OpticalLimits, formerly Photozone.de has completed their review of the Canon RF 35mm F1.8 IS Macro STM. Personally I feel that this is a start of a series of lightweight small primes for the Canon RF mount.
They give it a solid review, with the breakdown of scores of;
- Optical Quality – almost 4 out of 5 stars
- Mechanical Quality – 3.5 out of 5 stars
- Price / Performance – 4 out of 5 stars
Not exceptional scores, but it is at the lower end of the price spectrum for the Canon RF mount.
The Canon RF 35mm F1.8 has;
- Wide-angle prime is designed for use with full-frame Canon RF-mount mirrorless digital cameras.
- Bright f/1.8 maximum aperture suits working in difficult lighting conditions and also offers increased control over depth of field.
- Super Spectra coating has been applied to individual elements to minimize ghosting and flare for greater contrast and color neutrality when working in strong lighting conditions.
- An Optical Image Stabilizer helps to minimize the appearance of camera shake by up to five stops to better enable working in low-light conditions and with slower shutter speeds.
- Macro design benefits working with close-up subjects and provides a 1:2 maximum magnification along with a minimum focusing distance of 6.7″
- STM stepping motor offers fast, quiet, smooth, and accurate autofocus performance that is ideal for video recording as well as still shooting.
- Configurable Control Ring can be used to adjust a variety of exposure settings, including aperture, ISO, and exposure compensation.
- Rounded nine-blade diaphragm contributes to a pleasing bokeh quality.
OpticalLimit's conclusions state;
The Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 STM IS macro may not be the sexiest lens around but it is capable of delivering very high-quality results. Images are sharp in the center straight at f/1.8 and the corners are just marginally soft. There's a substantial increase in quality at f/2.8 and the resolution is truly impressive medium aperture settings. Image distortions, as well as lateral CAs, are low. The same can't be said about the native vignetting which is rather extreme at maximum aperture. However, auto-correction comes to the rescue so most users will probably just notice a slightly elevated light falloff at f/1.8. The bokeh is generally nicely rendered with a silky background blur and smooth out-of-focus highlights. The foreground blur is less ideal though. Bokeh fringing (LoCA) is present at large aperture settings but that's hardly surprising. However, a more ugly effect are focus shifts when stopping down (RSA) which seems to have a negative impact on AF accuracy as well.
Great to see Optical Limits (nee photozone) keeping up with reviews!
I’d say that for fast, light, compact and cheap there is nothing close. 5x$ gets you faster and much heavier and fatter with the F1.2. And the 40mm f2.8 pancake on an adapter is cheaper lighter and smaller but loses speed.
This lens was my choice to go on an RP to the hospital for a new baby arrival. Fast and compact was a better choice that a big 2.8 zoom. It also pairs nicely with the f2.8 RF 70-200 that makes a great everyday family photo lens in its short 70 configuration. ~$3000 for the pair makes a very versatile setup. With those, the 24-240 never gets much use unless shooting outdoors.
My suggestion for this lens is a switch to lock out the nearer focal distances to effectively speed up and quiet down the focusing by not hunting over the whole range.
And featuring 1:2 macro + a very good IS implementation + size-weight-price on the low side it is a very capable lens for taking photos. Maybe we are to much focused on super high IQ in all categories and loosing some creativity and fun taking photos.
I bought the RP with adapter and RF 35 during a super cool discount and payed just below 1100 EUR for the whole package and I am impressed how much fun the camera and the lens provide!
Attached a photograph, just 1 hr old, trying to explore close up capability and I am impressed about those wide angle close ups - up to now macro was 100mm, the EF-M 32 showed me that close up can be 50mm and now the RF35 paved the way to more wide angle macros.
I tried it too for vlogging - in motion and static - while a bit too tight for self-shooting without some extension it showed very good separation at f/1.8 and for the static case it is a great focal length with useful f/1.8 max aperture. The strong vignetting isn't that problematic in 16:9 because you cut out the extreme corners of the 3:2 format.
Noise is a bit loud for internal microphones but who uses internal microphones for good quality sound (I will add a Videomic NTG soon which might be a good addition to RP / RF35 because of moderate size and great interface (amplification potentiometer with engraved NUMBERS !!!).
About the photograph: Subjects are little cups of about 40mm max. diameter and 50mm height. So no real macro but definitely close up! The aperture was f/1.8
The EF-M 32 has the switch and it would have been definitely a good idea to give it to the RF35. But focusing manually works very well with the highlighting of in-focus parts of the image and that helps to bring different objects into focus/adjust the focal plane so there is a workaround but ... as always: no need for workarounds makes one faster!
It's particularly bad in low light servo mode, in that it tends to search the full focus range and as it's focus by wire I can't quickly pull it back to the range it should be in to help it. But that's STM for you.
If anyone is considering a lightweight 35mm the EF F2 IS is still the winner, it doesn't suffer like the RF35 does albeit you'll lose the macro function which admittedly is a nice thing to have when you don't want to carry the 100mm 2.8 IS around.
I observed the hunting too but only if I use the small focus point and if there is no pattern which allows the horizontal (DP)AF-sensor-arrays to do their phase detect. For static subjects I rotate the camera by about 30 degree, do the focusing and rotate the camera back to the intended orientation. Not perfect but much better than using a center point and recompose.
Maybe QPAF will help where we could have cross sensor capabilities :)
For my uses, this lens really shines in low-light shooting. With the image stabilization, I can easily handhold for 1/2 second exposures and get extremely sharp photos (some people have said they can even go up to a full second). Shooting low-light video with IS at F1.8 gives awesome, smooth video at low ISO's. I recently used it to to video some elaborate Christmas light displays and the results were spectacular.
I picked it up during the holiday sales for well under $500 U.S., and at that price it's probably a great addition for anybody with an R-mount camera.
A third option would be to add a mapping in the lens profile that can work out what the shift would be for a given focus distance and aperture. Canon mentioned that some of the RF lenses automatically adjust focus while zooming to emulate being parfocal, so it isn't a stretch that they could add a mapping in the lens or camera firmware if they really wanted to.
With IBIS the IS wont be needed anyway, and a touch more ISO noise in low light is fine. A line of “body cap “ lenses. Even f2.8 is fine.
The EF 24mm f/1.4L doesn't have that much vignetting at f/1.4
I need this lens but don’t really like it. Weighing whether to send it back and rely on the adapter 40mm pancake.