I've had the 85mm f/1.8 for over a week now, so I thought I should offer a mini review for the "rest of us". And by that I mean if you are looking for specs, charts, sample photos, stats etc. please look elsewhere. Here's what I've got:

• Feels ok. Not solid, but not flimsy either. A bit plasticky but hey, what do you expect from a sub $400 lens? But seriously, I'm a bit disappointed, but not enough to keep me awake at night. On the plus side, it's light, and very inconspicuous.
• Fast and quiet auto-focus. I'm impressed. Works great with my 7d, and that's pretty surprising considering it's by no means a new lens.
• Serious chromatic aberration or spherochromatism, or Bokeh Fringing or LoCA whatever, who cares what it's called, it's just pretty bad. Magenta and green fringing all over the place. In pretty much all photos with high contrast. Enough for me to return it? Probably not, but I'm lucky because I usually process in b&w. And don't think that these artifacts are like the usual CA you fix in Lightroom or Photoshop. I'm talking about serious color distortion here. Still, if you know your photoshop well, you shouldn't have much problems. More information here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/canon_7d_digital_slr/discuss/72157623189524582/?search=aberration
• Pleasingly sharp even at widest. Decent blur quality. (OK, for people who speak Japanese I meant "bokeh") I have never had an L lens, so I'm pretty happy with the quality here. And who cares anyway? You should know better than relying on just DoF for good photography. Right?
• Did I mention it's less then $400?
• And here's something I shot this weekend:

  

Unless I return it (which is still a possibility) I will try to add more comments as I discover this lens. So stay tuned!

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