Review: Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 STM by Christopher Frost

It seems a bit silly that you can't turn off distortion correction in camera, what if people want to use that distortion for an artistic effect? They should just leave it up to the user if they want to turn the correction on or off.
I rather always have a corrected viewfinder… like 99.999% of users. Without corrected viewfinder you cannot tell straight lines or leading lines, let alone the extreme vignetting and guessing how much of the image will be cut off when correcting.

in post I always have RAW files without correction to work with for those use cases where distortion doesn’t matter (such as Astro) or your unlikely artistic extreme distortion 3:2 use case…
 
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Del Paso

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No. They make some very fine and expensive lenses for the nerds who are allergic to corrections, and they make some lenses that perform nicely as an engineered system for people who want to take great pictures with a light and inexpensive lens.

Then again, those $100,000 Mercedes S-class sedans drive like crap with all the computerized traction control systems turned off. Can't Mercedes design a decent car anymore? I also hear the U.S. Air Force has some planes that won't even fly without computers ensuring stability. Talk about a step backward! Why can't they all be as smart as me and design things right?
Trouble is: these electronic corrections come at a cost, namely decrease of sharpness due to "corner stretching". But I guess this is acceptable for a $300 lens, designed mostly for street and vlogging.
As to the S Class, no!
I've been working for Daimler long enough to know that not a single Mercedes "drives like crap" , electronics switched off. You certainly lose some traction and stability advantages, but the cars remain stable even at high speeds.
i'm speaking out of experience (Stuttgart and Immendingen test tracks, cars, buses and trucks...).
There once was a real issue with the first A class generation, and, more specifically, with another German luxury car which performed miserably with ESP off. But this is another story...
 
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With a lens like this, we have to remember that our personal use cases aren't the same for everybody. As a semi-retired wedding photographer, this lens is very useful if you are running a 2 camera prime rig. With an 85/1.2 and a 35/1.4, this lens offers a quick change out for a light weight occasional super-wide. It's small, light and very pocketable. Not everyone needs a 16-35/f2.8 when they prefer a 35/1.4 as their main lens.
 
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Rivermist

Mirrorless or bust.
Apr 27, 2019
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Well, $300 is a pretty low cost, relatively speaking. I really do think Canon is planning on launching a sub-$800 FF EOS R, and the RP is now $1000. Having an inexpensive FF body with only costly lenses for it is not a recipe for success. But consider – the combination of the RF 16/2.8, RF 24-105 non-L, and RF 100-400 gives a user a very large focal range for a $1350 outlay.
I would also suggest along the same lines that this RF 16mm is a worthy addition to the 24-240mm all-purpose lens. Together they capture a range of focal lengths that, while not extending to 400mm, is probably still in the 95% of desirable pictures. Throw in the 600mm f:11 as a third and you have a range that is light weight, affordable and yet truly amazing.
 
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The RF 50/1.2 is literally ten times sharper than the EF 50/1.2. The RF 24-105/4 has the sharpness of the EF MkII but the size of the far smaller EF MkI. And the EF version is far optically worse than the 85DS or 28-70/2 as these lenses don't even exist in EF. That's before you even look at IS, or optic quality for a given size. No Victor, you're quite wrong on this point as you seem to be on everything else.
Yes that's pretty much the only lens. The ef 50mm f1.2 L was the most intrinsically un-sharp L prime Canon have ever made. Great Bokeh, contrast and flare resistance. Amazingly well built...but weak if wide open sharpness was your only metric. Even stopped down it never really came close to even a 24-70L at 50mm's level of sharpness. I always found the ef 50mm f1.2L's AF to be inconsistent and ponderous in low light too.
Most of the ef L primes are still very usable on the higher density sensor RF cameras. One example, the ef 400mm f2.8 LIS mk 1 is as sharp as the current mk3...it's just a LOT heavier. Another is the ef 135mm f2.0 L...still very very sharp.
Zoom wise, most of the ef mk II/III's are still very current and capable too.
Where the RF mount should excel in is with wide lenses, wider than 35mm. On the Rf mount, retro focus design isn't required because of the lack of a mirror box.
There's a lot of un-used ef lens formulas that were put on hold and reserved / modified for the RF mount. Can was planning this mount for quote a few years ahead of the EOS r1.
 
