Canon Eyes a Canon RF 50-150mm F2.8

Gentlemen, maybe you are to much focused on the fullframe cult.

This lens is so far only a patent and the optical dimensions make it look like a full frame lens but I believe that fact to be a byproduct.

50-150 slots very nice into the 10-18 and 18-50 row currently occupied by Sigma/Tamron

With any APSC advantages diminishing rapidly after 100mm it makes sense to build a lens which is seen as good quality supplement for poor non pro APSC children of a lesser god like me, while also feeding the cheap R8 clients who jumped for whatever reason onto the fullframe train.

The full frame pros will shun such a non L product so cannibalizing the wrong herd of cash cows will be kept to a minimum .

Sigma tried three times to get such a lens right. I fell in love with their 2nd attempt but not many did. Their 3rd attempt resulted in a lens as big as their 70-200 2.8 and failed to make any impression.

Now Canon comes along and puts lightweight, stabilization, value and no RFS limit for future upgraders into one product. Sounds sexy or?

At first look, my feeling was the same. This lens would complement Sigma's 10-18mm and 18-50mm very nicely. But it seems to be too large. I would actually expect (or, perhaps hope) that Sigma would come out with something more like a 50-115mm F2.8 that is more compact.

When I look at the table in the article it lests the lens length as:

176.15 (W) and 236.15(T)

I'm assuming these are in mm. When I look at the spects for the RF 70-200 F2.8 (non-Z) & F4 it lists the lens length as:

F4 : 119 (W) and 181(T) (https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Lens-Specifications.aspx?Lens=1529)
F2.8 : 146 (W) and 212(T) (https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Lens-Specifications.aspx?Lens=1417)

Which suggests that the 50-150mm would be longer than both of the current RF L non-z 70-200mm. Am I missing something? Is it just the diameter and weight improvements? Lower price? More versatile focal length range? It really doesn't seem to complete the "non-L f/2.8 trinity".
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Canon RF 45mm f/1.2 STM Reviewed by Opticallimits

You could check the Flickr group for this lens.
I checked it out; some terribly nervous bokeh at f/1.2, the boy on the green slide for instance, looks like the RF 50/1.8 !
The planar optical formula does tend to do this; adding an aspherical element makes it even worse. Even the EF 50/1.2 could get nasty. Kind of makes me confirm that if you want shallow dof and tasty bokeh with a ‘normal’ lens use an 85 or 100.
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Canon Eyes a Canon RF 50-150mm F2.8

I'm still waiting for someone to demonstrate in the final image the inferiority of digital geometric distortion correction, compared to optical correction that some people claim is superior. I tried and failed, finding that digital correction was just as good. Since you clearly believe that optical correction is better, perhaps you'll be the one to actually show some evidence to support that belief?

I won't hold my breath.

It can't meaningfully be done with the equipment we have available because you can't use the same lens to do both at the same time, meaning that there will always be differences in the image created.

The best you could do would be to take a lens such as this and create a system where you can alter the position of the sensor relative to the back of the lens so that when it is at 50mm, the position of the sensor is further back allowing the spread of light to cover more area. that assumes that the photos coming out the back of the lens are coming out at an angle.

It would also require custom firmware to record what comes out of the sensor because I think Canon do the stretching very early so you can never see an unstretched image. And custom software to measure the differences (better than pixel peeping by humans.)

Summary: proper comparison is as good as impossible to do for "normal" people so holding your breath for it to be done would not be healthy.
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Canon EOS R7 Mark II to Have Stacked 40MP Sensor?

Hey, lookie here! It's almost exactly the lens so many were adamant that Canon would never make! (hey, I'm surprised too).

Interestingly, it's not an RF-S lens, which makes sense I suppose - if it doesn't benefit from being smaller for APS-C, they might as well make it full frame.
I can’t speak for all of those people, but I thought it extremely unlikely that Canon would make an f/2.8 RF-S lens providing an FoV similar to 70-200 on FF…and this patent doesn’t suggest I’m wrong.

Your claim/request was explicitly for an APS-C lens.

Sony users have long lamented the lack of a ~45-135mm f2.8 APS-C lens to match the common 70-200m f2.8 telephoto zoom. I think once upon a time Sigma was rumored to be working on one, but clearly that never came to be. Fuji has a 50-140mm f2.8, but they're the only APS-C maker to do so. Now that there's potentially 4 mounts (X, E, Z, RF-S), maybe it'll finally make sense for Sigma or whomever to make one.

This design could become the third lens completing the non-L f/2.8 STM zoom trinity along with the RF 16-28/2.8 and RF 28-70/2.8. All of those lenses give something up compared to their f/2.8 L counterparts, and they also give something up (in addition to the stop of light) compared to their f/4L counterparts though they’re closer in price to the latter.
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The Best and Worst of 2025

That's the thing, yes. Even if being done optically, it's still stretching. Some defend adding, for instance, an extra lens element to straighten the image.
Will that extra element lead to a softer image? Perhaps.

Lets get it right: optical correction is not stretching. The goal with optical correction is to try and ensure that as many individual photons are distinguishable as possible when hitting the thing capturing the image. You can't stretch a photo to make it hit two pixels instead of one, but what you can do is try and ensure that two photons on very similar trajectories hit individual pixels on the sensor.

