135mm f2 L USM vs 70-200 2.8 IS II USM @ 135

Although I was not testing for that, I noticed it doing a side by side for sharpness. In practice, and this may sound strange, I sometimes lower the saturation in post.

bohdank wrote in post #12697230
Although I was not testing for that, I noticed it doing a side by side for sharpness. In practice, and this may sound strange, I sometimes lower the saturation in post.

That's not strange at all. In fact I tend to do it when I increase contrast. Especially for skin tones. Looks much cleaner. For landscapes, I leave saturation sooc, or increase it

The 70-200 is awesome. I love it, its bascially as awesome as my old f4 is, but with one more stop. And that is a compliment the 135L is pretty nice too. If you need the extr stop for speed, then its probably worth it. Otherwise, 70-200 all the way.

We spent the afternoon in a nature park and I shot a bunch of shots with the 135L and 70-200 @ 135 at different apertures, mostly 2/2.8, same subject, same distance. I haven't gone through them but will so later on and report on what I think I see. I won't be posting any since they are of THE WIFE and were just "you're bugging me" shots with poor high sun lighting

I bought the 135L for a very specific purposes, and have never been a fan of Canon zooms.

bohdank wrote in post #12698763
We spent the afternoon in a nature park and I shot a bunch of shots with the 135L and 70-200 @ 135 at different apertures, mostly 2/2.8, same subject, same distance. I haven't gone through them but will so later on and report on what I think I see. I won't be posting any since they are of THE WIFE and were just "you're bugging me" shots with poor high sun lighting

Haha, that's quite understandable
I'll trust your words then !

Ok. here we go. Didn't quite get the MKII @ 135 but close enough for this test, imo, to give you a good idea. I'm going to take them down in 24 hrs. Screwing up my slideshow on my site.

ACR Neutral and I just hit Auto.

135L f2

MKII f2.8 140mm

135L @ f2

MKII @ f2.8 165mm

^ 135L obviously has somewhat stronger background blur, as expected, and also slightly smoother one. The shots made with 135L also look a bit more contrasty and saturated; nothing major.

Thank you, bohdank.

In the first pair, the bokeh from the 135L is better although that may be due to the background being more blurred and not a bokeh quality, if you understand what I a trying to say. Not sure about the contrast. Although it doesn't seem to show up on the downsized images, the MKII has more saturated reds, but better controlled, in these shots.

It's really hard to tell about color/contrast in these shots. Other controlled tests, that had less contrasty setups showed the MKII clearly had better contrast and more saturated color. These shots, at least the first pair, the scene has very high DR. Lots of blown out highlights.

The second pair, the bokeh on both looks good, imo.

F2/f2.8... not a major difference. Useful for those that wanted to see the difference.

Don't tell my wife I made these public

gordholio wrote in post #12704753
Thank you, bohdank.

You're welcome.

Bohdank, thanks for the photos. To my untrained eye, there's really very little between the two as displayed.

Cheers

James

There is some, no doubt but, unless you are trying to squeeze out the max, the differences are not night and day, imo.

Anyway.... I need to remove them since they are screwing things for me, elsewhere.

Too bad, I missed the shots

bohdank wrote in post #12704721
Ok. here we go. Didn't quite get the MKII @ 135 but close enough for this test, imo, to give you a good idea. I'm going to take them down in 24 hrs. Screwing up my slideshow on my site.

ACR Neutral and I just hit Auto.

135L f2

MKII f2.8 140mm

135L @ f2

MKII @ f2.8 165mm

wheres the pics?

jonneymendoza wrote in post #12714991
wheres the pics?

For the sake of his marriage, he removed them. So if you missed it, you missed it. (I missed it too but.)