Among Canon photographers, the lens is highly regarded for its sharpness, contrast, and color rendition.
The lens is also popular because it is very sharp at its maximum aperture of f/2, allowing the photographer to throw the background out of focus while recording a lot of detail on the primary subject.
This feature is controlled by rotating the soft focus selector which has three choices; 0, 1, and 2.
This is done by rotating elements that are inside of the lens to create deliberate spherical aberration.
The lens can be used with any camera that accepts EF lenses, but cannot be used with Canon's teleconverters.