Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 Sample Photos and Mini Review

The 50mm lens and focal length is one of my favorites and possibly one of my desert island lenses if I was forced to pick.  It has a window to the world that shows just enough depending on where you stand, and can work well within the portrait range–which is what I value and like most obviously.  This “legendary” Canon 50mm is special because of the large light gathering aperture and its ability to bring about passionate discussions amongst expert keyboard photographers. 😉  I totally get it, as this lens was always expensive since 2007, and to be honest, not really usable wide open at f/1.2 in most situations.  It’s a specialty tool that has been in the kit of wedding and portrait photographers for a very long time now.  I had several Canon 50mm f/1.8’s over the years, and shot for ages with the manual Nikon 50mm f/1.4 ai-s adapted to EF, but finally got another endgame lens for my Canon setups.  It’s an older lens (in modern terms), and I have used the RF 50mm f/1.2, but that lens obviously doesn’t work on my DSLRs and film SLRs.  Does this lens hold up in 2025 and fit into my style of shooting and what I want to create, let’s see! 

Here are my random thoughts and sample photos with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L

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What’s the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 like on Mirrorless?

This lens can be used creatively wide open at f/1.2.  You can keep the keep the vignette, which still shows up around f/2.

If you’ve been shooting phones or kit lenses or digicams for any amount of time, 50mm will probably seem constricting.  It doesn’t draw you into the frame like a shot with a 35mm, but these are all different tools that a creative should have in the bag. Every lens will gift you its special ability when used optimally, and the humble 50mm is a great teacher.

For me lenses usually work best as a pairing or as a set in almost every scenario.  While an all in one zoom, or a nice 24-70mm f/2.8 could take care of most photo situations, it’s just not the same as carrying two cameras with two complimentary primes.  The 85mm + 35mm is a great one I’ve found and shoot all the time.  35mm + 105mm is S tier as well.  Since the 50mm f/1.2 renders very close to the 85mm f/1.2 you get that imaging ability in a somewhat smaller package with a much closer minimum focus distance.  So for me personally this brings another all star level character that you can immediately slot into this photography game.

By having the 50mm f/1.2 take over the captain’s role over the 85mm, you can instead pair it with a 28mm or 24mm for much more dramatic differences in angles of view.  Or to be honest, nothing is stopping you from pairing both the 50mm and 85mm together.  Or to get really crazy the 50mm plus 200mm (and phone for group photos) is a pretty unique way of building a loadout.  That’s what’s so cool about photography for yourself, you can choose whatever kit you want.

This 50mm is very temperamental at the various big apertures I’ve found.  Some closer up shots at f/1.2 can look great, some can look horrible in terms of color fringing and bokeh.  I’ll try to put the aperture used on the photos so everyone can see.  I pretty much shoot this thing in Aperture priority and ride all the fstops from wide open to smaller apertures.   Like with my other older Canon glass I’ve found that they work best stopped down.  Which is a shock if you are coming over from other brands like Nikon, where even vintage lenses are pretty sharp and clear wide open.  I know it seems silly to buy an expensive prime lens only to stop it down, but that’s what I’ve found works best if you main Canon EF glass.  In looking at things from a different perspective though, where else are you going to get an autofocus 50mm f/1.2 for both Canon film and DSLRs.  The out of camera color and ease of editing since its a native lens is obviously why things cost what they cost.

I think I’ve written many times in the past here that the main differences between Canon and Nikon (and Sony and other brands) is that Canon digitals almost always render brighter out of camera.  They produce much more usable light and airy photos of people that will pass the quality control if you have to show them to said people in the field.  This is usually at the expense of tones and details in skies and brighter areas.  The metering almost always does a great job of recognizing that say, people in shadows should be brighter.  Whereas with Nikons it will be darker and almost every shoot needing to be edited/finished in post. Like in the first 3 temple photos above I also shot that same scene with an old D600, and there’s so much dynamic range in the raw files that you can pull that info back, re composite and actually have a sky with clouds and color.  The image on the back of the screen will almost always look better on the Canon, whereas on a Sony/Nikon it will look somewhat gross and underexposed, but be far superior in the editing suite.  Things to think about if you are deciding between camera systems and can only get one.

For some time now it’s almost like the Canon imaging system is a stack of filters.  The sensor itself and its CFA is a filter, the lens is another filter, the tone curve that Canon writes into the raw is a filter (all you need to do is play with Linear Canon raw files to see what I’m referring to), and that adds up to really usable out of camera jpegs that you can just shoot and move on with your life.

