probably related to the MC-11 adapter and adapting a Canon lens onto a Sony camera, so I assume(?) it won't be an issue when the lens is put on a Canon mirrorless body. Fourthly: Agreed, it would be nice if fully perfected and modernised new 200mm f/2 (or 1.8) mirrorless lenses were being produced by manufacturers. It's a niche product, though, very expensive with relatively potential low sales figures, so I can understand why they are releasing all the "bread and butter" lenses first, there's more money to be made and bigger niches to fill. I hope it's just a matter of time... though, given how expensive a fully-new 200mm f/1.8 type lens is likely to be (very!) I will probably stick with the old lens I've got. The Canon 200 f/1.8 has a slightly old-fashioned look: slightly (only slightly) muted colours/contrast compared to a top-end modern lens. It's a different style, and concealable in post-processing. A newer lens could be a dab sharper wide-open, too, I guess, though sharpness is already high.
With regard to focusing on eyelashes and irises being soft, of you use dual-pixel RAW image format with the R5 you can adjust the focal plane slightly in post using Cannon's software. I have the same experience with the EF 85mm and was able to correct some images that slightly missed focus.
Really fun concept and having some Irene crossover was great! I was hoping Chris and Jordan would have been the models for the comedic factor, but obviously things turned out rather well as is. Gosh I hope you make it to 300K, my vote is to make Jordan film with a Pentax K-01 😆
I have one of these! Did you notice the R5 ibis vibrates like crazy with this lens when shooting at super contrasty scenes? The stabilization barely makes a difference on the r5. Ibis can do much for a 200mm. The weight is doing more that the ibis.
I'm a long time Canon user since 1990, am a lens and camera geek but I was never familiar with this lens, never saw one in life or in on line discussions. But I was managing civilian security at the curling venue of the Winter 2010 Olympics. I was walking in the building when I saw this guy with this lens attached to his camera (Note: only certified pro photographers are allowed into the Olympics with serious gear). I couldn't help myself and stopped and talked to the guy. He has been a long term sport photographer and said this lens was one of his staples in slower moving sports like curling, forgot to ask who he shot for but given the money to get a photographer in, it had to be a company with deep pockets.
Glad to see this reposted on DPR in honer of one of the best lens ever made IMHO. I may be deemed crazy, but I sold the F2 version to get this one, it has just something "magical" in how it renders wide open, probably there's some real Sauron's mojo inside.. :)
@@Elgsdyr and tells the same story every book ever written does.... Good versus evil and good wins. It has some inclusionary things like different species but it's the same story any book ever that is fiction has. Well I guess in some books evil wins. But they're always has to be a protagonist and antagonist something that happens and an ending. So something about it you don't like but it's not the story.... I think people that don't like it don't like it cuz it's such a long story :)
@@jlina "tells the same story every book ever written does" So according to your logic, if I love ANY other story it would falsify my statement since it would inevitably be the same basic story as LotR? And am I right in concluding from this, that you thereby love every single book ever written?
I've recently acquired one of these lenses, and after putting the serial number into the Canon serial checker, I realised I've got one from december 1988! Considering it was released the previous month, does it change the value?
