Crystal Vodka: the Canon 135/2.8 SF

I do most of my shooting between 35 and 50 mm, with an occasional foray into wide-angle and an even more occasional foray into telephoto. For about a year and a half, the telephoto end of my operation has been handled by the bargain-bin Canon 55-200/4.5-5.6 USM. While it really is a damn good lens for its very low price, it's still clearly several cuts below the optical quality of my main-use "pocket primes." I have formerly owned a Canon 200/2.8L, but sold it because I found it a bit too long for my needs, a bit too bulky to take along where the pictures are, and a bit too expensive to leave sitting on the shelf. Therefore, especially for portrait and event type shooting, I'd been on the lookout for one of Canon's excellent short telephoto lenses. I finally broke down and bought a slightly unusual lens: Canon's venerable 135/2.8 Soft Focus. I chose it partly out of curiosity, since it was an unusual lens, partly out of an irrational fondness for the 1987-1989 early EF build and nostalgia for the no-nonsense type of optical designs that Canon appears to have abandoned lately, and partly due to cost considerations: what with the weak dollar and Canon's strange pricing policies, it was available new for about half the price of any of its immediate competitors. I hereby dub it Crystal Vodka, because it's clear and smooth and can make the world go blurry if you abuse it.

The 135/2.8 Soft Focus is one of Canon's oldest EF lenses. It was introduced with the EOS system in 1987, along with the 15/2.8 fisheye, 28/2.8, 50/1.8 Mk 1, 50/2.5 Compact Macro, a couple of standard zooms, and a few telezooms, of which the 100-300/5.6L is the most fondly remembered. A lens with serious pedigree, in other words. However, it's also one that's been seriously eclipsed by its younger siblings. The 135/2.0L, lauded by many as Canon's sharpest lens, is nearly legendary in optical quality, while the more affordable 85/1.8 USM and 100/2.0 USM sport brighter maximum apertures and more modern builds, in particular ring USM and full-time manual focusing. In this company, it does seem like the odd one out: its one truly differentiating feature is that it allows control over spherical aberration, which makes it possible to dial in any desired amount of a soft-focus effect that cannot be effectively duplicated in post-processing.

Canon's choice to include a 135 mm prime in its EOS starter line-up is indicative of the importance given to this focal length. It sits at the long end of the "portrait lens" spectrum, clearly separated from the 50 mm normal and long enough to make for pleasing tightly framed portraits, but yet not long enough to be deep inside telephoto territory. Shooting with a 135 still puts the photographer inside the scene and forces him to interact with his subjects in some way; go to 200 mm and beyond, and you become something of a passive observer. A 135 is the longest lens that can be comfortably hand-held even in less than ideal lighting, and a 135/2.8 is compact enough to be almost pocketable... if you're wearing a coat, at least. A versatile focal length, therefore -- suitable for anything from portraits to event photography to ringside sports photography, and even certain types of travel and street work, and of course "compressed" landscapes.

From an optical design point of view, a 135 mm lens for the 35 mm format is just about ideally specified -- long enough that most of the corner problems with shorter lenses go away, yet not so long that you have to jump through several hoops to keep aberrations under control. There are several standard optical designs that work well for this focal length, and the designers have a quite a bit of leeway to balance different characteristics against each other. What choices, then, has Canon made on their first EF telephoto prime?

Moonrise with Anthracite. Helsinki, January, 2007. Canon 135/2.8 SF at f/4.0.