American Road Trip with the Canon EOS 85mm F/1.4 L IS USM
December 12, 2018
Last month my partner and I did our first trip to America and it was mind-blowing. On top of my regular photo and video kit, I really wanted to test out the Canon 85mm F/1.4 IS USM L. I wanted to see how it performed and where it could be used in my usual workflow. Being a stabilised lens with a wide aperture I was looking forward to using it to shoot video handheld as well as stills and night time-lapse. Thankful that CameraPro let me field test this lens!
The Trip
We spent 3 weeks across 4 states travelling in “Pinball” our rental escape campervan. Although we had a rough itinerary we never really knew where we would be the next day and went with the flow (and the weather)! We started in Phoenix (Arizona) and finished 3500km later in San Francisco (California).
The Lens
As planned I shot a wide range of content with the 85mm. I really enjoyed how versatile it was, the focal length is not too long that you always feel you have to step back and it’s wide enough to still fit a lot in the frame. Rather than a clean shot, I was often searching for something to have in the foreground and by shooting at 1.4 it created a frame that gave you the impressions of “discovering” the view through a gap without it being too distracting from the main part of the image. Examples below are all shot at F/1.4 which helped capture as much light as possible during the blue hour or after sunset:
I also shot a mix of timelapse and slowmotion video, the fact that it was stabilised enabled me some great handheld shots:
It also really works as a landscape lens too if you want to compress the frame (see the Nevada road shot) or wide open to isolate one subject (the Joshua tree at sunset).
In summary, although not practical for my science communications and field biology documentation projects (I need to be ultra-quick and the versatility of a zoom trumps everything else) it would sit well in my line-up of gear for my time-lapse work or projects where there are fewer time constraints and I can have extra time to create different content. I loved shooting with this lens and the shallow Depth-Of-Field slow motion you can get when pairing it to the Canon EOS 1DX2 and filming at 100fps (or 60fps) handheld is superb.
The lens is weather sealed which I always value for my outdoor work and performed well in all locations (we were in deserts, in the snow, on the coast…).
My complete Kit for the trip
Being a “car-based” adventure trip I had a bit more lenience towards what to bring and split between 2 people we were always under the carry on limits for our packs (with the cheaper gear being safely stored in check-in). We don’t always had all of it on us and were packing in accordance with our daily activities, length of hikes, etc…
- 1 x Canon EOS 1DX (2 batteries)
- 1 x Canon EOS M5 (2batteries)
- 1 x Rode Video Mic
- 1 x Canon 85mm F/1.4 IS USM L
- 1 x Canon 16-35mm F/4 IS USM L
- 1 x Canon 24-70 F/4 IS USM L
- 1 x Canon 70-300 F/4-5.6 IS USM L
- 1 x Canon 50mm F/1.8
- 1 x Sigma 35mm F/1.4 Art
- 1 x 3 Legged Thing “Brian” Tripod, the old version.
- 1 x Fstop Gear Tilopa BC, the old version I’ve had that one for 5years.
- 1 x Fstop Gear Dalston, my new go-to small kit days bag.
All saved on a Samsung SSD T5 1tb and backed up on another Samsung SSD.