The 200 mm f/1.8 doesn't have any less DOF than any other f/1.8 lens does. Blurry background is not same thing as shallow/thin depth of field. One can have deep/thick depth of field and very blurry background, the key to this is always to use a longer focal length as you will crop the background and magnify it because you are further. Rule of thumb is: Same subject magnification (subject is same size in the frame) Same F-stop (value, like f/5.6) Then the longer focal length will always blurry backgrounds more than short focal lengths. So, when taking portraits you anyways frame the subject same manner regardless anything else. Like is it a full portrait, portrait, a couple shot, group shot etc. That is the rule how you need to frame the subject. Then comes your space and location. Do you want to have subject in the scene, or is the scene so awful that it distracts from the subject? Keep it simple 3 details in the photo. So if you are photographing in the kitchen, you have less space than you are photographing in a football stadium. But if you are photographing in football stadium then you want to show that. If you are photographing in a kitchen, you want to show the kitchen too. Context matters. You don't want to blur those places out. In group photography you have people at various distances, and all needs to be in focus. In a individual photography you want to have everything from tip of the nose to ears in focus, so full face. Not one eye, not eye lashes, not with blurry nose or so (there are rules as expectation). So if you want to blur the background, it is because background doesn't matter. And when background doesn't matter, you can either move the subject away or you can crop the background and best way to get it done is to use long focal length. To isolate person from background can be done via blurring, but main key is lighting, colors, contrast, shapes and theme. Everything else than the lens or it properties. Put a person front of the white paper and well lit, you can't isolate more. Put that person front of the very busy multiple colored brickwall and you have very flat image. The great thing with the telephoto lenses is that you get very blurry background, but you can crank the F-stop up to f/8-11 range and get deep/thick depth of field so you get whole person in focus, but background is unrecognizable. What for you would want f/1.8 200 mm? Only for shutter speed. So sports, wildlife and such that are so small or you can capture them in one thin plane that DOF is not such a problem, but there you want anyways f/8-11 range anyways, but not by getting blurry shots because your shutter speed was 1/15 or 1/30.
This week DPR: we are having a 300k subscriber challenge.
Also DPR: I hate Lord of the rings
Next week DPR: we are having a 200k subscriber challenge😂
Only Jordan hates LOTR, which should give MORE incentive to make him suffer with a pitiful video camera.
@@sleazybukkake logic you cant argue, well done sir 👌
I laughed way too hard at this! 😂
Honestly i dont like mobs or pile -ons but
i think we should put Jordan on trial for heresy.
Loool I love how most of comments are shocked by Jordan’s hate of LOTR, and I will agree with the crowd, wtf Jordan.
I didn’t like it either. Nor the books. Felt really drawn-out to me. But it’s been a long time so i might give it another chance
I suppose I can understand a dislike of the movies, but the books are sacred.
I was gonna say, I was JUST about to unsubscribe when I heard that! LOL
These people need help. And love.
and a Sam
Only gearheads call it that.
Hey I think it's important to let all our viewers know, that I love the Lord of The Rings. Read the books before the movies. Think they are all fantastic. And was a D&D fan of Gygaxian proportions well before that. Bought the first MtG cards when they first came on the market.
faith in dpreview: RESTORED!
For where there is darkness, there must be light
Wait, are throwing Jordan under the bus to save yourself from the web wrath caused by your own comment ? XD
Too little, too late. Watch as your channel falls as surely as the tower of Bao-Dur did.
you were THIS close, Niccolls.
Good save, i'll stay subbed.
Mightiest lens I ever owned. Used it to record dance recitals.
Great to see the collaboration with Irene and combining everyone's take on using old & new tech in a setting like this!
This lens is something really special. I worked with an advertising photographer whos number one lens was the 200mm f1.8. Everything looks some kind of a stage with it. The compression of the image is really unique. It totally prefer the look over every 85mm.
Please more lens review collabs with Irene, this worked so well! Loved this video guys!
Wow cool to see you here.
I love the rendering of vintage lenses. It's more organic so often. More contrast it just a slider away.
Me after the comment section destroys Jordan for hating LOTR:
LOOKS LIKE MEAT'S BACK ON THE MENU BOYS!
...AND MY AXE
I love that this format is back! It may get less views than reviews of the hottest new cameras and less traffic from non-subscribers but for photo geeks this is golden content!
Jordan hates Lord of the Rings? BLASPHEMY! HERESY! HE'S A WITCH!
More gear from yesteryear please. These are always so fun.
He turned Chris into a newt!
Actually, to not hate "LOTR" is blasphemy, heresy, and to be a witch.
The picture quality from that lens is incredible, the flamingo at the end is an amazing shot
One of the best tele lenses ever made, I love this lens
Yes! Finally we have some gear from Yesteryear
I got my hands on one used for 500€ (absolute bargain) a couple of years ago and it's become my favourite lens. Not the one I use the most, but certainly the most unique one I have.
