Lenses

Battle of the 85mm Lenses: Canon 85mm f1.8 vs Nikon 85mm f1.8

Chris Gampat
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03/25/2012
3 Mins read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer canon vs nikon 85mm (1 of 2)

I was recently able to test fire and show a couple of sample images with the new Nikon 85mm f1.8 on my D5100, however I also was able to get my hands on a D700. Being a Canon 5D Mk II and 85mm f1.8 USM owner, I decided to put the two lenses in a non-scientific and totally practical test using all available light at around 7pm in NYC and only shooting at f4 and wider for a portrait.

So how did the two lenses perform?

Gear Used

Ergonomics

Both 85mm f1.8 lenses are very similar. The new Nikon 85mm f1.8 is far newer than the Canon version: which actually dates back to the film days. Nikon’s front filter thread is just a bit larger than Canon’s and the overall feel of the lens is a bit less plasticy. However, I’ve always generally felt that Nikon gear feels more rugged; but that’s just my personal opinion.

Interestingly, both lens focusing rings feel identical.

Both lenses focus extremely fast, though in real life practice I felt that Canon’s 85mm f1.8 is still the current champ. Indeed, it has often been touted as the company’s fastest focusing lens. A known problem with it though is the color fringing wide open; but this is also a problem that plague’s Nikon’s optics as shown in the previous test.

At this point though, I’d like to remind all the forum readers and people that like to generally sit there and bitch about minor problems like this that those issues are generally easily fixed in post-production software. Still though, I’d be doing an injustice if I didn’t report on it.

Process of the Test

I tried to shoot this test during the golden hour. Most of New York City is covered in buildings, and therefore needed to shoot at ISO 800 because of the diffused shadow lighting around the area.

I set both cameras to aperture priority and focused on the same spot of Dennis’s eye. Though their meter readings were very slightly off in aperture priority, it should be noted that in general, Canon and Nikon do have slightly different metering algorithms and this is just part of how they work.

Typically portraits like this are shot anywhere from wide open to f5.6. I stopped at f4 for this test.

The images were then brought into Lightroom 4 Beta and had the clarity and sharpness adjusted the exact same amount for each image. In the export process, they were resized to 1.5MB on export and 300DPI.

Image Samples

Nikon

f1.8
f2

 

f2.8
f4

Canon

f1.8
f2
f2.8
f4

So what are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below.

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5d Mk II 85mm f1.8 canon comparison d700 nikon sharpness
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.