Why read this article? This article has been raved about by readers:
hi.great review,thank you,.i have that lens,glass needs cleaning,do you know how to remove the front bumper so i can use the lens spanner wranch? the rubber-metal bumper prevents the accses to the tool.
thx.
Vintage lenses can offer a unique perspective on image making. A lot of them have interesting quirks of how they work, look, and how pictures look when taken with them. They can also provide an interesting perspective on how lenses have evolved over time, or what its like to use a lens that doesn’t have autofocus. Many old lenses are built to last, partially because they’re much simpler, and can still take very nice pictures. The Canon 80-200mm f/2.8 L is a lens that has some of these vintage qualities.
Physical Aspects
This tank of a lens was built in a way that modern lenses just aren’t. Big, heavy, solid, in many ways it was built to last. Ultimately though it’s probably not as survivable as later EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L’s. But this one feels every bit the part.
Optical Image Stabilization
Being 30+ years old, the lens was made before IS became available in Canon lenses. So, you’ll have to maintain the correct shutter speed when shooting with this lens. This can be a challenge when shooting in low light, but I don’t really have a problem with this overall. I can usually get shake free shots at 1/200th of a second if I’m careful. The reality is, IS is more of a crutch than a necessity. However, it’s become such a good crutch that many people now consider it essential. Not having IS is a detriment for most people.
Zoom Range
The range is a slight drawback being that it’s only 80-200mm. Of course, most modern zooms of this type are 70-200mm, or even 70-210mm. Tamron even makes a 70-180mm lens. The obvious difference is this lens doesn’t zoom out as wide as a modern fast zoom so if you’re using the typical f/2.8 24-70mm with this lens you may be missing the range from 70-80mm. If you’re annoyed by that Canon did make a 28-80mm f/2.8-4 L lens to go with this lens.
Focusing
Autofocus on this lens is a bit of a mixed bag. It is fairly accurate but also very noisy on the EOS R and R5. I tried this lens on an old EOS 1N RS though and was nearly as fast but a lot quieter. I didn’t get every shot tack sharp with this lens, but the majority of shots were well focused.
Optical Performance
Optically the lens performs well. It will definitely give some vintage aesthetic in most situations too.
Wide open the lens does have some vignette in the corners, especially at 200mm. Portrait shooters will probably appreciate a little vignette in the corners. If you don’t want it, it clears up when stopped down to about f/5.6.
There is some CA present wide open at 80mm, but it’s most evident in worst case scenarios like shooting tree branches against a bright sky. At 200mm the CA is well corrected on my copy. Check out these two example images at 80mm and 200mm.
Despite the minor optical issues, its pretty obvious that this lens has some nice glass in it. As lens making has evolved with computers its become easier to design complicated lenses that solve problems using cheaper glass formulations. Although, it’s not entirely fair to say that, the cheapness is a matter of saving time and ensuring consistency rather than sheer quality. Back then, for whatever reason, they put more time and effort into making each lens right, even if they didn’t know as much about what they were doing, in some ways, they accidentally knew a lot more.
Focus Breathing
Maybe one of the weirdest modern obsessions is that of focus breathing. The focus breathing of this lens actually breathes longer than 200mm up close. What’s cool about that is that the lens gets a lot of pop off the background for portraits. However, video shooters don’t like focus breathing. However, if you watch the test video I created at the end of this post, I clearly rack focus with this lens and the breathing is barely noticeable if at all. I feel like focus breathing kind of makes sense in a weird way but to each their own.
Bokeh Quality
Bokeh is pretty important because the human eye needs blurred areas to help it see more easily. What low quality bokeh can do is draw more attention than necessary. However, this can be subjective. At 200mm this lens does have a bit of a spherical aberration in the bokeh which is sometimes referred to as “swirl bokeh”. Overall I would give the bokeh of this lens a high rating. The thing I like about the bokeh is that it is very much a part of the image and really creates a strong sense of 3D depth.
