Canon Will Continue to Expand the RF Lens Lineup at 6 to 8 Lenses a Year
Plz give me an rf 50-150 f2.8 stm. The perfect companion to a wide angle when traveling
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Our RF 100-400mm are so much better, compare it at 300mm with the DO on the-digital-picture https://www.the-digital-picture.com...meraComp=979&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=4&APIComp=1I had one for a while. Bought it used and sold it a couple of years later for the same price that I had paid, essentially a free long-term rental.
I liked that it was the same size as my EF 24-105/4L IS. I was not a fan of the very busy bokeh, evident in the foreground here.
“Ribbit”
View attachment 228688
EOS 7D, EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM @ 300mm, 1/500, f/6.3, ISO 640
I had one for a while. Bought it used and sold it a couple of years later for the same price that I had paid, essentially a free long-term rental.By the way, Canon has produced a tele zoom with a DO optic, the EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM in 2004.

One thing that would set it apart is the ability to extend the focal length further with TCs. For the target audience, that may be sufficient.As others commented here, a 300-600, be it f/4.0-5.6 or constant f/5.6, would need a big feature that really sets it apart from the 100-300 f/2.8 + 2.0x TC.
As @scyrene states, DO designs are more compact, but not necessarily lighter (except insofar as a shorter lens needs less material for the barrel).For real life photography, that's weight. … [DO] allows for a very light, compact lens design…
The RF 600 f/4 would be the ideal lens for bird photography but it's super expensive and out of my price range (it's USD$14k here in Australia). I appreciate the EF 600 f/4 mkIII is essentially the same lense with built in adaptor but don't see any of the mkIII here in Oz, only mkII.Nice! Dream great white. The 500 f/4 was my dream Great White (I only buy lenses once I can justify with meaningful use, so waiting on a trip), but tbh the zooms have become effectively prime like aside from light gathering anyhow.
I don't see any issue with fogging but I live in Perth Australia and we very seldom have humidity here, unlike up North or over East. I've got an R1 so dim light doesn't affect me the same way with your R6I was considering that lens, but I read it fogs in persistent humidity (I'm in the Pacific Northwest) and on a personal trial at the local store I found the focus ring is too small for my taste (my thumb skids on the barrel). As awesome as Canon's AF capabilities are, dim light and moving grass still thwart on occasion for my R6. Otherwise seems like a great lens and I could probably get over the focus ring in real world use.
Primes are fantastic for what they do, but the zooms are so versatile in giving more options within the one lens. It's getting to the stage that the new zooms are only just a fraction less in image quality and if not a professional and making money from your shots then are the way to go, in my opinion.I find that I like primes overall for their zen (just frame, tweak, and shoot) but zooms are more practical in many situations or travel. No doubt the 100-300 and 300-600 would make killer safari lenses (or any dustbin / spattering-wet situation).
If I had a choice of what the new lens could be I'd go for a 400-600mm (wouldn't miss the 300-400mm range) and either f/4 - f/5.6 or a straight f/5.6. The new cameras, especially the R1 handle higher ISO soooooooo much better nowadays and with the advances in software noise isn't the big issue it used to be years ago. I'd take missing out 300-400mm to reduce weight / size / cost, but appreciate it would make more sense 300-600mm as that would fit in pairing with the 100-300mm. Whatever size / weight the lens is, if it eventuates, would 99.9999% expect it to be an 'L' lens so weather sealing, etc. will be all taken care of.I miss the earlier EF ethos of the 300mm f/4 and 400mm f/5.6. I still have my 300mm f/4 IS, which is fantastic for what it is, especially on modern systems. Would love to see those or equivalents come to the RF line within a $4.5k CAD limit. Perhaps a VCM-inspired tele range, like a 300 f/4, 400 f/5.6, and 500 f/8 and TC compatibility (apertures allowing for cost control in the context of modern ISO capability). But in nice barrels, like the 300mm f/4 with solid focus rings and controls — mini Great Whites (dog sharks) for the fortunate hobbyists. I think that the 600 f/11 and 800 f/11 are innovative for what they are, but I think that the allowance for full aperture control and weather protected are killer features. The original EFs weren't full sealed, but it wouldn't have taken much to finish the job since the 300 is fully internally sealed (no fogging).
