Canon RF 24-105mm f/2.8 'L' IS USM Z lens review 

"NANI!?"

This guy is a canon shill

@@Yupthereitism 🤣🤣🤣

I agree. I still have the old Sigma 17-50 2.8 since I first saw his review back in 2017.

yeah, that distortion is pretty ugly!

Yup that’s exactly the case. But… meh I don’t care. Covers my needs. Plus at this stage everything in mirrorless is being corrected with software, which is why none of these lenses in any mirrorless systems were possible with DSLR’s (or the lenses would be 3 times the size). It’s the same case on every mount.

@@TigerWould2 That's not actually true though. The shorter flange length and larger throat diameter of RF and Z mount allow *more* optical designs in general. It *is* possible to take a DSLR lens, rework the optics for the shorter flange length, and end up with a lighter, smaller lens. A lot of the wide angle DSLR lenses were doing retrofocal designs because things get slightly weird optically if your focal length is shorter than the flange distance. With mirrorless, everything down to ~20mm should be doable without retrofocal optics (down from ~40mm in DSLRS). Anyway, for example the RF 50mm f/1.2L, is a great example of what "no compromises" mirrorless can be. It has almost no substantial issues, even uncorrected (really just some vignetting). Here though, Canon is taking the approach that they do with their cheaper lenses (using a bunch of in-camera corrections to avoid optical complexity) but on a $3500 lens.

Imagine 24-105 f2. That's the absolute unit

But the 28-70 f2 is even heavier and much fatter.

@@80-80.😏

I own a 24-105 f/2.8. It’s a lot more balanced than the 28-70 f/2 (which is front heavy), plus you can use the tripod collar as an additional way to balance the lens. It’s solid and versatile.

Phil Thach TM

Thank you for the great chuckle!

me too 😂😂😂😂

It’s not that insane, it’s actually extremely practical and sure to sell very well

if only this would be available for canon ;)

I have the Sigma 14-24mm Art for wider shots on A7RV... Still way better than a 70-200mm... My Tamron is sharper than gm Version 1 i had before😅

Yeah, that Tamron will have me switch to Sony at the end of this wedding season, after 25 years with Canon. Can't wait anymore for the release of third party RF lenses.

Why not use prime lens like laowa for wedding?

@@edowijaya8603 which Laowa specifically? I typically use prime lenses, except during wedding ceremonies where I need ultimate versatility.

Seems like Canon more then any other manufactures are doing this. Like the RF35L is also terrible with out lens corrections. Like if Canon wants to do this, ok fine but how about a break on price while we are at it as these lenses are cheating compared to the EF versions that were optically very very good without corrections.

If you don’t get over your hate of digital corrections, you may never buy a modern day mirrorless lens again. I hope things work out for you though. There may just be some gems out there for you in future

@@justinburley8659Nikons rely much less on digital correction. Go Nikon

@@Yupthereitism There is still a heavy reliance though

@@justinburley8659 that’s relative. No, I would say they utilize correction but don’t rely on it

Well - its not a bad value vs 24-70. 50 percent increase in zoom reach for 31% increase in price. Would be a no brainer in not the huge size

Why carry and pay that much more, to have 35mm of overlap be the only thing you gain?

The better combo would obviously be the 100-300mm f/2.8, but that's in an entirely different price category. Mirrorless flange distances are giving some amazing abilities to obtain brighter apertures where they used to require monster sized lenses. I can't wait to see if somebody tries to create a new 200-500mm f/2.8 and how small it could be. Maybe shifting up to 300-500mm or 300-600mm since we've already got f/2.8 coverage from 24mm all the way to 300mm on 2 zooms.

@@Trent1453 Flange distances help wide angle lenses but not so much past 50mm. 500mm/2.8 is 180mm, a monster front element diameter.

