Here is the Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 STM

DPP4 offers Digital Lens Optimizer and peripheral illumination correction on a slider. It's a terrible program, but I love how Canon renders its images and feel like using other programs makes all the cameras look sort of the same, whereas using DPP4 makes it such that you can do RAW processing, but still get Canon algorithms, processing, and rendering.
It only offers that fine control for files from certain camera models. I, reluctantly, have spent most of the last year and a half working deep in DPP and the Canon colour profile formats (to enable in-camera split toning and a bunch of other effects; there's a lot Canon cameras can do that Canon just ignore), and as I've found to the detriment of my spare time and sanity, not everything that works in DPP with one model of camera necessarily works with another. Some functions are greyed out for some cameras, while others are enabled but only with basic on/off functionality.

But, more to the point, I was talking about more options for the in-camera processing, not processing raws at a desktop.
 
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Marketing. Canon said this about the EF 75-300 III (cheap, low-IQ Rebel kit telezoom): “The front part of the zoom ring now sports a silver ring for a luxury touch.” Luxury, like an L-series lens.
That wasn’t necessary. Let the reviewers ruin it for me. I’m enjoying myself right now. :)
 
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Canon should have let me design their lens line. I could have done a better job. They need to work backwards from expected users.
Lol. While I have little doubt you could have done a great job of designing a lens lineup for you personally, I have zero doubt Canon understands the lens market and the expected users’ desires far better than you.
 
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Canon should have let me design their lens line. I could have done a better job. They need to work backwards from expected users.

A "street user" (and any other pro who could use a wide little prime) needs weather sealing and maybe higher physical strength. I haven't yet looked into IQ but the street user would be happy to pay twice this for really killer specs. (Though maybe there's no way to massively increase quality without an utterly different form factor. Or maybe quality's already great.)

A "hobbyist" needs a few more features, whether macro or IS or some other bells and whistles. (Even weather sealing might count.)

This sounds like a great lens, but might just miss fitting either user type perfectly.
I think Canon did a perfect job. Your design would add a lot of cost that I don’t want to pay. Two things first and foremost. 16mm and under $300. Squeeze whatever performance you can into that package and huge sales will follow. I think that’s a better understanding of the market than what you present.
 
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You imply I said something incorrect, but what specifically?
You said "mainly for architecture use". That lens was never marketed as such—you can find archives of all of Canon's material from then—and architectural photography at the time was dominated by large format, though even on 35mm there were at that point shift lenses which were being offered for this task. The pancake (mirror lock-up) 19mm was very specifically advertised and sold for street photography.
I never said it was good optically,
If someone says "I'm not sure this lens will have good optics" and you reply with "well there was this other lens before that did alright", you're very clearly trying to say there is little, if not no, reason to doubt the optics of the new lens.

Don't bring up something as a conversation point if you're going to fall back on "well I don't know, it was a long time ago, it's not really my thing". If you're that unsure about something then don't try to put it forward as a talking point, let alone as a potential example to reassure (or dissuade) someone about a new product.

And for the record, yes, you are right that the 19mm wasn't quite literally 19mm; it was 18.7mm. Really struck upon the weakspot there, good job.


Has anyone seen any early image quality reviews yet for the 16mm? I thought some reviewers might have had a copy to test and just had to wait until the official announcement to publish, but I haven’t seen any optical test results yet.
1) It's only been in peoples' hands for a couple of days, far too early for any actual "reviews" of it.
2) Most of the media are just focusing on the R3; apparently there are very few actual working units of the 100-400 and 16mm to hand out. (And they don't draw clicks like a new body does.)
3) The few people who have gotten to play with the 16mm have only been allowed to report on the in-camera processing from the back of the camera. Nobody has been allowed to keep files. I've already seen one store proudly proclaim the lens has no distortion, only to then admit they forgot to check if the camera was correcting that automatically and that they hadn't looked at even the jpgs, let alone raws. Literally, everyone who has touched the 100-400 and 16 have only seen the images on the rear screen of the camera.

Canon have gotten stricter with their embargoes lately and nobody who has touched the R3, 100-400 or 16mm yet can really say anything about any of them other than repeating Canon's marketing. It's going to be late October before anyone who can actually talk freely about them will be able to get hold of one and use it for long enough to have some meaningful results.
 
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gruhl28

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1) It's only been in peoples' hands for a couple of days, far too early for any actual "reviews" of it.
2) Most of the media are just focusing on the R3; apparently there are very few actual working units of the 100-400 and 16mm to hand out. (And they don't draw clicks like a new body does.)
3) The few people who have gotten to play with the 16mm have only been allowed to report on the in-camera processing from the back of the camera. Nobody has been allowed to keep files. I've already seen one store proudly proclaim the lens has no distortion, only to then admit they forgot to check if the camera was correcting that automatically and that they hadn't looked at even the jpgs, let alone raws. Literally, everyone who has touched the 100-400 and 16 have only seen the images on the rear screen of the camera.

Canon have gotten stricter with their embargoes lately and nobody who has touched the R3, 100-400 or 16mm yet can really say anything about any of them other than repeating Canon's marketing. It's going to be late October before anyone who can actually talk freely about them will be able to get hold of one and use it for long enough to have some meaningful results.
In the past, reviewers have often been given equipment well before it has been released, and did testing, and were able to publish their results right after the official announcements. But as you say, in this case it seems that did not happen, especially for the lenses. And reviewers do seem more interested in the advanced R3 than the consumer 16mm and 100-400mm.
 