I hear what your saying that <$10K USD is unlikely but if they could get it down to $7K USD or thereabouts I think they'd actually sell more lenses at that price than making an extra 3K USD profit just on the lens. Not for me to say and that's for Canon but there's so many more amateurs spending money on good cameras that if they could get it into that lower price range then they'd be on to a winner.Regardless, the 300-600mm might or might not come. It might be f/5.6, it might be f/4-5.6. There was going to be a 200-500mm f/4, with prototypes in the wild and rumored announcement dates. But then...there wasn't, and instead it was going to be a 300-600mm. In 2025. But then there wasn't. And now...in 2026.
I hope there is a 300-600/5.6, and your statement that you want something 'that's a bit more affordable than the current RF 600 f/4' may be reasonable as such a lens will likely be priced in between the 100-300/2.8 at $10.5K (USD) and the 600/4 at $14.5K. So if 'a bit more affordable' to you means a couple of thousand dollars cheaper, well and good. If you're hoping for a 300-600/5.6 costing <$10K USD, I suspect you're headed for disappointment even if the lens does get launched.
The R5ii has the reputation of having the fastest AF to lock on to a target of the A1ii/Z9/Z8 class. I saw this myself recently:As others commented here, a 300-600, be it f/4.0-5.6 or constant f/5.6, would need a big feature that really sets it apart from the 100-300 f/2.8 + 2.0x TC. For real life photography, that's weight. Let's speculate that Canon may introduce diffraction optics (DO) in the first supertele zoom on the market to make it extremely light. To my knowledge, all tele lenses with DO/PF features so far made are primes: Canon's pioneering 400 f/4.0 I & II, Nikon's 300/4 that came later for their F mount (and suffered initially from decentered lenses, Nikon's production was still in a learning curve), and now Nikon's bold and great move with the 600 and 800 f/6.3 "PF" lenses. Let's look at the physics: diffraction optics means to use Fresnel lenses, flat lenses designed with tiny concentric rings that diffract light basically like a much more massive conventional glass lens (in fact a set of conventional glass lenses). This allows for a very light, compact lens design, but the price is that a sort of micro pattern comes into play. I guess that's the reason why we do not yet see any zoom lens based on DO (please correct me if I missed any lens on the market, Nikon's 180-600 is "non-PF", I checked that). So I guess it is a real challenge to control any sort of optical effects created by such micro pattern well enough for a high-end tele zoom.
That DO may create problems came into my wife's (she is a physicist) and my mind during a birding trip from which we returned yesterday. We shot birds side by side, and if there was enough light with the same settings. My wife used her new Z8 (upgraded from a Z5 II), her 600/6.3 PF lens with and w/o Nikon's 1.4x TC for Z mount. I used my EF 600mm f/4.0 III, w & w/o 1.4 TC III, and mostly my R5 II (partly my R7 when there was enough light). Without TC's my wife's combo performed AF wise like my combo (aperture set to f/6.3-8.0 to gain more depth of field): fast & precise. But with the 1.4x TC on, my wife's Z8 started to struggle: it's AF found the bird quickly but then started to micro-pump around the precise in-focus distance. Only if the bird was sitting still for a quite long time, the camera finally found the correct in-focus distance by try & error, just like the old purely contrast-based AF systems. By contrast, my Canon combo worked fast & precisely. But what is the problem in the Nikon system? One source could be Nikon's TC, of course we could have purchased a bad copy. But with the Z5 II my wife had not such bold problems with this TC, so we came to the conclusion the TC isn't the bottleneck. Now, the Z5 II has only 24 MP, so it has much less resolution and a much "grainier" pixel pattern on its sensor. The Z8 is known for being prone to Moiré, Nikon followed their philosophy for sacrifying a stronger optical low-pass filter in front of the sensor for gaining more micro-contrast. So, currently we suspect that the pattern of the diffraction optics in the 600/6.3 PF may interfere in some way with the Z8's sensor when magnified by the TC. But that's only our current guessing. One way to test it would be to use a comparable lens with conventional optics, what means that we would have to rent a Z 180-600 zoom - which is known to be much lesser sharp with a TC.
Well, that has to wait until we have time again to deal with that problem, since now we are back to work again. I also will try to figure out the "pitches" of such DO lens rings compared with the pixel pitch of such a 45 MP FF sensor: are these two distances even in the same order of magnitude, and is there any pattern to be expected on the optical image plane on the sensor? In fact, it needs to interfere with the pixels used by the AF system on Nikon's sensor, so we would need this information...