I use it for sports (great for indoor athletics where a 300 is actually too close to subjects) and the images are pretty special. But you have to know what you can use it with. If you need that particular shot and only get one chance at it, it sometimes misses, so I wouldn't risk it in that case. I wouldn't actually call it miss, because a 70-200 2.8 might be as precise but the shallow DOF of a 1.8 needs to act really quick.
Looking forward to use it with an R5 or R6 and see how well it performs. On the downside, really hard to find replacements if anything goes wrong at any given time. I guess I will just enjoy it as long as I can and take good care of it.
I really liked how this review also demonstrsted the practical working distance of a lens like this. That's not something you can easily realize without actually shooting with said focal length.
Nice to see Irene as a guest and always the classic 2 step ladder from walmart.
This, the 50mm 1.2 and the 135mm 2.0 are legendary
The full body shots look frickin' amazing! Looks like 8x10 large format or something like that. Love it.
This is best lens ever, heavy and front heavy, but I'm always astonished from the sharpness, colors and bokeh.
The Eye of Sauron is one of my favourite lenses that I've ever shot with when teamed up with an EOS1 or the EOS 3 with its eye control ... Hand holding was so easy with these combos.
Love that you invited Irene, her feedback was honest and coming from someone with a lot of experience. Seeing how old glass compares to new tech is fun, stuff wasn't always better in the good old days.
Wow. The next episode better be fire to make up for the whole "Jordan hates Lord of the Rings" thing.
A nice change of pace gentlemen, very enjoyable. Thanks!
This is a Unicorn of a lens, I've never seen one in person!
Wow, the first photo by Irene is to die for!
There was even a rarer Canon FD mount version of this lens!
Man, this lens is magic!
Holy eff you had this for a month! That’s mad love. That lens is insane
The comparison at 7.40, just wow, that creamy look, and watching this vid could cost a packet, thanks guys.
This as fun! Can’t wait to see more videos about old and weird camera gear.
This is THE portrait lens to use during corona times.
Love the lens review, particularly an older lens. Please do more stuff like this.
Covid safe portrait lens!
Yeah: 35mm used to be standard for street photography, now it's 200mm.....
Only with Canon can you bust out such a classic lens and breathe new life into it with their most modern body. So impressive
Not quite. It's "mirrorless" tech that makes this revitalizing of old lenses possible, not Canon in particular. This lens works superbly on Sony bodies with the MC-11 adapter, too (see my main comment somewhere in here between all the LotR jokes, and sites like phillipreeve.net for more).
Truly accurate focussing, because the focus is being measured and nailed by the main camera sensor itself, is a very welcome improvement when these old lenses are used on mirrorless, especially given the extremely fragile depth of field.
@@GH-gn6vu No, my comment is spot on and attests to the lens design. Try grabbing a 30 year old Nikon lens, or any other really and adapting it to a Sony and let me know if auto focuses. You will understand that it does not. I have shot with an EF L lens on my 35mm film camera, my DSLR for photo and video, and at the end of summer tried a couple adapted on an R5...talk about backwards compatibility. Engineering and commitment behind the EF mount is the reason there is high faith and expectation of the RF mount for years to come.
@@nubscrub Canon are an excellent camera company and the RF mount is a good camera mount with a bright future. Yet they do not have a special/unique wisdom as you seem to be implying.
Were you aware that Sony acquired Minolta back in 2006? They are one and the same company. Minolta's autofocus lenses go all the way back to 1985, and they can be adapted with good functioning autofocus to the newest Sony mirrorless bodies with, for example, the Sony LA-EA5 adapter. So, yes, in answer to your assertion, not only Canon can do this.
Nikon can adapt many of their old lenses to their new Z mirrorless bodies. As to whether, or why, they release an adapter that offers all AF functions with *all* of their oldest AF lenses, you'd have to ask them: they can do it if they wish to, and the adapter is the necessary component.
You can't presently adapt Nikon lenses to a new Canon mirrorless camera with autofocus, either. And likewise you can't presently adapt Canon lenses to a new Nikon mirrorless camera. To be able to do so would require someone to work on producing the necessary adapter, which does not yet exist. When it happens, it is the producer of the adapter who is to be praised, not an engineer from 35 years ago.