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No. They make some very fine and expensive lenses for the nerds who are allergic to corrections, and they make some lenses that perform nicely as an engineered system for people who want to take great pictures with a light and inexpensive lens.

Then again, those $100,000 Mercedes S-class sedans drive like crap with all the computerized traction control systems turned off. Can't Mercedes design a decent car anymore? I also hear the U.S. Air Force has some planes that won't even fly without computers ensuring stability. Talk about a step backward! Why can't they all be as smart as me and design things right?
Very well said.
 
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koenkooi

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Feb 25, 2015
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A general question as I am clueless - are distortion corrections applied to video? I'd imagine that took a lot more processing power?
Yes and yes. Every new Digic generation has allowed more DLO to be done in video, with Digic X you get everything minus diffraction correction, if I remember correctly.
 
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Wasn't the RF mount supposed to allow easier engineering of better designs without these optical weaknesses? Watching this review, the way the focus sounds like the original nifty fifty... It feels like they just slapped this together for lowest possible cost.
Jeah, well, but it IS a lense at the lowest possible cost? Especialy at this quite good quality at this price point and small size? :)
 
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Del Paso

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This line of reasoning is moronic, given that, as I already explained, correction of distortion results in destination pixel being AT WORST the average of two source pixels (linearly), and this very forum is full of pros ranting that 22MP is indeed enough for professional work. And again, the review shows the corners are far less sharp than that.

It's a waste of my time to make me write the same explanation over and over. Just read what I wrote the first time and learn from it and stop making me repost and repost.

As to Mercedes driving like crap, suffice to say I recall an esteemed automotive journalist writing, that Mercedes must tire of delivering a car it thinks measures up, upon which BMW releases a model that not so much moves the goalposts but chucks them over the horizon. My 2000 M5 is still driving like new and handling great and resale value is a high multiple of any contemporary Mercedes.
1: I'd suggest you take a look at TDP...
2: If you think you're THE authority...
3: Fine if you prefer BMW, and believe MB customers to be idiots, I just don't care.
4: No need to be insulting
 
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For those doubting focus by wire with the 16/2.8, perhaps autofocus will work.

With my R5 I can autofocus on many stars with my 20/1.4 Sigma, 35/1.4 Tamron, 70-200/2.8 L IS, and my 31 year old 300/2.8 L. One needs to find a reasonably good star well above the horizon and it is a good idea to turn the lens to manual focusing once accurate auto focus has been achieved. I have accidentally pressed the focus button while astro photography was going on and had to start over again. Also, my M6 ii will autofocus the 22/2 on night skies.
 
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gruhl28

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The lack of a mirror allows mirrorless designs to get as close as they want to the film or sensor. In SLR lenses, that is not possible, so where some lens designs would naturally have elements where the mirror is, those designs must be compromised to allow space for the mirror. It's why the EF 35/1.4 was something like ten times the volume of the Leica M 35/1.4 despite not being appreciably better optically.
This point made me wonder whether mirrorless lenses could now be made as small as typical Leica rangefinder lenses, at least if they were manual focus. And how much additional size would be required to add autofocus?

Hmm, come to think of it, I guess the RF 16mm and the RF 50 mm f/1.8 are about as small as Leica lenses. They don't seem to have the same optical quality as the Leicas, though. A line of small primes with size comparable to rangefinder lenses and very good optical quality would be quite attractive. Even if they were manual focus, with focus peaking I might be willing to give up autofocus for small size, and with IBIS you wouldn't need stabilization in the lenses. I doubt Canon will do this, probably wouldn't sell enough without autofocus, but with small elements they could probably add autofocus without making the lenses too much bigger.
 
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I got the 16mm F2.8 two weeks ago and I'm going back and forth about whether I should keep or not. I have until tomorrow to decided whether I'll return it or not.

On the one hand, it is a cheap lense (at least for RF mount) and it is great value for what it is. Some of the pictures I took look actually pretty decent (some even better than "decent") but the vignetting (nightskies/ nightscapes) drives me nuts and the (in my opinion sometime horrible) IQ in the corners. Just doesn't work for landscapes...

Since I don't think I'll get any good astro out of it and so I'll needing a more capable UWA leise anyway, so why keep it? But every time I attempt to send it back, I wanna keep it so torn about what to do. Maybe I'll just keep it until an 15-35mm or 14-35mm because affordable.


Or I'll just wait until 2034 when Sigma finally announces their first RF UWA leise :)
 
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