Canons RF “Leaked” Lens Roadmap Makes My Head Spin

Canon has leaked a new lens road map with some pretty interesting designs.

While it looks like there will be some nice lenses in the mix, it also looks a bit like lens spam.

• Canon TS-R 14mm f/4L
• Canon TS-R 24mm f/3.5L
• Canon RF 10-24mm f/4L USM
• Canon RF 14-35mm f/4L IS USM
• Canon RF 24mm f/1.8 IS STM Macro
• Canon RF 35mm f/1.2L USM
• Canon RF 50mm f/1.8 STM
• Canon RF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM
• Canon RF 135mm f/1.4L USM
• Canon RF 100-400mm f/5.6-7.1 IS USM
• Canon RF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM
• Canon RF 500mm f/4L IS USM
• Canon RF 600mm f/4L IS USM
• Canon RF 800mm f/5.6L IS USM
• Canon RF 1200mm f/8L IS USM

– Taken from Canonrumors.

See the current list of Canon RF lenses.

I like good 135mm lenses and f1.4 is going to be bananas. Nikon hasn’t made a 135mm in decades. Literally. 

Canon always makes great TS lenses so no complaints there.

10-24mm f4, I’m not sure how that will be useful to anyone unless you’re on APS-C. Ultra-wide is fun, but going too wide gets into specialty territory. Who knows, maybe this is for an APS-C cam.

14-35mm f4L. This looks great but seems like they’re just trying to one-up Nikon’s 14-30mm f4.

RF 35mm f1.2 will be great.

The 100mm f2.8L Macro looks great, but will probably be expensive.

And then it looks like they are filling out their sports lenses for the Olympics if that ever happens.

It seems like they are focusing on high-end pros and amateurs only. Cheap f1.8 lenses and crazy expensive f1.2 lenses or telephoto lenses. 

No good lightweight primes for the adventure/travel photographers which is a shame, but at the same time probably smart to not compete with Nikon or Sony directly while the system is still young.

It seems like of the three titans, Sony, Canon and Nikon there is a clear and obvious path depending on what you shoot.

Nikon has the best lightweight high-quality primes for under $1k. The holy trinity zoom lineup with a few nice ultra wides. Seems like Nikon focused on the Landscape / Nat Geo type photographer here. Which is pretty much the Nikons user base, that and maybe nature photographers. Right now this is my system of choice for how I shoot. I love what they got.

Canon is filling out their sports lenses and looks to focus on portrait and wedding photographers with f2 zooms and f1.2 primes. With a focus on zoom lenses. Canon shooters always love their zoom lenses. I don’t really use zooms much these days so the Canon RF system doesn’t have much for me. I have the 35mm f1.8, which is just decent.

Sony has a little bit of everything. Most of their stuff is just decent albeit, older now, but they have so many nice “character lenses” like the Batis 85mm f1.8 as well as other gems. They’ve also been filling out some nice high quality f1.8 lenses to compete with Nikon. But also, they have a lot of third-party lenses that should make you drool, like the Tamron primes. You just have to be careful with what you buy with Sony because there is also a lot of junk and slow AF lenses. So if bought into Sony for that sweet AF that you’ve been told is the best, then pop on a Rokinon 85mm f1.4, you won’t be getting cutting edge AF. And a lot of lenses are like that, unfortunately. But a lot of this is because they are the oldest system of the three. Tech has changed a lot in the last 8 years. I could apply the same criticism to the F and EF lens echo system.