I set myself a challenge…
Back in 2007, I got my start in local news photography. Most of my jobs were shot at very wide angles with brutally hard direct flash, but there wasn’t the time, the money, or the even demand for finesse, and besides - bending people into funny shapes then nuking them with a speedlight was fun! Sadly, moving more into the corporate sphere has made me more directly accountable to my clients, so now it’s attractive lighting and pleasing perspectives that pay the bills.
New additions: Canon 85mm f1.4L EF, Canon 15-35 f2.8L RF
While adapting to the RF system I’ve very recently bought the 15-35 f2.8L RF, so I’m back in with a new, very sharp wide angle zoom. Meanwhile, on a recent portrait job I did for a client, 50mm just seemed a bit too wide for the brief, the 70-200 f2.8 didn’t have quite the bokeh feel, and 85mm could’ve been just right. So I picked up a second hand Canon 85mm f1.4L EF from Wex Photographic. I had one once, but always went for the 70-200 instead.
Autofocus not up to snuff
Thinking back, the problem at the time was shooting a headshot on the 85mm at f1.4 then binning 80% of the session. DSLRs didn’t have the autofocus chops to land that sliver of focus accurately on the eyes: it would land on the eyelashes, or the ears, and f2.8 just gave you the margin of error. The Canon mirrorless cameras have fixed all that now; the eye tracking makes autofocus accurate at any aperture. So perhaps I can now use that 85mm focal length to its full potential.
The last few years I’ve come to lean on my 50mm. I can shoot an entire day of portraits or lifestyle images without ever switching, but what if my clients get bored of the same looks - or worse yet, I do?
The challenge
On a recent commission for Dr Maz Idriss from Manchester Law School, I set myself the challenge of doing two strong portraits on the wide angle zoom, and two on the 85L, neither of which I’m used to doing. The point here isn’t just to click a shot that’ll do fine; the idea is to do some great stuff that really utilises the unique properties of both a wide angle lens and a short tele prime in the 85mm.
And of course.. do it much better than I did in 2007.
Working with the 15-35 f2.8L RF
The Canon 15-35 f2.8L RF
Firstly this is a gorgeous lens, and it’s nicely sharp edge to edge. On earlier wide angle zooms such as my 17-40 they’d be soft in the middle and get progressively worse towards the edges, so you’d have to be careful about wide, off centre framing of subjects. Not so on this one.
Canon 15-35mm f2.8L RF, @ 19mm, f2.8
It was hard to make this work at first, but once Maz had one leg pointing down the frame and the eyeline pointing the other, the composition really came together. Dr Maz is pretty characterful and he’ll draw the eye on a larger canvas. The lens here was out at 19mm - 15mm just brought in too much foregound we really didn’t need.
Canon 15-35mm f2.8L RF, @ 18mm, f2.8
Surrounding Maz as i have with so much concrete, you need a pretty wide lens to get out of that block and into some full environmental context. I’d set up a high dish for a tighter shot on Maz but once I switched to the 15-35, I saw that the flash shape picked him out of the wall nicely and added a fairly crucial compositional element too, things I’d not really consider for my usual longer focal lengths. Here we’re a little wider at 18mm - still ultra wide and I definitely like it.
Getting used to the 85
The Canon 85mm f1.4L EF
After so long working on a 50mm prime, the 85 perspective felt tight. I also felt that bit further away from my subjects. 50mm is a long enough focal length to be optically kind to your subjects but also wide enough for you to be near to them and communicating easily as you’re shooting, and that extra distance took some - but not all - of those dynamics away. Another interesting issue was that my usual compositions felt too tight and quite bland, and at first I didn’t feel like I was lining things up correctly.
Canon 85mm F1.4 EF @ f1.6
Where the wide angle shots were expressive and vibrant, these pictures taken on the Canon 85mm f1.4L (here at f1.6) are clean and ordered. It took some thinking to make the subject and background line up just right - the geometry of the 85 is that much straighter than I’m used to from the 50 that I have to consider things a little differently. The 85 is also an older lens, so was interested to see how it stacked up against the new RF glass; all I can say without channelling Ken Rockwell is, it does well. It’s sharp wide open - the contrast, while not up to the 50mm RF, is still attractive, and the bokeh looks lovely.
Canon 85mm F1.4 EF @ f2
High contrast lighting can really stress lenses out, especially at wider apertures, so this one here is lit with a reflector dish and 5mm grid - very spotty harsh light that many average lenses couldn’t render properly. The 85mm did great at handling it. As for this perspective, I like how the 85 renders the verticals on the brickwork, and I think the geometry of this picture taken at a wider focal length wouldn’t have looked as tidy.
‘That’s my favourite’
Canon 50mm F1.2L RF @f1.8
Two people went straight for this one so far, and it’s sad because it’s shot on the lens I was trying to avoid doing well on. It’s taken on the 50mm RF in the same spot as our first wide angle example - the 50mm offers a nice natural perspective with no fuss, and at f1.8 here has really nice separation and contrast. The 50mm RF really is a technically perfect lens, and I’ve used this focal length so much I know exactly how the world looks through it. But at least I’m working on being less predictable.