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 announces 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 allow 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 Lens List

Canon has a new design philosophy with theses RF lenses, which 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 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 a 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.

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 lens 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 has 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.

Samyang / Rokinon RF Lenses

Samyang has produced some new full frame lenses for the Canon RF mount. All though these are new designs based on looks, we’re still not seeing them take advantage of the short flange distance that comes with mirrorless cameras. It could be they have to keep the rear element set back so that the lenses are more compatible with different brands of cameras.

Full Manual

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 has moved away from the Handevision brand name and is just using Kipon now which already has a great reputation for their high-quality adapters.

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.

Mitakon Lenses For Canon RF Mount

Mitakon is slowly moving over some of their more interesting designs to the Canon R mount starting with the latest update to the Speedmaster.

Viltrox Lenses For RF Mount

Viltrox has been working hard at pumping out new lenses for these mirrorless camera systems. Their first lens for the Canon RF mount is the 20mm f1.8. A full manual lens with a few interesting features. Short-wavelength high transparency. Not sure what that means, Short-wavelength is UV light.

4 ED elements and a Nano-coating. Some of these third-party lens developers are getting very good with their lenses and some of these lenses should not be ignored. The Kipon lenses, for example, are fantastic.

Yasuhara Lenses for the RF Mount

I’m currently reviewing the prototype of the Anthy 35mm f1.8. A new Japanese lens coming around September to full-frame mirrorless. They are the same company that made the 5:1 macro APS-C mirrorless lens that was well received. They also have a few EF and F lenses.

The new Anthy 35mm f1.8 Features 9 elements in 7 groups. So far I’m seeing nice contrast and sharpness with the weakness being the vignetting. This might be a great place to start if you’re looking to build out their prime manual lens collection.

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 microlens design and sensor stack that each camera has.