It's a fine thing when someone does it: it's nice for example that you can adapt all Canon AF lenses to Sony thanks to third-party companies like Sigma and Metabones... it's nice that you can adapt at least a few Nikon AF lenses to Sony with good autofocus thanks to Commlite... it's nice that Sony-Minolta AF lenses all the way back to the 1980s can be adapted to Sony E... the key technological development was mirrorless itself, and the hard work of those, in the present day, who design adapters.
Every company that introduces complex tech products to the market, now or in the 1980s, makes their best guess as to the right engineering choices for their present day and the foreseeable future. Some decisions turn out right, some turn out wrong, obsolete, or simply not-in-demand. Canon were not unique in designing an AF system that still works with new cameras in 2021 as, like I said, Minolta (now Sony) did it too.
Every camera company screws up occasionally and every camera company gets it right occasionally, designing a product to the best of their ability for the present and near-future that sometimes, to everyone's surprise, turns out to still be functional and useful decades later, with the right added work on backwards-compatibility. It isn't unique.
You imply the infallibility of Canon and refer to their EF mount as evidence of the infallibility of their RF mount. I note you did not mention Canon's EF-M mount, a mirrorless mount introduced less than a decade ago which looks likely to end up being a technological dead-end in the near future, as it supports APS-C only. The wiser, more farsighted choice, made by Nikon with their Z mount and Sony with their E mount, was to use a single mirrorless mount specification for both APS-C and full-frame. I mention this only as an example that Canon is neither unique nor infallible. I believe Canon's RF mount will last a long time, but so will Sony's E mount, their product is not unique. Nikon's Z mount is also a sound design, and the only question mark over its future is financial, not technological: will Nikon, as the current third-placed competitor in mirrorless, be profitable and have enough market share for years to come, in order to continue making products that work with it? (hopefully, yes)
To me, it's just nice that new tech happens to be able to work with old tech in interesting ways. I praise the ingenuity of those who provide the new tech today and the new, clever adapter designs today to make old tech relevant once again - not the long-since-retired engineers of 30+ years ago whose choices and guesses back then, while perhaps admirable, have long since been paid for, and tell us nothing about corporate culture today, and shouldn't influence our opinion on the wisdom of a new generation of engineers. Brands aren't special and we shouldn't be too loyal to them or boastful about them, we only encourage them to rest on their laurels by doing so.
Great video! I’d love to see more content like this!
Lovely portraits, nice presentation of this awesome (g)oldie
This lens was quite popular with astronomers, used as a telescope for doing ground-based wide field exoplanet transit surveys. I remember the focus by wire was a nuisance because we were running them on a scientific CCD camera without the camera body electronics needed to provide power for focus, the focus was adjusted by painstakingly swapping back and forth with a cheap film body at least on the project I was involved with. At the time this lens was the best compromise for large field of view and aperture while keeping cost down (compared to, say, custom optics, which is what the NASA TESS spacecraft did).
SuperWASP.
I own a 2nd version and want to try wide field with it. Took some great photo of the total lunar eclipse in Squamish with moon rising against the Chief
Love the collaboration, I know it isn't always useful but I love seeing fully processed images from real world scenarios.
As always, informative and entertaining. And wonderful portrait images too.
Wow, that Bokeh picture at 7:00. A true piece of art. I love it.
Super nice idee! More of this type of videos please
Always nice to see some collaboration, and I enjoyed Irene's photos! Also, the picture of Chris is adorable.
Great video though, the photos looked astounding, appreciated as i bet it was cold!
More old lens review please, they are inspirational and engaging.
This lens was one of my old housemates dream lenses! He finally got one after I moved away and so wish I could have had a plan with it! It looks fantastic! Brute of a lens!
Fabulous lens. Please keep making this kind of content. It is highly appreciated.
