Thanks for these articles. Based on the previous article, I bought a CF card (expressB) 10 days ago and today I looked and the same seller has none in stock, the goods are expected on April 14th and the price of the goods is 22.5% higher than what I bought.

Maybe a dumb question, but would it be impossible for Canon to take the RF 50mm F1.2L (or the 85mm) USM and "just" replace the USM-motor with a VCM style motor? or is the motor inside a lens so composed that a total redesign of everything is necessary?

roby17269 said:

I do not believe that... the reality is that we do not know, but if that was the case, how would that be materially different from Canon simply saying "no 3rd party AF FF lenses allowed"?

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It sounds better in press and interviews when journalists ask about it. So instead of saying "we not allow it", they can just say they negotiating or something.

I’m surprised Canon hasn’t yet produced an RF TS-E. I know it’s niche but it’s something Canon have specialised in. There are so many RF lens but these are absent. I’d love a replacement for the 17mm TS-E. Laowa have one. Ideally I’d like a 15mm one. Autofocus wouldn’t be necessary for me.

GirlsAreBeautiful said:

Which kind of confirms what I am saying, 28mm has been the default thanks to smartphones. And now manufacturers want to differentiate.

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He pretty much wrote the opposite.

Iphones dropped 28mm as their main focal length back in 2019, almost seven years ago.
Samsung Galaxy S series dropped 28mm in 2016, even before the RF system existed.
ASUS Zenfone, back when they were a thing, never had 28mm as their main lens.

It’s been a long time since “smartphones used 28mm on their main cameras”, and Canon never invested seriously in this focal length, as there has never been a 28mm L lens in their history. Nikon did invest seriously, Leica does, Sony doesn’t, Canon doesn’t.

As much as I like 28mm, I have to recognise it is not the most common focal length.

I am pretty sure it's canon blocking 3rd party FF RF lenses... with Sigma Art capabilities shown in the Sony E mount I can't believe they just not capable to port their art lineup to RF mount except some financial issues with Canon

foda said:

Nice photos! Avilist considers American and Eurasian Teals to be subspecies of the Green-winged Teal.

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On many such international forums the politics are directed by those who are on the top and dictate the money flow.

The main scientific argument against the Teals being two different species is the "high gene flow". In the same time there are species that are preserved by humans from the same "high gene flow" - to preserve their species integrity. In other words the science is acknowledging their single species identity!
From my point of view the "gene flow" between the Eurasian and the Green-winged Teals is a secondary factor and the reason for this is the character of the mitochondria - with their often circular DNA that is like the bacterial (for me it looks like an ancestral difference!!!)! In other words the mtDNA differences are more significant for me. If there is a secondary, species unifying "gene flow" that is polluting the original genome DNA - it's a different question!

Can the mods change the tread title as at present doesn't seem to have anything to do with RF 300-600mm

Long story short: I was planing to go today on the other side of the Island but landed in Waikiki: decided to give one more chance to the Orange-Cheeked Waxbil (last seen 2025.12.31! Few more attempts later were unsuccessful) before I check it "eventually lost". It was there!!
Took some photos but my attention got on another Waxbill (for sure the Common Waxbill but "strange"!). I took bunch of photos to document the bird, posting just two.

Starting with photos of Japanese White Eye and Saffron Finch. The last photo is how the Common Waxbill should look.

neuroanatomist said:

Which smartphones? For several years the main camera on iPhones has been 26mm(equivalent) for the non-Pro and 24mm for the Pro models.

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Which kind of confirms what I am saying, 28mm has been the default thanks to smartphones. And now manufacturers want to differentiate. Or do you have another idea for why it might be that there are almost zero 28mm produced?

Very nice series, danfaz.

Noreaster said:

Carolina Wren is my first pic. We are on the edge of their range
Some should have been in the birds in flight threa

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Beautiful series. Noreaster.

Exploreshootshare said:

This Kestrel showed up frequently during our walks last year. So, I took my RF 100-500mm out, put a 2x TC on it and went at it

R5 + RF 100-500mm + 2x TC
600mm
F11

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I really like this shot. Well done!

R5ii + 200-800 @ 800 (both)

...checking out the master bedroom (female downy woodpecker)



=====

Dark-eyed Junco testing a trampoline

AlanF said:

Interestingly, I got yesterday a shot of a Eurasian Teal, which has a horizontal white stripe, compared with your America Teal that has a vertical shoulder stripe. Here it is plus a Shoveller and a very small Little Egret that came very close. I wish we had your Wood Ducks and Hooded Mergansers.

View attachment 228629View attachment 228630View attachment 228631

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Nice photos! Avilist considers American and Eurasian Teals to be subspecies of the Green-winged Teal.

The King is dead? Long live the King!

Ring USM was all about performance in the context of photography, manufacturing at scale, and reliability. Anything that replaces it with rock solid performance that can be achieved at quantity and be occasionally hit against a rock is equally a good solution. It looks like VCM is increasingly carrying the torch.

From a personal opinion standpoint, I dislike anything that can break when twisted and the power is off. So for the way some gear drives have been implemented I tend to avoid them in any brand's makeup.