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stevelee

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I do not care so much about vignetting. All wide angle lenses have a few stops of vignetting wide open and that can be corrected quite wll in Lightroom. Distortion is another thing though. It bends the whole image. A secret distortion correction is quite a fake. The photo might still look sharp, but usually you have to rotate an image a fraction of a degree. That means the same image is edited, then rasterized and saved, then edited again ans rasterized again. With each rasterization you loose some information. So it would be much better to to the distortion correction and the rotation in a single step. In some situations distortion correction would not even be needed, but Canon DPP does not even fgve us the option to disable it.

Doing distortion correction in the EVF in real time might also drain the battery a little.
But I’d that what Lightroom actually does, or is it more like ACR in saving corrections as instructions that are applied together in one swoop?
 
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stevelee

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My hope was that Canon's next APS-C lens would be a fast portrait prime in EF-M mount, instead we get this 16mm RF mount lens. The EF-M mount is going to be 10 years old next year and still no portrait prime for it from Canon. How is this mount not already dead for Canon? Also, look at all the great APS-C lenses that Tamron has brought to market in the last couple of years for the E mount, none of which are offered in EF-M mount, even though Tamron was the first (and for a long time the only) 3rd party lens maker doing a native AF EF-M mount lens with their 18-200mm that is also available in E mount. I had to settle for a low quality yet still expensive Sigma 56mm f/1.4 because why would Canon bring to market a portrait lens 8 or more years after the mount was first introduced? EF-M is dead and this 16mm f/2.8 is the mount's tombstone.

What I find really amusing is all the people in this forum believing that Canon is currently capable of making a FF 16mm f/2.8 UWA prime the size of their own nifty fifty (look ma, a tiny 43mm filter thread on a FF UWA!) AND that Canon is currently willing to sell such a lens at the same price as said nifty fifty. Hope, indeed, springs eternal.
An EF 50mm lens on an M camera is in portrait range. There are several to choose from.
 
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stevelee

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Marketing. Canon said this about the EF 75-300 III (cheap, low-IQ Rebel kit telezoom): “The front part of the zoom ring now sports a silver ring for a luxury touch.” Luxury, like an L-series lens.
I have an even older (and maybe even worse) version of that cheap lens. I shot total solar eclipse pictures with it on my Rebel. I found online test charts, and f/11 seemed to be the best setting for that lens, so I used it for all shots. Almost all of the CA went away, and I got great once-in-a-lifetime shots, clearly worth the $100 it added to the kit price.
 
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I was under the impression that IBIS works better with wide lenses than with teles.
I think it's a more prominent issue with video than stills, although I've seen it with ultrawides (15-35). The center and midframe are sharp but the corners are mushy. For video, it seems to "wobble" in the corners. It's like the IBIS doesn't have enough displacement to apply the full correction. IIRC, I saw it while trying to shoot waterfalls without a tripod. I took bursts, and the center and midframe would be sharp enough, but the corners in some of the images were blurry.
 
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stevelee

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I think it's a more prominent issue with video than stills, although I've seen it with ultrawides (15-35). The center and midframe are sharp but the corners are mushy. For video, it seems to "wobble" in the corners. It's like the IBIS doesn't have enough displacement to apply the full correction. IIRC, I saw it while trying to shoot waterfalls without a tripod. I took bursts, and the center and midframe would be sharp enough, but the corners in some of the images were blurry.
Interesting. My cameras do video stabilization by cropping, same as editing software will do. That’s an advantage of shooting 4K even if your final output is 1080p, you can do stabilization without losing much of anything. Obviously doing it all in post gives you the most control and potentially quality.
 
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joseph ferraro

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At that price point, IQ will always be at some level compromised (although ML lens 'correction' seems to produce marvels these days!), but for a walk-around prime lens at that length (especially a pancake) a lot of us would likely wear those compromises. If it had any sort of usable macro length that would just be the icing.
it should be able to do 1:3.8 at .26x magnification (asked a canon tech) which would be ok for some wide angle macro photography with a min focus distance of about 5.1 inches. Comparing that to a sigma 15mm which was about the same but the mfd was a bit longer. I also use a laowa 15mm macro, usually in the 1:4 range just so I can get some light on my subjects, so I'm looking forward to when the rf16mm is shipped to me. lighting at that distance is always an issue, ymmv.
 
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Joules

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You’re correct that Canon would not call this the RF 16mm f/2.8 if it didn’t cover a FF image circle.
But the RF 24-240mm 6.3, 24-105 5.5 and 14-35 4.0 do not cover the full FF sensor - not even before cropping, as their corners are not just dark, but actually black. Does Canon not call them FF lenses? Pretty sure they do.

Which I think is fair, after all for all but the absolute very widest focal length, they are just regular FF lenses. But in this thread, we're talking about a prime. How much of the image circle has to be black/cropped away before you can't consider a lens as being FF any more? Gives the Full in Full Frame some interesting notion.

Canon in a sense has given each of these lenses an individual crop factor, and named them after the equivalent focal length you end up with after applying this crop. They are all wider than their names suggest when viewing an uncorrected FF image. I've not seen Canon call them any different, or even acknowledge this property of them.

Which actually makes me wonder - are the given f numbers still the actual physical ones (meaning each of these lenses is actually slightly slower on the widest end than advertised) or are they also statements of equivalency that take the crop into account?

Probably the former.
 
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