Canon New FD 100mm f/2

Across a dark room at a gallery opening, this is the lens that reaches the people you are not standing next to. Wide open at f/2, 100mm pulls a single face out of the crowd and turns everything behind it to soft wash. It is a short telephoto built for distance you cannot close on foot, and Canon shipped it from 1980 as part of the New FD line, the quick-mount redesign that became the company's last manual-focus system before EF autofocus arrived in 1987.

The rendering is calm rather than flashy. It is sharp wide open and tightens up a little stopped down, which is where most people leave it for portraits, but you can shoot it at f/2 without apology. Bokeh is smooth and rounded, with none of the nervous swirl some fast teles throw; backgrounds dissolve instead of churn. Canon's Super Spectra coating, standardized across the New FD line, keeps contrast honest into backlight. It draws skin and hair cleanly without the clinical edge of a modern apochromat, and that restraint is most of why portrait shooters keep coming back to it.

The honest flaw is longitudinal chromatic aberration wide open. Shoot a backlit branch or an eyeglass frame against bright sky at f/2 and you will find green and magenta fringing on the out-of-focus edges. It improves noticeably as you stop down, so a click or two off maximum aperture buys back most of the cleanliness. It is also not built for close work; it focuses to about a meter, so frame-filling detail belongs to Canon's FD 100mm Macro, not to this lens.

Portrait shooters loved it on film, and a second wave found it on mirrorless. FD glass adapts cleanly to Sony E, Fuji X, Micro Four Thirds, and Canon RF with a plain ring, because the short flange leaves room; the one place it will not reach infinity without corrective optics is a Canon EF DSLR. That orphaning kept FD prices low for years, but this one held its value better than most. It has tended to stay sought-after among FD shooters, cross-shopped inside Canon's own catalog against the more affordable 85mm f/1.8 and 100mm f/2.8.

The 52mm filter thread is small for a fast 100, which makes ND filters and polarizers cheap to feed. And low light is where this lens earns its keep. In a dim venue, set f/2 wide open and let Zone Light Meter hand you the shutter speed before you decide whether your hands can hold it. The lens gives you the separation; you still have to bring the steady hands and the timing.