But looking at the EF lens catalog, many of the initial offerings were limited in their drive capability. I stopped counting at 41, but glancing ahead on the page more than 41 EF lenses used gear or PZ or other drives. I don't think RF is doing anything different here in terms of equivalency. I think that where the RF lens stable is avoiding high performance drives in the 2020s is surprising to me, but Canon must have its reasons.

Of course, I only own USM EF lenses — save for the 40mm 2.8 STM — because I have other tools or remote / external mics for video. So I don't care if they're a little noisy — I care that they're responsive for their purpose. Also, while some USM lenses moved enough glass to be slow as compared to many, for typical use cases they AF just fine (the 50mm 1.2 is a typical portrait lens, for example, not an F1 straightway snapper — my peeps just don't move in a blurring motion; even the kids aren't that fast).

USM, VCM, whatever. Just be fast, reliable, and tough. Oh, and Canon — please stop releasing $2.5k+ lenses without focus rings. The sports folks might not care, but some of the rest of us do. Not that my opinion matters here. A 200-800 lens without a dedicated focus ring is, well, just silly. In my opinion, of course.

If Canon is open to third parties making lenses for the full frame sensors, but nobody is... then likely the contract by which such an engagement may take place has been made deliberately burdensome. This is a common business practice from plumbers through to large companies.

Just as a client interviews my company prior to engagement, we equally interview the prospective client. Success allows for choosiness.

And just because a FF lens can be made available doesn't mean that all FF lenses can be made available. Restrictions in the licensing could be stuff like:

• Nothing faster than f/4
• No constant aperture zooms
• Only focal lens between 40mm and 49mm
• etc.

Yes, some of those examples are silly — but just to illustrate the point. Sigma may be totally allowed to make FF lenses for the RF mount, just within parameters that do not make good business sense to Sigma given their finite research, manufacturing, distribution, and support resources plus their brand reputation in its current form.

But... if the door is in fact open, then it can be pushed little by little to open further. Probably, as I've mentioned before, the crop lenses are a Canon test to see how things go with Sigma and its impact on the Canon / RF brands.

Here are some sand tufa I saw for the first time yesterday at Mono Lake, CA .

blackcoffee17 said:

Maybe Canon just set the license fee so high that it makes no sense for Sigma to release full frame RF lenses. So they can say the technically allow it.

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I do not believe that... the reality is that we do not know, but if that was the case, how would that be materially different from Canon simply saying "no 3rd party AF FF lenses allowed"?

roby17269 said:

And I don't believe for a second that Sigma would not sell their FF lenses to RF customers if they could. If it was a case of costs they could simply pass them to the customers. And if it was a question of capacity they could simply produce less crop lenses and favor the more profitable FF ones

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Maybe Canon just set the license fee so high that it makes no sense for Sigma to release full frame RF lenses. So they can say the technically allow it.

AlanF said:

Interestingly, I got yesterday a shot of a Eurasian Teal, which has a horizontal white stripe, compared with your America Teal that has a vertical shoulder stripe. Here it is plus a Shoveller and a very small Little Egret that came very close. I wish we had your Wood Ducks and Hooded Mergansers.

View attachment 228629View attachment 228630View attachment 228631

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For the American Ornithological Society (AOS) the Eurasian and the American Teals are two subspecies of the same species. For most other ornithologists they are two closely related species. The mitochondrial DNA data are showing deep difference between the two taxa but the genome DNA data are showing (from conservative regions of DNA) high similarity (but still with differences!). The hybrids between thees two species (they hybridize in the Bering See at higher rate) have both, vertical and horizontal white strips!

Carolina Wren is my first pic. We are on the edge of their range
Some should have been in the birds in flight thread

GirlsAreBeautiful said:

I don't think a new 28mm is a priority for the simple reason that it is the default cellphone focal lenght, so manufacturers are focusing about things that feel "different".

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Which smartphones? For several years the main camera on iPhones has been 26mm(equivalent) for the non-Pro and 24mm for the Pro models.

m4ndr4ke said:

The RF 28mm f/2.8 is good, but I'm not bringing it out for low light situations, and I'm not very fond of pancake lenses. The lens vignettes heavily at f/2.8, an aperture that would be stopping down with most prime lenses, but it is not with this one.
I'm mostly okay with software corrections, that's not my point, but I'd prefer having that level of vignette at f/1.8 or wider, and being able to stop down to f/2.8 for a cleaner image, like many lenses allow us to.

A regular 28mm, with a proper lens hood, would do. I wouldn't necessarily want f/1.4, I'd be glad with a RF 28mm f/1.8 STM, but the 45mm is setting a precedent for extremely wide apertures, so I guess one can dream. Also, it could make an amazing standard lens for APS-C users, since a RF-S 32mm f/1.4 is nowhere to be found, so I think there may be a market for a budget, but fast, 28mm, specially with a price and form factor similar to that of the 45.

As for a L-series 28mm...yeah, at this point, I doubt it.

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I don't think a new 28mm is a priority for the simple reason that it is the default cellphone focal lenght, so manufacturers are focusing about things that feel "different".

Hugin said:

An RF 20-70/4L IS, as light as possible, would be nice.
Though there are already so many lenses covering the standard zoom range so I don’t have to much hope.

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Extending the 14-35 to 14-50 would be even more amazing.