Color
Color accuracy for lenses is usually so subtle that differences are hard to see. Most of the lenses that people think have good colors actually have bad colors. For instance, most cinema lenses have intentional color distortions whereas photography lenses tend to favor more true to life colors. This is why you’ll see some people say a cinema lens is “easy to color grade”. Well, it’s because its already partially color graded. This is also true for many kinds of cinema cameras. Again, photography cameras tend to favor accurate colors while “cinema” cameras tend to have color distortions. This lens is pretty accurate but seems to have some minor color distortions.
Decentering
I actually have 2 copies of this lens and both of them are slightly decentered which is visible at f/2.8 when focusing on flat subjects. Well, that’s good news because I usually have no cause to focus on “flat subjects” since the world is in 3 dimensions.
Conclusion
It’s not a bad lens at all. The AF is probably going to upset some people… they probably wouldn’t buy this lens anyway, but, it is loud and kind of annoying. However, it does work well enough and I’ve gotten a lot of nice photos with it. It’s not a perfect lens but it can still do the job at the end of the day if you have the skills to work within its limitations.
Rating
Great lens.
Canon EF 80-200mm f/2.8 L Sample Images
Canon EF 80-200mm f/2.8 L Sample Video
The video is shot in 4k on the EOS R which has a 1.8x crop in its 4k video mode. With the crop the effective focal length is 360mm. The good news is the lens is still very sharp in the center of the frame.
9 Comments
Great lens ! thanks !
hi.great review,thank you,.i have that lens,glass needs cleaning,do you know how to remove the front bumper so i can use the lens spanner wranch? the rubber-metal bumper prevents the accses to the tool.
thx.
Hello, you don’t need to remove the front bumper! The gaps for the tool are just on the inside of the front of the lens. There is a retaining ring which must be removed. Simply remove the retaing ring and the front lens will fall out.
Great optics, doesn’t close focus like a 70-200 and worst of all, no USM; so noisy, delicate, brittle and tends to break is very common with them ….worst of all again, no parts available. It’s lousy as a bird/wildlife lens simply because it is so noisy, might as well take a cordless blender into the field and mix drinks?
I believe the 70-200 4 non IS is just as sharp if you don’t need 2.8, and far more reliable and a far better value….btw The MDP beats the 70-200 2.8 IS I in sharpness, but so does the 70-200 f4. The 70-200 2.8 IS II beats all the above in sharpness, no question in the results.
Fondness is what the MDP has going for it, and a nickname that comes from sentimental emotion… Dizzy Dean put it best when he said “The older we get, the better we was”
Of course, it’s not as good overall as current lenses. That much is obvious. This one is usually cheaper even than the f/4 versions which have retained their value better, partially due to being newer. Depending on who you are and what you shoot you may value “getting the shot at all costs”, well, for those people I recommend avoiding this lens, lol. Too slow to focus and the servo AF is borderline unusable. If you’re the type who walks around taking artsy photos, this lens could be a nice affordable choice for getting some big background blur.
BTW, I also have the RF 70-200mm f/2.8 L and it is so much better than this lens, but there’s still something nice about the old lens, haha.
At a recent buy of $350 for a close to mint lens out of Ebay Japan, I’ll take it for my purposes! Those purposes could best be described as occassional use for an older guy who used to be a photographer in the 70’s. I goto an air show once a year with a still alive WW2 ace and capture him with my 24-70 II. The airplane shots will now be the chore of the 80-200 instead of my 28-135 IS! One thing you did not mention is the superior tripod mount that can be undone with little more than a flick and no lens removal along with an equally ez hood. While the AF is not up to par to the later ultrasonic, this is the lens that lured the pro’s away from nikkor due to a working AF and its pretty good.
It’s good that you mentioned the AF, while it isn’t as fast and precise as the modern lenses, I was surprised to find that it worked better on my Canon film SLR’s. It’s faster and quieter and seems to produce less “grinding” noise when used with my EOS 1N RS. It seems that the newer cameras are overdriving the lens motor and leading to lots of noise that wouldn’t normally be there.