Canon EF 35 mm f/1.4L II USM review - Introduction

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Canon EF 35 mm f/1.4L II USM

17 February 2016

Arkadiusz Olech

1. Introduction

Canon made us wait for the next version of a fast 35 mm model quite a long time. The EF 35 mm f/1.4L USM, much praised and enjoyed by fans of photography, was launched in 1998; its successor, the EF 35 mm f/1.4L II USM, was presented as many as 17 years later, in August 2015.

Still it was worth waiting such a long time because the new Canon lens is simply stuffed full with the best and the newest technologies. Ordinary aspherical elements and UD low dispersion glass don’t impress anybody any longer but of course the new construction features them as well. An ultra-precision aspherical element made in glass molded GMo technique is quite another story. Additionally you get a very efficient SubWavelength structure Coating (SWC) which covers one surface of the big front element. Also the use of the BR optics (Blue Spectrum Refractive Optics), a new organic optical material with unique anomalous dispersion, is a huge novelty – it is able to refract blue and purple light efficiently so the correction of chromatic aberration should be made easier.

Canon EF 35 mm f/1.4L II USM - Introduction

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I admit we could hardly wait for the lens in order to test in practice all these technological novelties; finally it found its way to our editorial office and our test, sharing the results and our impressions, can be found below – enjoy your reading!

We would like to thank the Proclub shop for borrowing us the lens for testing purposes.

You are also invited to get acquainted with our test procedure, described in the article "How do we test lenses?" If you feel it’s still not enough, please go to our FAQ section where you can find some further explanation.