Yesterday I decided to shoot a little video talking about the Canon 85mm 1.8, a lens I have had and enjoyed for a while. The video is a hands on review about what I think of the lens and what works about it for me.
A lot of people are going to be thinking about this lens compared to the 85mm 1.2. The biggest differences are what the out of focus areas will look like, focus speed, and size of the lens in hand. The 1.2 aperture is pretty shallow, compared to the 1.8 but in actual use for myself I found I was usually shooting at around 2 or 2.2 aperature openings. So in the case of this lens length either would work for me. The benefits of the 1.8 over the 1.2 faster focusing, and easier to hand hold, as talked about in the video won the game for me.
I elected to not keep this lens because of the rather long minimum focusing distance limiting portrait work, and the harder time I had hand holding this lens and getting consistent sharpness. The canon 100mm 2.8 IS macro solved both of these issues and is now the lens of choice for me to cover this portrait need and macro work.
Hope this helps, if I had know some of the things you face with actually using a lens I may not have gotten this one for my use. This is still a great lens, and I would recommend it with the caveats of limited minimum focusing distance and hand holding issues.