Sorry for this lengthy posting, but maybe someone has a good idea here regarding our "DO problem".
So, maybe the difference in inherent camera AF is the answer, so you have more control experiments to do.I was out shooting yesterday with someone using the Sony A1ii + 300mm f/2.8 + 2xTC. He was complaining he couldn't get his gear to focus in time when I was having no problems with the R5ii + RF 200-800mm.
The Canon EF 600mm f/4 DO IS BR USM was first announced as a working prototype in September 2015 during the Canon Expo in New York. 11 years later still not here. That is genuine vaporware, announced and never marketed.It's worth remembering that the weight of supertele lenses is to some extent non-negotiably related to the size of the front element, and DO can't get round that. They can be shorter than non-DO designs and that obviously saves weight overall, but recall the prototype EF 600 f/4 DO, the front was still a big hunk of glass.
The EF 200mm f2.0 LIS is a bit of a unicorn lens for me. Everytime I've had the cash in my bank account, none have been available....then when there's a load on the market and the price drops...I'm skint. However it's probably a lens that will get minimal use, unlike the rest of my kit, which is literally the smallest subset of gear for each of my genre requirements.I used to have the EF 200 2 (for fashion mostly) and sold it to finance the move to MF. I miss that one dearly. I have rented (not owned) the 400 2.8 II for a safari in South Africa and loved it but could never justify buying a big white given how rarely I do wildlife and I don't do sports.
Well these are your words - I haven't searched long past that
So you are happy to assume that about an unannounced Canon lens, as well as assuming that recent Sigma offerings are sub par?
I cannot access your web sites from work, sorry. I can't even access my own portfolio from the office (in my signature, together with the list of my current gear)
I have listed on dpreview my old (and sold) gear and the list is getting too long, I think I may delete it out of shame thinking about all the money I've spent
Personally, I have started with the 350D and as you moved to FF as soon as the 5Dbecome available - still have fond memories of the old rascal. But in 2017 I branched out to medium format for fashion photography. I use Canon for travel, wildlife and family stuff now, and Hasselblad for fashion... as well as drones occasionally.
I have all 3 and they are great in their own different ways, especially my favorite, the 85 1.2... Sigma is supposed to release a 85 1.2 soon, but obviously it's academic since Canon does not allow 3rd party FF AF lenses for RF. And Sigma has a 35 1.2which Canon has not deemed to release yet, in their infinite wisdom
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Probably there are better alternatives now but im also sure the ring USM is not the same as 35 years ago. Probably was constantly improved. Cars were also invented 100+ years ago and yet the modern combustion engine is a spaceship compared with the original oneRing USM is, what, 35 years old, maybe more? It was superb back when the most important attributes of an AF motor were fast starting and fast, accurate stopping, plus quietness. No other brand could compete with Canon's Ring USM for stills on a 1990s SLR. It's kind of sad to see it go but there are so many better alternatives now.
It's worth remembering that the weight of supertele lenses is to some extent non-negotiably related to the size of the front element, and DO can't get round that. They can be shorter than non-DO designs and that obviously saves weight overall, but recall the prototype EF 600 f/4 DO, the front was still a big hunk of glass.As others commented here, a 300-600, be it f/4.0-5.6 or constant f/5.6, would need a big feature that really sets it apart from the 100-300 f/2.8 + 2.0x TC. For real life photography, that's weight. Let's speculate that Canon may introduce diffraction optics (DO) in the first supertele zoom on the market to make it extremely light.
Respect. Not that you need it from me.Here's my website: GMCPhotographics
Predictably puerile. And still off-topic. Not going to bother replying further. As I said, it's the internet...so behavior like yours is par for the course.Nah, will just go with a good Aussie phrase "tell someone who gives a ...."
Nah, will just go with a good Aussie phrase "tell someone who gives a ...."So you feel that I insulted you by calling out your behavior? You omitted part of a quote that changed meaning and intent of that quote. How would you characterize that? If it was an honest mistake, you could have stated that. But even before I (correctly) characterized your behavior, you responded thusly:
Merriam-Webster
smart-arse
British, informal + impolite
: a person who says things that are clever or funny but that are also disrespectful or rude
Do I also need to post definitions for 'disrespectful' and 'rude', or is apparent that calling someone a smart arse is insulting? I mean, even the assigned usage label is 'impolite', which I would say is a polite description of your behavior.