It could be very useful for wedding photographers, but given the somewhat strong CA that might be an issue when taking photos of the bride for example.

the RF 24-70 F2.8L does have IS already

@@ryevisuals sorry i meant the 28-70 hahaha! (although i wish it was on the EF version, i ended up with a Sigma 24-70 2.8 ART OS to use with R6 as well as on my Canon EOS 3 and 33 film cameras)

I’m happy with them cutting corners if I can have an extremely versatile lens like this one. And even if they use digital correction It doesn’t bother me since no one will ever know or notice it in my productions. So at the end of the day, who cares?

For low light, high iso photographers, it’s a real shame. At this time, digital corrections don’t solve the moire noise patterning. And the fact that these lenses are just getting optically worse and reliant on digital corrections even further exaggerate these patterns. They look terrible, and I have to shoot with distortion correction off for each of my lenses when I go as high as 40k iso. Until Lightroom can figure out how to implement distortion correction without creating a bunch of ugly noisy circles with RAW files, I’ll have to pass on every one of these lenses.

@@Augnos But does anybody but the photographer notice those issues? Most of our audience isn’t going to pixel peep. It is only a problem for those who make giant prints, and those people will find the gear that suits their needs

@@justinburley8659 exactly!

@@justinburley8659 If you have any lenses with strong distortion corrections, try for yourself. It's pretty obvious when you can see the noise patterns in the thumbnails.

They are pictures of Llangrannog, Wales :-)

@@christopherfrost, Ah, of course. I should have guessed that by your accent!

That is f/2.8 on APS-C which is f/4.5 equivalent. No adapter will make the lens exceed what it was designed for.

@@okaro6595 blur, yes I agree. But in terms of shutter speed, f/2.8 is what I get out of it.

Send me an email and I'll get back to you

@@christopherfrost Hi Chris, have sent email. Cheers.

It's a petal-shaped hood, so i doubt it. This hard vignette is a recurring effect in multiple mirrorless lenses at the wide end.

It does though, the lens is optically wider than 24mm but after correcting the pincushion is crops off the now bulging edges at a 24mm angle of view. It is the sort of correction anyone can prove for themself by doing a raw perspective correction in Photoshop etc. To me it seems that because the EF mount is for film and digital Canon only made lenses that projected correctly onto the focal plane. Because the RF mount is exclusively digital it is now taking advantage of that by creating lens that were previously impossible of impractical by designing them to capture raw data that can then be corrected by processing. But that only means accepting barrel and pincushion distortion, not artificially recreating what detail it thought was in the corners. I have the RF 24-240 to have as a general purpose lens with my R6 to give me more reach than my EF 24-105 f/2.8L. I was really hesitant because of it uses the same design but the reviews were positive and I gave in. It is obviously a compromise being much slower and not as sharp in the centre, but that is an accepted compromise with an all-purpose lens. But the corners do not stand out as any worse than you would expect of such a lens. And compared to the awful APS-C Tamron superzoom I used to use on an 7D they are far better. With the world of Canon pricing I think this is a fair price for this lens overall. But, as always, photography is about a balancing compromises and if anyone really does not want lens like this that depends on processing they can stick to the more traditional slower RF 24-105 f/4 etc. I dare say if there was an optically perfect f/2.8 version it would just be some combinations of being too big, heavy, and expensive to be worthwhile.

@@Rebecka_J Thanks. That does make sense. And I wouldn't have guessed at the answer.

@@thecaveofthedead It is not obvious unless you use one, the main giveaway is when you look at raw shots of test charts like the one Christopher included. Wide open it is much wider than the chart and showed something else to the right to it. But Canon probably should be more open about what they are doing with the RF mount now they are bringing this concept to L lenses and not just consumer ones like the 16mm or 24-240. I can totally understand people being confused by what is happening and it putting off professionals who for that price just want something they can trust.

The focal lenghts are always on the corrected image.

24mm after digitally corrected same as RF 10-20mm. Raw at 10 is not 10mm. It's like 9mm.