In the relentless march toward clinical sharpness and autofocus perfection, camera manufacturers have left behind some truly special lenses. These weren’t always the sharpest or the fastest focusing optics ever made, but they possessed something increasingly rare in modern lens design: character. While today’s lenses are technical marvels that can resolve every eyelash at f/1.4, some of us still dream about the unique rendering, specialized capabilities, and creative possibilities that these discontinued classics offered. Here are five lenses that manufacturers absolutely need to resurrect for the modern era.
Canon EF 50mm f/1.0L USM: The Bokeh Monster
Before every manufacturer was racing to create f/1.4 and f/1.2 normal lenses, Canon did something absolutely insane. They created the EF 50mm f/1.0L USM, a lens that remains the fastest autofocus 50mm lens ever put into production. This wasn’t just about bragging rights or spec sheets. At f/1.0, this lens created a depth of field so impossibly thin that you could have someone’s front eyelash in focus while their pupil fell into blur. The rendering was unlike anything else, creating images with an almost liquid, dreamlike quality that made subjects appear to float in pools of creamy bokeh.
Yes, it had problems. The autofocus was glacially slow, using a ring-type USM motor that struggled to move the massive glass elements required for that f/1.0 aperture. Making matters worse, the manual focus ring employed an electronic focus-by-wire system that felt disconnected and lacked the tactile, mechanical feedback of traditional manual focus lenses. Wide open, it was soft enough that some photographers joked you needed to stop down to f/1.4 just to get “acceptably blurry” sharpness. It was also ruinously expensive and the size of a small telescope. But none of that mattered when you saw the images it produced. There was something magical about that rendering, an ethereal quality that the sharper, newer f/1.2L that replaced it simply couldn’t replicate. Today’s photographers shooting environmental portraits, editorial work, or anything where mood matters more than clinical sharpness would absolutely lose their minds for a modern version with better coatings, improved autofocus, and maybe even image stabilization. Canon proved with the RF 85mm f/1.2L that they can make fast lenses that actually focus quickly. Now imagine that technology applied to an f/1.0 fifty.
Canon EF 200mm f/2L IS USM: The Portrait Lens That Still Has No Equal
If you’ve ever seen someone shooting with the Canon EF 200mm f/2L IS USM, you’ve probably done a double-take. This absolute unit of a lens looks like a small satellite dish and weighs nearly as much as a newborn baby, but what it does is truly special. Combining the subject compression of 200mm with a jaw-dropping f/2 maximum aperture created a level of background separation that simply has no equal in modern photography. This wasn’t just a telephoto lens. It was a portrait photographer’s secret weapon, capable of turning cluttered gyms into silky-smooth backgrounds and making outdoor portraits look like they were shot in a professional studio. It’s the one lens that kept me in the Canon ecosystem, the many times I was tempted by Sony.
The lens became legendary among sports photographers shooting indoor events where light was scarce and backgrounds were busy. It was equally beloved by portrait photographers who discovered that shooting at 200mm and f/2 created images with a three-dimensional pop that made subjects look like they were cutouts floating in space. Here’s the frustrating part: Canon has not created an RF equivalent to this lens. Yes, they offer the RF 100-300mm f/2.8L IS USM, an incredible (and incredibly expensive) zoom that covers this focal length, but it’s not the same as having a dedicated f/2 prime with the unique rendering characteristics that made the EF version so special. Portrait and sports photographers are still hunting down used copies of the EF version, even though they have to use them with adapters on their mirrorless bodies. With modern lens coatings, better image stabilization, and the optical improvements Canon has made in the RF era, a true successor to this lens could be absolutely spectacular. The demand is clearly there. Canon just needs to make it.
Nikon AF DC-NIKKOR 135mm f/2D: The Lens That Let You Paint With Bokeh
In an era where every lens maker is trying to create the “perfect” bokeh through optical design alone, it’s worth remembering that Nikon once gave photographers direct control over bokeh quality with their DC (Defocus Control) lenses. The AF DC-NIKKOR 135mm f/2D was the crown jewel of this line, featuring a separate control ring that allowed you to manipulate the spherical aberration characteristics of out-of-focus areas in front of or behind your focus point. This wasn’t just a gimmick. In the hands of a skilled photographer, the DC control could transform the same lens from razor-sharp to beautifully soft-focused, creating a painterly, almost romantic look that no amount of post-processing or soft-focus filters can truly replicate.