With firmware/software stretching photon strikes that didn't happen have to be invented.
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Canon RF 45mm f/1.2 STM Reviewed by Opticallimits

I fully agree, but the worst was the choice of 2025's best photo gear.
Sony, Fuji, Nikon, OM, Sigma, Tamron. Canon??? Not one single product chosen...
Very Sony biased, they even warmly praise Sony MILCs (I've learned my lesson ;) ) for their"great ergonomics".
They make me think of the German car magazines, guess which brands win the comparative tests...
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Canon RF 45mm f/1.2 STM Reviewed by Opticallimits

I know, I know!
I wanted to point out that some other reviews are quite positive, I guess it depends on what you're looking for.
This lens is definitely not for me, but others will certainly enjoy using it. Sharpness seekers pass your way. It may not be a lens for MTF or chart photography , but rather for "vintage look" lovers. Bad can sometimes be good, just like my beloved M Summilux 1,4/75 is objectively horrible at f/1,4, yet this is the aperture I most often use... :)
At least, it's 10mm closer to 35 f/1.2 :unsure:
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Canon Eyes a Canon RF 50-150mm F2.8

Gentlemen, maybe you are to much focused on the fullframe cult.

This lens is so far only a patent and the optical dimensions make it look like a full frame lens but I believe that fact to be a byproduct.

50-150 slots very nice into the 10-18 and 18-50 row currently occupied by Sigma/Tamron

With any APSC advantages diminishing rapidly after 100mm it makes sense to build a lens which is seen as good quality supplement for poor non pro APSC children of a lesser god like me, while also feeding the cheap R8 clients who jumped for whatever reason onto the fullframe train.

The full frame pros will shun such a non L product so cannibalizing the wrong herd of cash cows will be kept to a minimum .

Sigma tried three times to get such a lens right. I fell in love with their 2nd attempt but not many did. Their 3rd attempt resulted in a lens as big as their 70-200 2.8 and failed to make any impression.

Now Canon comes along and puts lightweight, stabilization, value and no RFS limit for future upgraders into one product. Sounds sexy or?
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Canon RF 45mm f/1.2 STM Reviewed by Opticallimits

Optical limits is one of Richard's favourite sites
Summary:
The Good
Very sharp at medium aperture settings
f/1.2 on a budget

The Bad
Blurry corners from f/1.2 to f/2
Excessive axial color fringing at f/1.2
Very pronounced focus shift
Wavy field curvature
Miserable corner bokeh in certain scenes
Overpriced for what it is

1.5/5 stars, Avoid!

I know, I know!
I wanted to point out that some other reviews are quite positive, I guess it depends on what you're looking for.
This lens is definitely not for me, but others will certainly enjoy using it. Sharpness seekers pass your way. It may not be a lens for MTF or chart photography , but rather for "vintage look" lovers. Bad can sometimes be good, just like my beloved M Summilux 1,4/75 is objectively horrible at f/1,4, yet this is the aperture I most often use... :)
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Possible Canon EOS R7 Mark II Specifications

I don’t get your point. Every Canon Lens fits this. You don’t need dedicated APS-C lens to make it work.
Fullframe lenses are fine for tele lenses. But when it comes to standard and wideangle lenses, fullframe options are generally way bigger and more expensive than dedicated crop-lenses.

Canon APS-C system seriously needs something equivalent to 24-105 on a fullframe (so 15-70mm 'ish).
But maybe there's actually hope for getting a crop-lens like that:


The 16 years old EF-S 15-85mm is still the most used lens on my R7 (Sigma has some nice crop lenses too, but nothing that really can replace this for me).
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Canon RF 45mm f/1.2 STM Reviewed by Opticallimits

And yet, the PhotoTrend review speaks a fully different language, despite their strong Sony bias.
To be clear, it's not my dreamlens either! :cool:
I hadn't heard of Phototrend before so I checked it out. Very strange choices for Best Lenses for Canon Full Frame. For supertelephoto zooms, they have the RF 100-400mm and RF 100-300mm. Canon doesn't even classify the RF 100-300mm as a supertelephoto zoom, and the 100-400 is a value king but it's hard to consider it better than the RF 100-500mm or RF 200-800mm.
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Canon Eyes a Canon RF 50-150mm F2.8

Yea I don't want this, for the STM line just do a 70-180 or even 70-150 and make it as small as possible don't start it at 50, if 70-150 (or even 135) meant it was as small as the 16-28 and 28-70 its an instant buy.

HOWEVER

I would LOVE a 50-150 f/2.0
Me too, provided this 50-150 f/2,0 is an L lens.
There have been sooo many interesting L lens concepts, it's time to turn some into reality!
Do you hear me, Canon? :p
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Canon Eyes a Canon RF 50-150mm F2.8

Reading the full article sometimes helps:

We had this before, it was discussed before, and nobody is forced to buy this lens. Other (more expensive, but also bigger) options are available.
It would be ideal lens for APSC sensor cameras as they only use the middle part of the image circle. I could pair it with my Sigma 17-40 to get a very useful travel kit.
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