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 which will allow for possibly better designs.

Canon RF Lenses

Canon has a new design philosophy with theses RF lenses to keep the lenses lighter and more customizable. A lot of people say they feel plasticky, but from my experience they feel very good. 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 RF lens 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 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 lenses featuring only 16 elements for that prime like contrast and 3d pop. 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. Review coming soon.

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

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.