A Complete List of Canon RF Lenses

This is a complete list of every Canon RF Lens, updated regularly.

Canon has very quickly filled out their RF lineup and already have a complete zoom package with lenses ranging from 15mm to 240mm.

We still need some more affordable and lightweight f4 zooms and some midrange primes to compete with Nikon.

Some news 

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. They’ll probably just design them around the smallest mount (Sony) then adapt from there.

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. This allows for more flexibility when it comes to design. 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 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 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, better than any other brand in my opinion.

You have some MF focus ring sensitivity options so you can set the focus ring to change 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 by releasing ultra-fast lenses. The 35mm f1.8 IS macro is interesting because it isn’t something we’ve ever really had before that is this fast. The IS in these lenses is also very good.

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.

Canon EF to RF Lens Mounts Adapter

American Third-Party RF Lenses

There aren’t many Amerian lens companies out there. The only one that’s popular is Lensbaby.

Lensbaby Lenses for Canon RF

Japanese Third-Party RF Lenses

Sigma Lenses for Canon RF

There is nothing yet but Sigma has announced that they are developing some Canon RF mirrorless lenses.

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.

Korean 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

When Samyang originally started making their lenses for the full-frame Sony e-mount system all they did was add an extension to the back of their lenses. They were not mirrorless lenses.

They’ve quickly adapted a few of those lenses over to the Canon RF system and I’ve labeled those “DSLR styles.” You would actually be better off buying those lenses in the Canon EF mount so you can use the variable ND or polarizer adapter kit.

Samyang is now making mirrorless designed lenses which I’ll list in a separate table.

Full Manual DSLR Styles

Autofocus Mirrorless Style

China Third-Party Lenses

There has always been this stigma about Chinese quality control and production ability. While this is true for some lenses and products, there are some incredible things happening in China right now and we’re seeing some genuine expertise with some lenses coming out of China.

Kipon, for example, is a very high-quality brand. They’ve been designing and redesigning and tuning and they now have some very experienced designers working for them now.

Kamlan is also getting better as well as Laowa. I’m not sure Mitakon has nailed it yet with the build quality, but some of their designs are getting better.

Of course, some of the Chinese lenses are junk. Usually, they are priced very fairly and I’ve had a ton of fun with some of those cheap Chinese lenses over the years and I do recommend them as beater lenses or sometimes it’s fun to try out a certain focal length for a while before committing to something more expensive.

7Artisans Canon RF Lenses

I’ve always found 7Artisans lenses to be super fun, especially for the price. They can be a little shaky when it comes to build quality, but they always give a cool classic look that you just can’t find anymore unless you go retro.

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 its high-quality adapters.

LAOWA / Venus Optics Lenses For Canon RF Mount

Venus Optics has made some interesting lenses over the years and their quality is pretty good. People usually get excited by the zero distortion some of their lenses offer.

Meike Lenses For Canon RF Mount

Meike has engineered its 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. Usually, the main flaw with their designs is poor coatings, so you get inner element light scattering in bright environments and well as ghosting and flaring.

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.

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.

*The links on this list are affiliate links. I will get a very small kickback from anything you order with those links.