Hey guys. Great review. As I was watching this review my wife chimed in to say that I have the same lens. I froze because I did not want her to know how much it cost me!
know that feeling very well
Awesome video ! I’ve been experimenting with longer lenses myself so this was helpful
More of this if possible :-) A lot of the old stuff, usually what has been expensive then, really holds up well until today.
Love it! 200 1.8 what a crazy lens did not know this existed, now I want one
Do t try one out, that how I got trapped
The images are stunning!
Stopped down isn’t so great, but wide-open, all I can say is wow! What a lens, such beautiful images and also a wonderful model.
Oh that sweet sweet modem sound.
The pictures of this model are fantastic.
I saw Irene Rudnyk's name, and I clicked right away.
9:07 Is that a fault of the lens? Doesn't the lens go where the AF system tells it?
shot with one this weekend, its a cinderblock, set your expectations about that weight , I shot all hand held for the music event, but I didn't move around as much as I would with a 70-200 2.8
You guys keep bettering yourselves! Loved this review, not just for the technical aspects but also from an application point of view. My partner really wants me to get better at portraits (I'm a landscape/wildlife kind of guy) so anything that can help me there is good.
Cameras of YesterYear's Spiritual Successor!!
Release date November 1988, discontinued in 2004, replaced with 200 mm F2 from April 2008.
I used this puppy on my XPro2 and man I produced fracking amazing frames. Now balancing this juggernaut with the XPro2 was like making Frankenstein run!!!! Lol
Interesting that it's so much sharper than the 50 f/1.0, which is the same age and the same sort of "statement" lens.
Amazing lens!
Man now i want this lens.
And there i already shoot with my 135mm L 2.0 and 70-200 2.8 @200 2.8
This looks like a fun lens to shoot with! Speaking of old lenses, I love shooting with my old russian Jupiter 21-M 200mm f/4
I had the chance years ago to shoot a soccer match between the goal & corner flag with this lens on my EOS-3 and 1D (the original).
The lower contrast on this lens paired well with the Kodak & Fuji E6 film I was shooting with, and also got good results out of the 1D jpgs with reduced highlight blowout.
Loved Confederation Park when I lived in Calgary. It was where my daughter took some of her first steps. One of the most beautiful park I've seen in Canada.
I own this lens and have used it on Sony camera bodies (the a9 and a7Rii) with the Sigma MC-11 adapter.
On 3rd generation Sony bodies and up (the a9, a7iii, a7Riii and up) everything works well*, including eye-autofocus. So that's what I wanted to mention first: this isn't only a lens for consideration with the new Canon mirrorless cameras, it's a fine lens on Sony bodies too.
On the older a7Rii the eye autofocus doesn't work unless you change the camera's setting to only contrast-detect AF instead of phase-detect, which is a very slow focussing mode. Of course, autofocus and other features work, but not eye-autofocus.
Secondly... At 9:07 and at 11:08 it's mentioned that the reviewers found some inaccuracy in the eye autofocus. I'm not sure what I think about that. I've mostly used the Sony a9 when shooting people with this lens and I haven't noticed the same thing, but I am not at the same level as these reviewers. I wonder whether the focusing accuracy issue is really down to the lens - it's interesting that the reviewers mention that this happens with other Canon EF lenses on RF bodies too. Perhaps the extremely thin depth of field (much thinner than any native RF lens you can get) is revealing a slight lack of precision or update-speed in the current Canon bodies' eye autofocus processes?
Not saying this to have a dig at the Canon bodies, I just don't know whether the issue is inherent to the lens or to the camera it's being used with (given the extraordinary DoF, it's the hardest test possible) and wanted to raise the question. Maybe the a9 is doing the same thing when used with this lens and I just haven't been attentive enough to notice? That's quite possible. Or maybe the a9's uniquely, absurdly responsive autofocus performance/sensor readout is helping? Maybe later Canon bodies will do better, if so. I have no idea. Incidentally the a9 can certainly drive this lens hard - the old lens' AF motor is not silent, and it sounds very busy when tracking a moving object. I'm sure a brand-new, native Sony lens would track better with the a9, but the focusing speed is fairly good nevertheless.
