schutze

I just bought both recently. I bought the 85mm for my Canon 20D because the 1.6 factor makes it a 135mm, which was one of my favorite old film camera lens's.

The 85 is an exquisite lens for optics, however, the magnification seemd to be more than my old 135. It's so magnified that I often can't get back far enough to take the photo in a normal room, unless you want everything to be tight cropped head and shoulder shots.

The color and clarity are stunning. the shallow depth of field when it's wide open is stunning if you like this effect for your artistic composition, or if you want to isolate people from a crowd and cluttered background. The main limit for me is that this lens is too magnified for general use.

So, .. I bought the 50mm 1.4. This is also a very exquisite lens for color, clarity, razor sharp focus and the 1.4 is awesome for low natural light situations or high shutter speeds with lots of light. The 50mm times the 1.6 digital sensor factor makes it a very nice mild telephoto for moving in close without being too close. With my 85, I often find myself moving across the street to capture my shot.

Minimum distance is also a factor. The 85mm has a minimum focus distance of about 3 feet ... just beyond an arm's length stretch. The 50mm is functionally about 2 feet. Neither are macros, so for closeups I have to crop in Photoshop. The superb quality and focus does not impede this post process cropping.

I like them both, but if I didn't already buy them, I would have bought the 50mm 1.4 only.

Since the resale on Ebay seems to be more than the price I can buy them for new, I think I'll use the 85mm for a few months against the 50mm, then decide if I want to sell off the 85mm. I don't want to be a lens collector.

I think I may also offload a new 28mm-135mm zoom. I have little interest in shooting for distance, and my "walk around" lens seems to be my 17-40mm zoom. I think I can survive nicely with my 17-40 zoom, the 50mm 1.4 prime and .. ?? maybe one other, but my other lens's seem to be overlaping in function.

I'll go to the San Diego zoo and compare my 85mm prime against the 28-135 for distance shooting of wildlife. Primes are so clear and crisp, and they have the advantage of more light. I'm not convinced I want all the extra glass and small F stop of a zoom. Anyway, that's just me.

Stan

sschutze@aol.com

You guys are great

My spanking new, whoop-dee-doo DELL high speed desk top was making me WACKO trying to find out why my thumbnail views were loading slow, SMALL 1/4 size, as "view" icons and thumbnail fragments. Often the load was incomplete, even for only a few photo files.

I've spent hours with the technical software folks at Dell ... all great, but no cigar.

Let me add slightly more to clarify this issue. My Photoshop is 7.0, and it works just fine on all my older computers (one year or less). I installed with my original 7.0 PS disk, but the problem is on my new computer. Why? I don't know why PS loads differently on my new computer. My 1 year old Dell laptop did not have this issue.

Let me also clarify about "unclicking" the Photoshop "generate thumbnail" option when viewing file properties on the new Phtotshop tab that has appeared: ... I was concerned that I would have to find out how to unclick EVERY photo file ... NO! .. I only unclicked one photo file, and the problem was solved. Every other photo file I opened to examine in Properties, was now unclicked.

So simple. It was absolutely the issue that srewed up loading of XP thumbnails. The new "Photoshop Image" tab under file properties seems to have no other purpose, except to display a path to the file.