After hearing lots of great reviews and opinions from around the Web, I finally bought the 85mm F1.8 (12 July 2007). I wanted to get this lens mainly for street photography and indoor portrait. I could have used my EF-S 60mm Macro lens (see my review here) but autofocus is too slow and F2.8 is not wide enough for low light and shallow DOF subject isolation. My Sigma 30mm f1.4 is great for general indoor shots but the FOV is too wide for ‘head & shoulder’ type portraits.
Overall, I like this lens for its ultra-fast autofocus, accurate and ‘silent’! At this price, it is a perfect lens for what it is. Having used the L version of 85mm F1.2 Mark II, I must say that the image quality of the latter lens is simply in its own ‘elite’ class. But this comes at a price. The bokeh quality and sharpness at F1.2 is simply amazing and cannot be reproduced by the 85mm F1.8. However, I can't justify the 85L price for my amateur needs. Hence, I bought the F1.8 version and at this price, it did not disappoint despite that images are not as sharp as my Sigma 30mm F1.4 (reviewed here).
All samples below were taken at F1.8 and converted from RAW using Capture One Pro (V3.7) with my usual exposure/saturation, white balance, sharpness and cropping adjustments. Some of the photos were post processed in Adobe Photoshop CS2 to convert to black & white or sepia. | 
