Canon FD 85mm f/1.8 S.S.C.

Put a Canon FD 85mm f/1.8 next to a Nikkor 85mm f/2 from the same years and the difference is not sharpness, because both are excellent. It is the way they fall off. The Canon renders the transition from focus to blur a touch smoother, with rounder out of focus highlights at wider apertures, while the Nikkor holds onto its edges a little harder. Neither is wrong. But if you want a short portrait tele that flatters skin and lets backgrounds go soft without getting nervous about it, the Canon is the one I reach for.

The S.S.C. coating is the tell. Super Spectra Coating was Canon's premium multicoat in the mid 1970s, and on this six element, four group design it does real work. Flare control is genuinely good for the era. Shoot into a window or a low sun and you get a faint veil at worst, not the rainbow of ghosts you fight on cheaper single coated glass. Wide open it trades a little contrast for a soft, gently glowing rendering, with some color fringing on hard edges, the kind of look that flatters a face. Stop down a hair and it firms up fast. By f/2.8 it is crisp and the glow is gone, and from f/4 to f/5.6 it is sharp corner to corner. That softness at f/1.8 reads as flattering rather than failing on a portrait, which is a fair trade on fast glass of this age.

People keep these for the way out of focus areas render. The falloff on a face is gentle, with no clipped surgical plane and no nervous edges behind it. Color is neutral with a slight warmth that suits open shade. The honest weakness is the close focus distance, which sits at 0.9m. For tight headshots you will find yourself stepping back more than you want, and there is no getting closer without an extension tube or a diopter.

In the FD lineup this is the sensible fast 85. The FD 85mm f/1.2 (the S.S.C. Aspherical from 1976, later reborn as the New FD 85mm f/1.2 L) is the cult object, the lens that gets the magazine writeups and the five figure prices, but it is heavy, slow to focus by hand, and overkill for most portrait work. The f/1.8 covers nearly everything that lens does, for a small fraction of the money and roughly half the weight. That is why it stayed in production from 1975 to 1987 across the breechlock and New FD revisions. People still cross shop it against the Nikkor 85 f/2 and f/1.8, the Minolta MC and MD shorties, and the Olympus 85, and it wins on price almost every time.

One practical note. Wide open in low light this lens is a joy, but a meter reading taken off a bright background will fool you and underexpose the face. Spot meter the skin in the zone you want it to land and let Zone Light Meter place it, rather than trusting an averaged frame. The 55mm filter thread is standard FD glass too, so your polarizer and ND set will move straight across from a 50mm f/1.4 or a 35mm without a second ring. Mount it on a body you can actually meter through and it holds its own. The reasons it sold for a decade are the same reasons it stays on my shortlist now.