The beauty of the DC system was its subtlety and control. You could shoot a portrait where the subject was tack sharp but the background melted away into an impressionistic wash of color. Or you could dial in some front defocus control to soften harsh foreground elements while keeping your subject crisp. Portrait photographers, particularly those shooting with film, considered it an essential creative tool. The lens itself was also optically excellent. Even without touching the DC control, it was sharp, contrasty, and rendered beautiful colors. Nikon was committed enough to this technology to produce a 105mm f/2D sibling lens, proving the DC concept was more than just a one-off experiment. But that extra control over the rendering gave photographers creative options that simply don’t exist in modern lenses. It’s worth noting that Nikon’s newest high-end portrait lens, the Z 135mm f/1.8 S Plena, takes the exact opposite approach. It’s marketed as having clinically perfect, onion-ring-free, flawless bokeh. While that’s impressive technically, it highlights what we’ve lost. The DC lens was designed to be controllably imperfect, giving photographers artistic agency over their rendering. With today’s optical design capabilities and coatings, Nikon could create a modern DC lens that’s even sharper when you want it to be, with even more beautiful defocus characteristics when you’re dialing in that artistic look. Given the current renaissance in interest for lenses with character and creative control, this is a lens concept that deserves to be resurrected. Canon does make the RF 100mm f/2.8 L Macro IS USM lens with spherical aberration control, but there’s no Nikon portrait-specific option.
Canon EF 180mm f/3.5L USM Macro: The Working Distance Champion That Canon Forgot
Macro photography requires getting close to your subject, but sometimes you don’t want to get that close. When you’re photographing skittish insects, dangerous spiders, or any subject that might flee or react to your presence, working distance becomes critical. The Canon EF 180mm f/3.5L USM Macro built its reputation solving precisely this problem. This L-series macro lens offered true 1:1 life-size reproduction from a comfortable distance, giving photographers the space they needed to light their subjects properly, use longer flashes or ring lights, and avoid spooking wildlife. It was also surprisingly sharp and well-corrected, producing the kind of image quality you’d expect from Canon’s premium L series.
Canon has conspicuously a longer focal focal length out of their RF lineup. Their RF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM is excellent, but that working distance issue difference is big. For professional macro photographers, particularly those working with insects, small reptiles, or product photography that requires careful lighting, this is a genuine gap in Canon’s lens lineup. A modern RF 180mm or even 200mm macro with current optical technology, better coatings, image stabilization, and perhaps even faster autofocus would immediately become the go-to lens for serious macro work. The demand is absolutely there, as evidenced by the strong used market for the EF version and the continued popularity of third-party 180mm macro options.
Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro: The Weirdest Lens That Proved Specialized Tools Matter
Some lenses are designed to do everything reasonably well. The Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro Photo breaks that mold entirely. This is one of the strangest pieces of glass ever mass-produced by a major manufacturer, and that’s exactly what makes it brilliant. It’s a manual focus only lens that cannot focus to infinity. In fact, it can’t focus on anything beyond a few inches from the front element. What it can do, however, is magnify subjects from life-size (1:1) all the way up to five times life-size (5:1), revealing microscopic details that are literally invisible to the naked eye. This makes it the ultimate tool for extreme macro photography, allowing photographers to capture the compound eyes of insects, the individual scales on butterfly wings, or the crystalline structure of snowflakes with stunning clarity.
The learning curve is steep. At 5x magnification, your depth of field is measured in fractions of a millimeter, your working distance is almost nonexistent, and the slightest vibration will ruin your shot. Many photographers who buy this lens end up selling it in frustration. But for those who master it, the MP-E 65mm opens up an entire world of photography that simply doesn’t exist with any other lens. Bug photographers, in particular, consider it an absolutely essential tool. Canon has never updated this lens design since its introduction decades ago, and they still haven’t created an RF version. A modern update with better coatings and improved build quality would be welcomed, but the single most requested feature is the ability to record the magnification setting (1x, 2.5x, 5x, etc.) in the EXIF data. While the current lens does transmit basic information like aperture and focal length, it fails to record magnification, which is critical information for focus stacking workflows and image cataloging. This lens proves that sometimes the most important tools aren’t the ones that do everything, but the ones that do one very specific thing better than anything else possibly could.