You can make the pot kettle argument if you want, but let's not forget that you are the one that started that rolling. Not to mention continuing to argue with @AlanF about the 'vaporware' while failing to even read his posts.
This is all rather pointless. If you'd like to acknowledge your inappropriate action(s) and apologize for them, like a mature person should, feel free. I won't hold my breath.
So you feel that I insulted you by calling out your behavior? You omitted part of a quote that changed meaning and intent of that quote. How would you characterize that? If it was an honest mistake, you could have stated that. But even before I (correctly) characterized your behavior, you responded thusly:Pot kettle black
Merriam-Webster
Unethical
Synonyms for unethical include immoral, dishonourable, unscrupulous, unprincipled, dishonest, and corrupt. These terms describe actions, behaviors, or individuals that violate moral principles, professional standards, or fairness.
Merriam-WebsterYou don't need to be a smart arse about it, it's only a forum about Canon camera gear.
Ahh, my fault then for being too fast on the keyboard. Carry on...or not. Could do without the personal insults, but you do you.
I am free to call you out on unethical behavior.
Ahh, my fault then for being too fast on the keyboard. Carry on...or not. Could do without the personal insults, but you do you.Mate you've really got a problem, whatever floats your boat go for your life, it must be so satisfying being as perfect as you.
I've separated the different parts of several posts into different replies (see post above about me damaging my 200-800) and my next post was going to be about your and DocInfoSci's comments regarding the 300-600, but trying to talk reason with yourself is like getting blood out of a stone.
You're right, I'm wrong, happy now![]()
Mate you've really got a problem, whatever floats your boat go for your life, it must be so satisfying being as perfect as you.Try going back and looking at your post:
You made a specific point about the 300-600 not being vaporware using an incomplete quote to support that point, when the full quote supports the opposite conclusion.
You want to rewrite history now, but that’s hard to do when your own words are right there for all to see. The internet, remember?
Of course, you could have chosen to quote and respond to the part of my reply that was about the 300-600, since you seem so bent out of shape that the thread veered away from that topic. But no, you ignored that on-topic bit and chose instead to try vainly to defend your behavior, while perpetuating the tangential path of this thread. So…well done?![]()
Did the 200-800 break in two?
Nothing as drastic as snapping in two, l fell in our pool and got sand into it and seems to be stuck on 400mm focal length, it was a stupid thing by me that caused it.That sucks. Sorry to hear of it. Did it break due to an appropriate circumstance, like a bear smacked it? Or something surprising, like you put it in a backpack and then it spontaneously cleaved in two? I ask because one scenario is entertaining and the otehr is actually informative to people considering the lens.
Try going back and looking at your post:You're looking way to much into my post, I had to go back and look at the article to see what you were talking about. My post was originally about there being multiple pages in. a row that had zero to do with the 300-600 lens and was making a joke about changing the thread title.
If it supports your conspiracy theory that I was trying to be "unethical" go ahead, but it was just a copy of a comment from an article and I had zero inclination to divert it's meaning![]()
You made a specific point about the 300-600 not being vaporware using an incomplete quote to support that point, when the full quote supports the opposite conclusion.The thread is entitled "Canon RF 300-600mm" so was expecting discussion about that subject
and if you want to talk about the article, it said
"I have been told that in a recent retailer meeting that the lens was once again mentioned in a presentation, but that there is still no announcement date, other than “coming in 2026,"
Coming in 2026 isn't something that's "vaporware".
You're looking way to much into my post, I had to go back and look at the article to see what you were talking about. My post was originally about there being multiple pages in. a row that had zero to do with the 300-600 lens and was making a joke about changing the thread title."You are a very ethical person."
"You are a very ethical person, or so I would have thought before you omitted the end of a quote to change its meaning."
See what I did there?
I should clarify: I'd like an RF-S pancake lens equivalent to a 24, 28 or 35mm FF.Given that there already is the 28mm pancake lens for RF there is little hope for a pancake in a similar range as RF-S I guess.
28mm is too long for my personal taste so I would have prefered a 24mm pancake as well.
Count me in on this as well. I'd like an RF-S pancake lens equivalent to a 24, 28 or 35mm FF.I would like to see them make an RF-S 22mm or 24mm pancake. I had the EF-S 24mm but sold it as I moved away from adapted lenses. But now I wish I would have kept it.