360Photography

Introduction

Alongside the EOS RP, Canon has announced the next six lenses it plans to introduce for its RF mount. Don’t be fooled by the timing: although they are being announced with the RP most of these lenses are not being targeted at entry-level or even mass-market customers.

Canon has already said it’s working on a full frame mirrorless camera aimed at professionals, and most of today’s development announcements make clear it intends to have appropriate lenses ready to suit it. All six lenses will be formally launched by the end of 2019, the company says.

Details are pretty scant right now (technically Canon is only announcing its intention to develop these lenses), but mockups of all six were on show at the pre-launch RP event.

RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS USM

To us the most exciting lens to be revealed is the RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS. Part of our excitement is that a 70-200mm F2.8 is one of the workhorses of any system. Pros and enthusiasts use these lenses for a whole range of shooting situations, from portraiture to sports, so it’s an essential ingredient for a system trying to appeal to high-end shooters.

Another piece of good news is that the lens uses Canon’s Nano USM lens motors. The company is a little cagey about exactly how these work, other than that they provide linear, rather than the rotational motion of the ring-type USM motors used in DSLR lenses. What we do know is that the fastest and smoothest focusing lens in the RF system so far (the 24-105mm F4L IS) is powered by Nano USM, which bodes well for the 70-200mm.

RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS compared to the EF 70-200mm

Oh, and the other interesting thing about the RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS? It’s TINY. Here we’ve shot it alongside the most recent EF 70-200mm F2.8L IS and you can see just how much smaller it’s going to be. Unless the ‘pro’ RF model ends up being huge, this is going to make an impressively compact combination.

Canon’s engineers wouldn’t be drawn on exactly how they’ve managed to make it so small, beyond pointing us back to the claimed benefits of the short and wide lens mount. There may well be something more complex going on: we’ll find out when it’s formally released but we were given the distinct impression that it’s not a diffractive optics (Fresnel) design.

RF 24-70mm F2.8 L IS USM

Another great pro workhorse is the 24-70mm F2.8 and Canon’s going to launch one of those, too. We’ve had no details about specifics but it’s a sensibly-sized lens, even if it isn’t as impressively small at its tele counterpart.

Canon has confirmed that it’s working on an in-body stabilization system

Like the 70-200mm the 24-70mm has built-in image stabilization and Canon has confirmed that it’s working on an in-body stabilization system for future camera models that will work in conjunction with this. So you’ll get stabilization on all RF bodies and even greater stabilization on others.

Like the 70-200mm, the 24-70mm will be driven by a Nano USM focus motor.

RF 15-35mm F2.8 L USM

The last in the cover-the-bases pro lineup is the 15-35mm F2.8. Canon says the RF lens mount allowed them to make it a 15-35mm, rather than starting at 16mm.

Again the lens is small and stabilized and, like the other two F2.8 zooms, will be driven by a fast, silent Nano USM motor.

We only wonder whether it needs more prominent markings to make it easier to distinguish from the 24-70, when they’re placed next to one another in a camera bag.

RF 85mm F1.2 L USM

While the trio of F2.8 lenses are all pretty compact, the same can’t be said of the 85mm F1.2. We thought the RF 50mm F1.2 was big (in part because we’ve only had the mid-range EOS R to mount it on, so far), but perhaps not unreasonably, the 85mm F1.2 is even bigger.

We’ve been impressed by the optical performance of the 50mm F1.2 so far. And, while we can’t be sure how much of that can be ascribed to the short, wide lens mount, Canon is clearly doing something right. A super-fast 85mm prime that can be confidently shot using off-center AF points is likely to be an exciting prospect as a portrait lens, even if you don’t always opt for for the hairbreadth depth-of-field that F1.2 can give you.

On the subject of focus, like the RF 50, the 85mm’s focus elements are too big and heavy for the use of a Nano USM motor, so it’s based around slightly less snappy ring-type USM drive.

RF 85mm F1.2 L USM DS

The ‘DS’ designation is new for Canon. Sadly it doesn’t mean we should expect avant garde engineering and styling. Instead, it stands for ‘Defocus Smoothing’ and promises improved bokeh, compared with the standard version.

If that makes you think of apodization elements (essentially an element that’s progressively darker towards the edge to prevent bright-edged bokeh), then the things we were told in our interview with senior engineers will only confirm that assumption.

The DS was the only lens not shown in mockup form as we’ve been told that not all the design decisions have been made yet. Despite this, a computer rendering of the lens has been issued: it says ‘Defocus Smoothing’ on the front, whereas the non-DS version does not.

RF 24-240mm F4-6.3 IS USM

The only lens not clearly aimed at a high-end audience is the RF 24-240mm F4-6.3 IS USM. It’s designed as a do-everything travel zoom, giving a 10x zoom capability.

We’ve mounted it here on the EOS RP and you can see it’s well matched (many of the other RF lenses have a wider diameter, and as a result lift the RP body off the ground if you haven’t attached the optional grip extension).

The two most obvious features are its comparatively small size and comparatively slow aperture range. We stress ‘comparatively’ when it comes to aperture, since you’d need a 15-150mm F2.5-4.0 on Canon APS-C to be equivalent, and few keen photographers would turn their noses up at such a lens. The other thing to notice is that it has only two rings, so we wonder whether the ‘focus’ ring will double as a custom ring when in AF mode.

Summary

The addition of these six lenses will extend the RF system to ten lenses by the end of 2019. With the three F2.8 zooms, 50 and 85mm F1.2s and the monstrous/rather cool 28-70mm F2, it means seven of the options have a distinctly high-end feel to them (and, we suspect, will have price tags to match).

This may leave EOS RP and many EOS R users a little short of choice (or push them towards adapting EF DSLR lenses), but makes very clear that Canon is gearing up for a pro-level RF camera sooner, rather than later.

Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)