I have plenty of old Canon cameras to put this on for these beauty/product shots.  I thought about using the older 5D classic and even mark II with the 50mm because they have a 1/8000 shutter speed which would allow 1.2 in bright light, but those older DSLRs (especially my 5D classic) have very inconsistent AF with large aperture lenses.  That combined with the general nature of 1.2 would leave nothing in focus.  Mirrorless technology has definitely breathed new life into these old lenses with pin point focusing.

Next are photos of my art/drawings in a dim room with one light.

The mirrorless advantage is that the camera bodies can also correct the flaws in lenses like the 50mm f/1.2.  For some reason the older Canon 6D can fix chromatic aberration but not the barrel distortion that the 50mm has.  So if you shoot older DSLR or film, just know that you’ll have to correct in post if you’re meticulous.

I know most folks view my site via random Google searches for lenses and camera gear stuff, but if you have time, please check out the rest of what I have on both my front end website and this crazy long sprawling blog.  I write and post about camera gear because I genuinely love them, but I’m not here to sell cameras or presets, the search for memorable photos of life and beauty is pretty much my main goal.  The viewing experience is so much better off mobile so please give it a look!

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What’s the 50mm f/1.2 like on Canon 1.6x Crop?

If you have only Canon crop sensor DSLRs, the 50mm 1.2 is a very nice portrait lens, and pretty much mimics the 85mm 1.2 for FF.  I might seriously use this more in the future for fun projects.  It would be fun to see this legendary lens mounted on more cameras that can be found for $20-40!! (Similar to the 200mm on the D40!) Yeah they don’t shoot video and only have one real ISO, but the photos still rock.  These cameras are worth way more than for simply making novelty filler content videos.  Back in the day (and even today) this could be an endgame camera setup so you can just focus on what’s really important, which is taking photos of life and the things that inspire you.  I’ve been reading and watching a lot of anime/manga that have photography as one of the story elements and the joy and respect that’s given to ANY camera is really refreshing to see. We definitely could use more of that starry eyed Japanese manga reverance IRL.

This is an example of the 50mm f/1.2 on a “lowly” Rebel XTi.  Not bad!

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What’s the 50mm f/1.2 like adapted to Sony?

The OG Sony A7 (which has steadily held its price on the used market) is a great simple pure photography camera if you can live with the quirks of being a first gen 2013 camera.  With the Sigma MC-11 adapter you can put Canon lenses on it, but most don’t focus well enough for work level events or fast paced shooting.  The 50mm f/1.2 will autofocus on it, but it takes many push and pull contrast detect motions before it will get what you want it to lock onto.  For goofing off though, this does work and gives you another tool in the kit to work with.  It could solve a problem or produce an image in a setting that the native Canon cameras can’t.  An example again, is dynamic and tonal range in landscape photos.  The Sony A7 and Nikon D600/D610/D750/D800 are pretty much the same in that you can really turn a dark/black RAW file into a properly exposed photo still with nice color and low noise.

The lens shows up as f/1.3 as read by the Sony, which is probably correct. I’ve read online that the Canon 50mm f/1.2 is actually f/1.27 and the Nikon 200mm f/2 might actually be closer to f/1.8. Mhz Speed, Horsepower, Torque, Watts RMS on amps–nothing has changed in the world of gear bragging and inflation!! 🙂

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Canon 50mm f/1.2 on a calibrated 6D

These lens “review” posts of mine are also Journal rough drafts in my own learning path when I get new gear.  It takes a good amount of time to get to know a lens, probably months of shooting and editing the files, so don’t believe what plenty of other online reviewers say in their own short time with a lens.  In the brutal world of content creation, or let’s call it what it is, advertising for manufacturers–a brief 15 minute backside of a building photo shoot isn’t going to get enough XP to truly figure out a lens.

I’ve realized that this 50mm is a lot like the Canon 35mm 1.4.  You can’t shoot a 3/4 angle of 3 people in a group at even f/5.6 and expect anyone except the center person to be in focus.  The photo below was done very quickly and I’d moved the lens from f/2.8 (what I decided on for the majority of the day) to f/2 and that was definitely not enough to get both subjects in focus.  Again, this 50mm f/1.2 is much much closer to the 85mm f/1.2 in terms of personality.  On a totally different tier comparison, the RF 24-50mm kit lens that I have at 50mm, even at f/8 is so unsharp for upclose product shots. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So that’s it for now.  Just my thoughts and samples from a lens I’ve wanted for a while.  This particular 50mm f/1.2 might not be for everyone (especially considering the price), but for many Canon shooters that still enjoy older DSLRs and film, this lens is very nice.  I look forward to using it on random outings that can further show its strengths and rendering. Thanks for making it this far!

Coming Soon, Canon 50mm f/1.2 on 35mm film!