*Thirdly: Oh, one caveat. I said earlier that "everything works" when this lens is adapted to Sony bodies with the MC-11. Not quite completely. There is one small glitch I'm aware of: if you change some of the physical switches on the lens body (like the AF/MF switch) while the camera is turned on, I've seen some weird behaviour - just not switching from AF to MF as requested, for example... I forget exactly. So if I want to switch one of those settings I turn the camera off, switch the setting on the lens, and turn the camera on. This is probably related to the MC-11 adapter and adapting a Canon lens onto a Sony camera, so I assume(?) it won't be an issue when the lens is put on a Canon mirrorless body.
Fourthly: Agreed, it would be nice if fully perfected and modernised new 200mm f/2 (or 1.8) mirrorless lenses were being produced by manufacturers. It's a niche product, though, very expensive with relatively potential low sales figures, so I can understand why they are releasing all the "bread and butter" lenses first, there's more money to be made and bigger niches to fill. I hope it's just a matter of time... though, given how expensive a fully-new 200mm f/1.8 type lens is likely to be (very!) I will probably stick with the old lens I've got. The Canon 200 f/1.8 has a slightly old-fashioned look: slightly (only slightly) muted colours/contrast compared to a top-end modern lens. It's a different style, and concealable in post-processing. A newer lens could be a dab sharper wide-open, too, I guess, though sharpness is already high.
an absolute magic comes out of this one :O
With regard to focusing on eyelashes and irises being soft, of you use dual-pixel RAW image format with the R5 you can adjust the focal plane slightly in post using Cannon's software. I have the same experience with the EF 85mm and was able to correct some images that slightly missed focus.
Actually very much fun! Thank you.
So, the lens sees whether it focuses on eyelashes or iris?
To clarify her comment about focusing issues, newer EF lenses like all Sigma ones as well, work perfectly fine with the R5 and R6.
Nice, great review. I'm still trying to work out if it's worth hunting down these older high end lenses? £2k-£4k is a lot for a 30 year old lens.
Do it! It is only money. The hype is real with this lens.
Thanks for this review Chris & Jordan. I am a Sony shooter and this vid. has prompted me to immediately look at old Minolta lenses.
Wow, with a lens like that I would love to take some portraits again. Great video also interesting to see some invited talent.
I know another option for 'gear of yesteryear'.
The Minolta 70-210mm f4 (beercan) from1980's!
Still focusses via la-ea4 on every Sony A7*.
Really fun concept and having some Irene crossover was great! I was hoping Chris and Jordan would have been the models for the comedic factor, but obviously things turned out rather well as is.
Gosh I hope you make it to 300K, my vote is to make Jordan film with a Pentax K-01 😆
My sports lens. I love it. I have only ever seen one other person use this lens.
Great lens, even BETTER wonderful Hunter wellies. :-)
Loved this vintage gear review! 👍
Jordon absolutely hates lord of the rings? UNSUBSCRIBE MANFLESH!
I have one of these! Did you notice the R5 ibis vibrates like crazy with this lens when shooting at super contrasty scenes?
The stabilization barely makes a difference on the r5. Ibis can do much for a 200mm. The weight is doing more that the ibis.
That was Interesting! Can you compare this Eye of a Sauron with the Canon EF 135mm f/2 ?
Very good! The lens is excellent. And i bought canon 200mm f/1.8 too
Jordan you a have target on your back from now on. Just saying.
I'm a long time Canon user since 1990, am a lens and camera geek but I was never familiar with this lens, never saw one in life or in on line discussions. But I was managing civilian security at the curling venue of the Winter 2010 Olympics. I was walking in the building when I saw this guy with this lens attached to his camera (Note: only certified pro photographers are allowed into the Olympics with serious gear). I couldn't help myself and stopped and talked to the guy. He has been a long term sport photographer and said this lens was one of his staples in slower moving sports like curling, forgot to ask who he shot for but given the money to get a photographer in, it had to be a company with deep pockets.
Thats an awesome lens. Is that the Shimoda Explore at the beginning of the video? 40 or 60? Just wondering because it looks really nice.
