A Complete List of Canon RF Lenses

A complete list of every lens for the new Canon RF lens mount.

There aren’t many RF lenses yet, but I’ve spoken to a third-party lens manufacturer out of China and there are third-party lenses coming very soon with both cheap and high quality options.

Sigma announce they would be making actual mirrorless lenses rather than DSLR lenses tuned for mirrorless. We can also expect more real mirrorless lenses from other third-party manufacturers instead of just DSLR lenses with extension tubes. I can imagine it will be tricky designing lenses for Sony, Panasonic, Canon and Nikon now that they all have dramatically different mount sizes.

What does it mean to make a mirrorless lens?

It means you can design a lens that has a rear element that is incredibly close to the sensor that allows for possibly better designs. But this isn’t anything new or special. Fujifilm has already been designing lenses like this for their APS-C system for years. It does allowed them to implement new and interesting optical formulas without making the lenses larger, like all internal focus lenses that are weather sealed seen in the XF 35mm f2.

Canon RF Lenses

Canon has a new design philosophy with theses RF lenses, that is to keep the lenses lighter and more customizable. A lot of people say they feel plasticky, but from my experience they feel very good, very high quality. Canon is just using a thinner plastic outer shell than what they traditionally have used in the past. I think people are forgetting that Canon lenses have had a plastic outer shell for a very long time now.

Regarding the electronic manual focusing, it’s the best I’ve used so far. You can get very accurate with it and it feels very natural. You don’t get those little digital steps you do with Fujinon or some Sony lenses.

You have some MF focus ring sensitivity options so you can set the focus ring to vary with rotation speed or you can link it to rotation degree. If you link it to rotation degree it works almost exactly the same as a manual lens. You can also adjust the direction of the rotation of the manual focus ring.

Canonrumors has reported that as many as 7 Canon RF lenses could come in 2019. Check out their list.

Canon RF Prime Lens List

Canon has started out with some interesting prime lenses. It makes sense that they would take advantage of Sony’s shortcomings here by releasing an ultra fasts 50mm. The 35mm f1.8 IS macro is interesting because it isn’t something we’ve ever really had before that is this fast.

I would expect Canon to release a nifty fifty very soon along with some portrait lenses, but I haven’t seen an official roadmap yet.

Canon RF Zoom Lens List

The Canon RF 24-105 is an incredible multipurpose lenses featuring 18 elements. I’m very impressed by it. It focuses fairly fast, has really nice build quality and great IS performance. It’s the best kit lens I’ve ever seen.

The Canon RF 28-70mm uses 19 elements in 13 groups, it’s big and heavy with a fairly high number of elements, so you may see a reduction in micro-contrast, although they made the lens much larger which helps make up for all that glass.

Rumors: Canon has mentioned they will release the holy trinity of lenses for the R mount likely next year. So expect a 16-35mm, a 24-70 and a 70-200. You will also likely see a significant improvement to image quality with these lenses as Canon as been redesigned these lenses to take full advantage of the close flange distance of the R system.

What this means is the rear element can sit right up next to the shutter.

Canon has also improved some lens coatings and optics over the years, so when these lenses are all updated, you can expect to see the best technology Canon has to offer.

Canon EF to RF Lens Mounts Adapter

Third-Party Lenses

There still aren’t a lot of third party options for the EOS R yet, but we are starting to see some cool lenses come out of China. Expect to see a lot more coming in 2019.

Kipon “Elegant” Lenses For Canon RF Mount

Kipon has a new lens line of Elegant lenses for the Canon RF and Nikon Z Mount. These are essentially new Handevision lenses. Handevision is actually owned by Kipon and they make lenses with a classic style in both physical design and rendering.

Kipon is one of the few Chinese factories that has the precision gear to make this stuff properly. They have to, since they every adapter you can think of and their reputation is very good. This is also why they were able to capture the attention of some fairly prestigious lens designers out of Germany.

I’ve reviewed several of the Handevision lenses and some are really cool, some are just so-so. The 75mm f2.4 is a gem, so if you want to see what these lenses are all about, start there. I highly recommend it.

So what’s the story of the rebrand?

Kipon has expanded their network of lens designers and they now have some very good guys they work with and consult. The very initial release of Handevision lenses designed by IB/E Optics GmbH had a few minor issues with the builds that resulted in some minor reliability issues, oil on the aperture some minor wiggle that sort of thing. In early 2018 they were tuned up for improved reliability. The Kipon Elegant lenses have been completely mechanically redesigned for improved reliability and precision by Kipon’s new team of designers. Consider these IBERIT Mk II lenses since they have the same optical formulas.

Since the Handevision lenses have also been updated, you could still buy the Leica M mount versions of the Handevision lenses and adapt them to the EOS R.

What’s the point of these Kipon lenses compared to a Canon 50mm f1.8 or a 35mm f1.8 since the prices are similar? The main thing is size, weight and rendering. The Kipon Elegant lenses are about as small as you can make a full frame lens without any huge sacrifices to output. This means they are perfect for street photographers or casual shooters that want to keep their gear low profile and light. Since the element count is low, you also see some really nice micro-contrast and color. 

Meike Lenses For Canon RF Mount

Meike has engineered their 50mm f1.7 lens for the new Canon RF mount. This was a fairly popular low budget lens for the Sony FE mount and it’s nice it has moved over to Canon. The Meike lenses are cheap Chinese lenses but their optical formulas are actually quite nice. The APS-C 35mm f1.7 is probably my favorite cheap Chinese lens for APS-C cameras and this lens looks very similar. Review coming soon.

Canon Third-Party RF Adapters

I’m already noticing that third-party 35mm lenses adapted to the Canon EOS R are performing a lot better than they do on the Sony cameras. Because Canon has a correctly sized lens mount, they don’t have to use a very aggressive lens micro design, so lenses designed for film or DSLRs tend to perform better.

Also, the Canon EOS R has a thin sensor stack which results in improved performance when adapting Leica lenses or 35mm film lenses. If it wasn’t for the pretty bad focus peaking, the EOS R is probably the best option for adapting old 35mm film lenses.

Kipon has 20 different adapters for the Canon EOS R system. Kipon is a very high quality adapter and lens company out of China.

Novoflex has some adapters on the way as well.

Canon RF Lens List | Conclusions

I’ll continue to keep this list updated as I do with all my other lists. A lot of third-party companies are going  to make their lenses for all the full frame mirrorless mounts, but we will start to see some differences in image quality because of the different micro lens design and sensor stack that each cameras has.