EF 35mm f/1.4L

[fingerz]

I'm back from New York and I bought the above lens for the bargain (IMO) price of £726.94. If anyone else is thinking of getting one I can highly recommend it. Having a general-purpose lens that's perfectly usable at f/1.4 is going to be very handy. I already have a few low-light shots of the Manhatten skyline from the Staten Island ferry that I took with the lens wide open which I'm very happy with.

And it's not just my say so. The chap from Photozone liked it too:
http://www.photozone.de/8Reviews/lenses/canon_35_14/index.htm

Unlike its high-speed sister lens, the EF 24mm f/1.4 USM L, the EF 35mm f/1.4 USM L showed a very harmonic behaviour in the MTF lab. The center resolution is already excellent straight from the max. aperture and it surely exceeds the resolution limits of the EOS 350D in the sweet spot range (f/2.8-4). The border quality is very impressive (very good) at f/1.4 and it even reaches excellent levels at medium aperture settings. All-in-all an exceptional performance - at f/1.4 it even beats the EF 50mm f/1.4 USM (which is marginally better beyond f/2.8).

With the 1.6x crop factor on most of today's digital SLRs, 35mm lenses perform similarly to 'standard' 50mm lenses on film SLRs and I've found the angle of view (on my 20D) to be a lot more useful than the nifty fifty. The cheapest prices from Hong Kong importers are around the £800 mark so if anyone's off to the states soon, it's well worth considering picking one up out there.

 

[Steve]

Congratulations on the purchase and it seems at a bargain price too

I am glad you are happy with it.

 

[CT]

Oooh.. nice lens Jamey! I love my 50mm 1.4 and the extra FOV on the 1D is very noticeable, but you've made a good choice there for available light work on a 1.6 crop camera.

 

[busterboy]

Nice one Jamey, I will await your "Full" review in the coming days as this is my next purchase..

 

[fingerz]

I doubt I'll have time to do a proper review with test shots as I'm working the next 14 days solidly and also photozone's review is much more technical than mine could hope to be. You won't regret the purchase as long as you have a use for the wide apertures and know you'll make use of a prime in that range.