I have that lens sitting in in the closet, this has motivated me to take it out and try it with the R5! Thanks!
Sell it and buy two or three R5's - the price of the 200/1.8 just went up...
@@AnandaGarden I am taking this lens to the grave. They will never ever reproduce this. Priceless! Or perhaps a couple of R1's with a global shutter
This was a cool video, with a cool lens, nice job guys👍👍
5:37 These images look beautiful.
Ohhhhh My Goooooood!!! What did you do to that scarf!!!!
Glad to see this reposted on DPR in honer of one of the best lens ever made IMHO. I may be deemed crazy, but I sold the F2 version to get this one, it has just something "magical" in how it renders wide open, probably there's some real Sauron's mojo inside.. :)
How can you 'absolutely hate The Lord of the Rings'? That's very difficult to do.
I agree with Jordan on this. Well, I don't hate it, but I just don't think it's a very good story.
@weeb jail Let's not get into a discussion about "right" or "wrong" in a matter of taste. ;)
@@Elgsdyr and tells the same story every book ever written does.... Good versus evil and good wins. It has some inclusionary things like different species but it's the same story any book ever that is fiction has. Well I guess in some books evil wins. But they're always has to be a protagonist and antagonist something that happens and an ending. So something about it you don't like but it's not the story.... I think people that don't like it don't like it cuz it's such a long story :)
@@jlina "tells the same story every book ever written does"
So according to your logic, if I love ANY other story it would falsify my statement since it would inevitably be the same basic story as LotR? And am I right in concluding from this, that you thereby love every single book ever written?
@weeb jail Well, if you can prove that I might consider changing my mind. :P
I've recently acquired one of these lenses, and after putting the serial number into the Canon serial checker, I realised I've got one from december 1988! Considering it was released the previous month, does it change the value?
The eye of sauron lens!
Great! Please make other videos on old lenses! That’s fun!
The 200 mm f/1.8 doesn't have any less DOF than any other f/1.8 lens does.
Blurry background is not same thing as shallow/thin depth of field.
One can have deep/thick depth of field and very blurry background, the key to this is always to use a longer focal length as you will crop the background and magnify it because you are further.
Rule of thumb is:
Same subject magnification (subject is same size in the frame)
Same F-stop (value, like f/5.6)
Then the longer focal length will always blurry backgrounds more than short focal lengths.
So, when taking portraits you anyways frame the subject same manner regardless anything else. Like is it a full portrait, portrait, a couple shot, group shot etc. That is the rule how you need to frame the subject.
Then comes your space and location. Do you want to have subject in the scene, or is the scene so awful that it distracts from the subject? Keep it simple 3 details in the photo. So if you are photographing in the kitchen, you have less space than you are photographing in a football stadium. But if you are photographing in football stadium then you want to show that. If you are photographing in a kitchen, you want to show the kitchen too. Context matters. You don't want to blur those places out.
In group photography you have people at various distances, and all needs to be in focus.
In a individual photography you want to have everything from tip of the nose to ears in focus, so full face. Not one eye, not eye lashes, not with blurry nose or so (there are rules as expectation).
So if you want to blur the background, it is because background doesn't matter. And when background doesn't matter, you can either move the subject away or you can crop the background and best way to get it done is to use long focal length.
To isolate person from background can be done via blurring, but main key is lighting, colors, contrast, shapes and theme. Everything else than the lens or it properties.
Put a person front of the white paper and well lit, you can't isolate more. Put that person front of the very busy multiple colored brickwall and you have very flat image.
The great thing with the telephoto lenses is that you get very blurry background, but you can crank the F-stop up to f/8-11 range and get deep/thick depth of field so you get whole person in focus, but background is unrecognizable.
What for you would want f/1.8 200 mm? Only for shutter speed. So sports, wildlife and such that are so small or you can capture them in one thin plane that DOF is not such a problem, but there you want anyways f/8-11 range anyways, but not by getting blurry shots because your shutter speed was 1/15 or 1/30.
Buttery Toneh!