Canon Super-Canomatic R 135mm 2.5

This lens has been sitting in a box on a shelf for more than a year. Why, you might ask?

I picked it up on a whim. I had never read about an f2.5 Canon lens, and I wanted to see what uncoated Canon optics could do. I was curious about the Canon FL mount as well.

This lens is heavier than any 135mm lens I own. I feel even my 135mm 2.8 Pentacon is lighter, which is saying something.

I had some travel lined up, and while pondering which lens to pick for the upcoming trip, I decided I'd give it a whirl.

If you're travelling light and don't need something heavy to keep your bag (or tent, or friend) pinned to the ground, don't pick this lens. It's massive and well built. The slightly flimsy Canon FL mount made me a bit nervous, since it felt a bit wobbly. With the Canon FL mount, you turn a ring to tighten the lens on the camera. There wasn't a click or any lock on my adapter, so I ended up tightening it as much as I could and checking on it every time I took the camera out of my bag. The style of preset aperture baffles me a bit. You have two rings. The first one clicks for each aperture stop, while the other opens and closes the aperture. The thing is, the first ring doesn't limit how much the aperture closes on my copy. (Could this be the intended behaviour, or is it broken?)

The first ring is there so you know where to stop when turning the second ring to close down. This means you need to take the camera off your face and fiddle with 2 rings if you want a specific aperture.

It's not a very sharp lens. Wide open or stopped down, I found sharpness to be lacking. Is that a bad thing? Not really. I found it performed really well when taking portraits, and was quite pleased with the results. The lens does render color a bit on the cold side, so expect a bluish tint, which means skin sometimes appears a bit weird. It's still fixable in post, and it gives images an interesting feel.

Chromatic aberrations are surprisingly well controlled for a lens this old. You do see some wide open, but stop down and, poof, they're gone.

Although the Canon FL 135mm 2.5 performs really well for portraits, its weight, inconvenient aperture rings, and size alone would stop me from picking one up. For half the weight and better performance, you can easily get another 135mm lens which, albeit not as light on the pocket, will be lighter in your camera bag.