Canon FL 55mm F/1.2 - Review
Canon FL refers to a lens mount introduced in April 1964 with the Canon FX camera, superseding the previous Canon R mount. After only 7 years it was replaced in 1971 by the Canon FD lens mount. FL lenses are compatible with FD-mount cameras. Given its fast aperture and manual focus it tends to be a little tricky for portraits (especially moving subjects and street photography) with practice and focus magnification tack sharp eyes can be achieved. Stopping down to F2 or 2.8 increases sharpness again, but surprisingly isn't to bad wide open for a lens built in the 60's. The FL 55mm 1.2 and 58mm 1.2 still have a higher price tag than expected - somewhere between $300 and $600 AUD.
Features
F/1.2 maximum Aperture
Smooth bokeh
Good image quality
Fast prime
Full Frame format
Tech Specs
Production Years - 1960's -
Focal Distance - 55mm
Optical Formula - 7 elements in 5 groups.
Aperture Range - f/1.2 - f/16
Minimum Focusing Distance - 0.6 m
Lens Mount - FL
Filter Thread - 58mm
Manual focus
Build Quality
All metal construction
Metal housing
Metal mounting
Dust sealing
Optical Formula
As this was my first FL lens and my first 1.2 the low light capabilities was one of my reasons in purchasing. Although at F/1.2 the depth of field is very thin and crucial, which makes low light shooting even harder, thankfully the A7 series camera's perform with a little extra ISO.
F1.2
F/2.8
Personalised test charts in a controlled environment for image sharpness - nothing else. none of the following photo's have been post-processed in any way - no output sharpening. They are Not a representation on a pixel level, but enough to show image quality. With the representation of the first image, you can see how much cropping has been done to zoom into the centre of the map.
