Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L USM

I know what is in your head. Get the cheaper non L lens or this one!!!!
I had the same problem...:)
If money is not an issue then forget the 1.4.
I am a wedding photographer. 85L 1.2 is the lens which I would never sell.
I also have the 35L, 17 40L and 28 70L. People talk about everything but at the end what matters is whether you can produce the "WOW" experience (i.e. when somebody finds your pictures magical) The 1.4 doesn't provide that. You will always feel that something is missing and you will always wish you had paid more and purchased the 1.2. I know I went through the same.
There are a couple of excellent shots on my site. http://www.haringphotography.com
Look for the blond girl and the guy on the beach in the engagement session. The wide lens was the 35L but the other pictures were created with the 85L 1.2…:):)
I hope it helps.

Color, sharpness, blurr

big and expensisve

WOWWWW!

Great lens! Good image quality and nice blurrrrr….:) However the lens has some back-front focusing issues. I have a it on a Canon 5D and sometimes pictures are totally out of focus. My Canon 28-70 or 17-40 never had this kind of problem...Any suggestion? Furthermore, it is a heavy lens.
I mainly use it for wedding photography. www.usafromabove.com If you want to see samples.

Great lens for portraiture and very good for indoor activities and can be used for sports, but takes special care. What an incredible piece of equipment. I have been using the 135L, 70-200 IS and also the 85 1.8 for my portraiture work, which is the main crux of my business. I was previously pretty happy with the results of the 1.8, the flexibility of the 70-200 IS. I was and still impressed by the 135L, but found it a bit to long for 3/4 or waist up pose. I had been using the 70-200 IS and getting what I though were pretty good results. Then I got this lens. I now have 2. This is an absolutely amazing product. Yes, many have said that the 1.8 is close, which is true, but the difference in sharpness compared @ 1.8, 2.0 and 2.8 goes to the L. Also the BG blur attained by this lens is amazing. The 135L is also incredible, but in a different way. My portrait work has nit a new high, both because of the quality of this lens, and because I am inspired by the image quality to try new and different ideas, and I have a new excitement in my portraiture. this lens is so good, that I feel the need to back it up with another 85L. Yes it is expensive to do so, but I am a portrait photographer. Also great for any event work inside and can be used for indoor sports, but it does not focus very fast. You may get missed shots, or you could go to zone focusing, esp those of youu like me, who cut their teeth on an FM2, or similar MF camera. I am really nuts about this prime. For me it is a must have.

Light gathering abilities, image quality, background blur, build, great environmental lens

Cost, a bit of a learning curve, slow AF and hunts a bit, not quite as contrasty as the 1.8

Canon 135L
Canon 70-200 2.8 IS
Canon 70-200 2.8 non-IS
Canon 85 1.8

This is a very unusual lens, being so fast and expensive. You know that. You also know this lens is very big (about the size and diameter of a coffee mug) and heavy. What is less apparent is the bokeh on this lens. Others have addressed this, but I'd like to offer some further observations, even though I am a new comer to this lens. You can really get some strange effects with this lens that perhaps no other Canon lens at least can duplicate. The smoothness of the out of focus areas are amazing. I'll post some pics of this on this site. What you do have to deal with at f1.2 is a very shallow DOF. This creates the bokeh, but something in your frame has to be sharp. So this is an extremely demanding lens, not for the casual shooter. It's priced out of their reach anyway and Canon has done them a favor. You can get some serious purple fringing with this lens wide open, and even stopped down to f2. You'll see this in very high contrast areas, like a tree's limbs across a very bright sky. I'm using it to shoot some closeups where the contrast is not too high and I'm extremely pleased with the results so far. Nothing else compares to the smooth, almost luminous bokeh I see. I colors are extraordinarily blended into a very rich pallete, almost like a painter came along and filled in my photo with brush strokes.

Bokeh. Bokeh. Bokeh! No one will mistake you for an amateur with this lens. You'll know you have arrived as a photographer when you look down the maul of this beast. You are getting serious indeed! Light gathering capabilities: I shot regularly at 1/6000 of a second at ISO 160. Can handhold up to 1/100 of a second, so I've certainly got some wiggle room! Balance of the weight is good on my camera. I don't feel that the camera is going to fall over with this lens attached.

Cost. Cost. Cost! Demanding to use wide open. Easy to miss your focus and you'll just get a blur. Focus ring only operates when camera is on and metering is activated. Front element does extend over the very large focusing range this lens has. You have to focus to infinity to let the lens return to normal before you can store it, and you'll forget to do this before you turn the camera off.

Canon 135mm f2 - another bokeh superstar

Not needed.

Having previously owned a 85 f/1.8 Nikkor and a Zeiss 85 f/1.4, I can say that the EOS f/1.2 is the sturdiest and easiest to hold standard lens of the lot. I had an accident and dropped the 85 onto concrete from 3' and it is still working as adverstised. Build quality is excellent, and low light images are sharper than either of the other two lenses.

Build is great. Durability is tops. Wideopen sharpness is excellent. Internal focusing helps when skittish animals are watching you.

Auto focus is dead slow. Wide open focus suffers in the 10D viewfinder. Takes up plenty of camera bag space.

Nikkor 85 mm f/1.8 AI Zeiss 85 mm f/1.4