About 3 weeks ago I got a "box o' goodies" from B&H. I haven't been very enthused to shoot much, and I've been pretty busy, so the box went unopened until just a few days ago. Yup, it took weeks for me to even bother looking at my new pano head or the two lenses I got, the 50mm f/1.4 and the 85mm f/1.8.
Three weeks. Unopened.
So I finally broke down and threw the 85mm on the 20D and loaded the new 2GB CF card. I aimed at a few things and was impressed by the AF speed and the f/1.8. Very nice indeed.
Then it sat there for another 3 days.
I finally got the urge last night to actually try it out, so I attached the flash and went looking for some cats. I didn't have to go very far, since 7 cats allow me to take care of them. I walked into the bedroom and found 5 of them sleeping on the bed. Lazy bums! It was only 7:30 at night and they're sleeping already!
So I woke them up re-arranging the blankets and pillows to get appropriate backgrounds, flipped the flash towards the ceiling and fired away.
The first one here is "my" cat, JC (full name Jean Claude von Cat, named for his acrobatic style of fighting/playing). He was not a very cooperative model, and was constantly distracted by the dog who kept walking in to see what I was doing.
These two are OD (on the left, aka Uncle OD since he's the surrogate father of all the other cats) and Major (full name Major Havoc, since he was a hellion as a kitten). OD is constantly cleaning the other cats if they're within reach, and the other cats often put themselves within reach for some extra attention. Major often takes full advantage of this habit.
Anyway, this lens is impressive. Small, fast with aperture and AF. I like it.
I was also very impressed by the small amount of sharpening done on these pictures. Very nice indeed.
