Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM

Name: Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM
Brand: Canon
Rating: 9.7 (30 reviews)

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Lens Review
Specifications

135mm	$999 average price

Lab Test Results

Sub-frame
Full-frame

Blur
Chromatic Aberration
Vignetting
Geometric Distortion

Blur
Chromatic Aberration
Vignetting
Geometric Distortion

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(From Canon lens literature) The fastest 135mm telephoto lens in its class. Ideal for indoor sports and portraits with background blur. Two UD-glass elements correct secondary spectrum for outstanding sharpness and color.

Test Notes
As the reader reviews below testify, this is an absolutely stellar lens, probably one of the sharpest and most distortion-free that Canon makes. It starts out very sharp at f/2.0, gets even sharper at f/2.8, and softens only slightly at f/11. At f/32, it's pretty soft, but less so than a lot of lenses at that aperture. (Suggesting that diffraction limiting is only part of the story with lens softness at tiny apertures.)

As you'd expect from a premium prime lens, both maximum and average chromatic aberration is very low across the aperture range, with the maximum CA on the order of 0.02% of frame height regardless of aperture. Exposure uniformity (vignetting) is also really excellent, reaching a maximum of 1/4 EV (on a camera with an APS-C size sensor) at f/2, and dropping to well under 1/10 EV at f/2.8 and above. The lens shows a very slight pincushion distortion, but it's well under 0.1% of frame height, an excellent performance by any measure. Finally, although we don't explicitly test for it, we have to note that this lens' bokeh (rendering of out-of-focus objects) is really excellent as well. Fit and finish are first-rate as well, with very smooth manual focus operation, and very fast autofocus on the camera.

Bottom line, this is just an outstanding lens by any measure, one that makes clear why you'd want to pay the freight for expensive prime glass. - Actually though, it's performance is so good that you really have to consider it a bargain, even at the $800-900 street price. It just doesn't get any better than this!

Full-Frame Test Notes:

The Canon 135mm f/2 is no less impressive on a full-frame camera. Testing on an EOS-5D, we see that it's sharpness is almost as good wide open in the corners as on the EOS-20D with its smaller sensor. At the other end of the aperture range though, the 5D's larger pixels actually help matters, as the softening starts later (it's very sharp even at f/16), and is noticeably lower at f/32.

The 5D's larger pixels also make chromatic aberration somewhat lower at most apertures. As you'd expect though, distortion and light falloff are both higher with a full-frame image circle, but perhaps not as much as you'd normally expect. Light falloff (vignetting) gets pretty high (0.73 EV wide open, but drops to 0.3 EV at f/2.8, and only 0.17 EV at f/4. Geometric distortion is lower than one would expect, at 0.15% pincushion maximum, with an average of 0.07%.

We always expect to see some drop in performance (particularly corner sharpness) when we move from testing on a sub-frame to a full-frame camera, but the 135mm f/2L turned in a really remarkable performance even at full-frame. Really, just an amazing lens, easily worth the $800-900 it commands on the street.