CanonEF 35mm f/1.4L USM Wide Angle Lens for Canon SLR Cameras - White Box (New) (Bulk Packaging)

Amazon delivered the lens exactly on time in perfect condition.We use this 35mm f/1.4 lens for our wedding videography business as well as for our photography, which is just for our own enjoyment. I've taken close-up portraits with this lens as well as full body portraits, wide shots and more. I've heard the things this lens can do be described as "unnatural" for a 35mm. This lens has an amazing one foot minmum focusing distance so you can get pretty close to your subject with minimal distortion. It's very versatile. It's certainly helped improve our skills as photographers as well taking our business to the next level. Mounted on a 5D Mark II this lens is fast providing beautiful quality in low-light situations such as a church or dance floor. I've used this lens for night time work as well and it performed splendidly. The AF is surprisingly fast, silent, and accurate - one of my concerns after I pulled the trigger on this purchase. Note, you will have to manually chose your focus point as the lens has a shallow DOF at lower apertures. Images from this lens look absolutely gorgeous. This is our first L lens so I don't have much else to compare it to but our clients and friends have been pleased and even impressed with the results. Image quality is addictingly excellent. You'll wish all of your lenses provided the quality images that come from this lens. This lens takes full advantage of the 5D Mark II's 21MP full-frame sensor (We have a 60D as a back-up body and the lens works great mounted on that body too for all the crop body users out there). Between the full-frame sensor and the shallow DOF, images take on an almost 3D effect creating a nice separation between the subject and the background. Sharpness is top notch even wide open at f/1.4. The sharpness does get better towards the edges beginning around f/2 and completely by f/2.8 but I feel like I'm splitting hairs when I notice it, the difference is negligible. Some say the images taken with this lens are too sharp showing skin flaws, etc. in portraits. All of these things however, can be corrected in post very quickly using Lightroom. Color reproduction and saturation are excellent requiring very little post work.Regarding build quality, the lens is made very well - what you'd expect from an L. It does not have weather sealing like some of the newer L lenses. I'm sure that will be on the 35mm f/1.4L II coming out soon but I'm also sure that it will be way more expensive than what this lens is going for now. The lens is made of a very high quality plastic and has a metal mount. The focus ring is dampened nicely. I do sometimes wish that it had the build quality of some of the newer L lenses (I like the feel of them) but I don't plan on throwing it against the sidewalk to see how far it will bounce back up anytime soon.All in all this is a fantastic lens. Yes, it's expensive, it's very expensive, BUT well worth it if you are looking for a top tier versatile Canon prime (one of the Canon prime holy trinity 35/85/135) that produces top notch images. Some say this Canon L prime can be compared to Zeiss and Leica lenses in terms of image quality. According to articles online, President Obama's first presidential portrait was made with this lens. I will say though that if you are on a budget, this lens is over 4x more expensive than the 35mm f/2 and comparing to my other lenses that I have from Canon, it does not produce images that are four times better. Magic rainbows will not pop out of your pictures/videos once you use this lens. If you need a lens that goes all the way f/1.4 then get this lens, it will not disappoint. Otherwise don't spend $1000 more than you need to on something that you will be disappointed with. If you plan on getting a 35mm L at some point, I would buy this now. The price is right since this version is towards the end of it's product cycle with Canon.TIP: You can see many photos taken with this exact lens by going to flickr.com and searching "Canon 35mm 1.4L" and clicking the Canon 35mm 1.4L group on the right-hand side of the page. Many images will also be tagged with the camera body that the photographer used. I also recommend you rent this lens first to try it out. I was able to use a friend's copy for a little bit before I bought mine.Thanks Canon for making this wonderful lens!

Awesome lens, 'nuff said. You'll know when you're ready for it, and when you are, just buy the damn thing and stop thinking about it.***UPDATE***Okay, so people didn't like my review above. I got a 1/3 helpful. I guess I need to include more?Umm, this lens is amazing. It's stellar. It has absolutely no negatives.The sharpness is outstanding, especially from f/4.0 and up. f/8 is superb, especially if you turn off in-camera sharpening and you know what you're doing in post processing.Colors and saturation are some of the best you can get from Canon. Definitely the best in the lower focal lengths, I think the 35 produces better colors than the 14mm, 24mm, 50mm 1.4/1.8 or 85mm 1.2/1.4. The 135 is a rival, and the 50 1.2 might be just as good, haven't tried it. The only lenses that I think compare are the 300 2.8 and the new 200 2.0. Maybe the old 200 1.8 but good luck finding one.Vignetting, well, if you ask me on a full frame sensor that's a feature for a lens like this. It's another creative tool for the photographer. Don't like it? Open up. Want more? Stop down. On a crop body (especially 1.6x) it's almost non-existant but you can still get a little past f/14.Great build quality. Solid contruction that withstands the rigors of full-contact wedding photography and various photojournalism assignments, including war zones, the desert, the rain forest, and cold regions.Fast focus for such a large aperture lens. Great manual focus ring too.Bright in the viewfinder, man this this collects light.Balanced, it feels great on a 5D, 5D II, 1D pro body, or even on a 40D/Rebel prosumer body. Just long enough to get a good support, short enough to keep the weight centered and balanced.Everything is internal, so you can use any filter you desire.No IS.. thankfully Canon hasn't given in to the IS craze and put IS on this lens yet. It's 35mm, you don't need IS.If you aren't using a decent quality body, or an older camera, you're going to have problems. The lens will out-perform your camera in many ways. This isn't a bad thing, but know that you can't just drop a Ferrari engine into a Daewoo and expect great things.What else can I say? You know when you're ready for a fast, accurate, top quality prime of this nature. You've probably had the nifty fifty 1.8 for a while, maybe you spent some money for the 50 1.4, and you'd like an L series prime. If you're into the normal field of view, this is a classic performer. In my opinion it's the ultimate walk-around lens for a pure photographer. Amazing for city street photography, rivals any Leica 5cm.