Canon RF800/11 is STM(N)

I’ve been using this lens for wildlife photography for several months now. From the moment I got it, it became my favourite lens. In that time, it has been the lens used to shoot many of my favourite shots. The best features of this lens, for me, are: • The long focal length. There’s nothing on the market at a comparable price that will get as close as this. • Picture quality is very sharp. • For the size of lens, it is comparatively light and so can be carried relatively easily. • I always shoot hand-held. The in-built stabiliser works very well. • Despite the barrel being made of plastic, it is robust. That said, like all lenses, it is built to a compromise so it may not be suitable for everyone. Here are some things that could be issues: • The minimum focussing distance is quite long (from memory, I think it’s 6 metres). I have on occasions found myself having to step back in order to get a shot. And on one occasion not getting a shot, because I didn’t want to step back into a canal. Generally, I’d say it’s great for shooting birds, but not very good for butterflies. • There’s a fixed aperture of f/11. This precludes any artistic aperture choices but for me is generally fine (with the exception of the point below). • I have found when shooting birds on grass or in bushes, that the lens can sometimes produce unwanted artifacts in the background. I think if there was a choice of apertures there would be the possibility of mitigating against these, but with the fixed nature of this lens I can only deal with them afterwards in post-production. In short, if you’ve got £19k to spare, you might prefer the L-series version. If not, this may be the best one available.

First of all, check out Dustin Abbott and Ken Rockwell review for this lens please. I can confirm that the sharpness(compared to my old EF 100-400 USM II) is satisfied for the price. AF speed isn't too bad. If you put this lens on your R6 II(samples photos attached), it has ALL the AF point selection like the regular RF, or EF lenses with adapter. For the older R6 or R5, you only got one big AF square to focus. I was expecting very less vignetting of this lens but I was so wrong. Heavy vignetting with blue or lighter color sky as background. Since F11 is all we got. Cannot stop down anyways. There's no way to avoid it. See the equalizer image of the attached P-51. What the heck with those dark corners! You gotta put your target right in the middle and crop it out. or take some time to fix it in Lr or Ps. Lens Image Stabilization works well with Canon body iS. but you still need 1-2 sec to get it stabilize with flying aircraft or birds. Is this lens for you? If your main purpose is to shoot some birds in the local park where those birds are not afraid of people and you can get close to them. Meh! its minimum focus distance is long 6m. My Canon 100-400 II allows me to stay closer and the birds are bigger in the photos. For the great outdoors where you can't get close to the wild animals, YES! My main purpose of this lens is aircraft spotting LOL. Just watch out the vignetting. If you Jetphotos, you know what i meant. Somewhat slow shutter is possible with this lens. The image B-25J was done with 1/200 sec. and 1/320 sec for the white Yak-18T(with red maple leaves). You can practice with the moving cars on the road.

I was really excited to see that Canon was coming out with new Telephoto lenses specifically designed for the R Series Cameras. I have a couple of 3rd party lenses that work pretty well on the R, but by that I mean pretty well. There's nothing that quite beats something designed specifically to work well with a specific product and this is it. The firmware on the EOS R I have was updated to specifically recognize this lens properly and it knows exactly how to work with it. It is tuned to work great with it, and it does. The lens is lightweight and VERY sharp. I'm not going to say $12K sharp, but you get the idea. It is very good. Now there are those that will complain about the fact that it is strictly an F/11 non-adjustable lens, however the R series cameras are very good at high ISO's and to be truthful, unless you are shooting Birds in Flight, you can shoot at relatively slow shutter speeds and use lower ISO's due to the very good 4 stop Image Stabilization. I can routinely shoot at 1/30 second (if careful) and get good crisp results, but quite frankly anything even under overcast skies will shoot at around 1/1000 sec at ISO's at or under 1000. One thing I will say is you will want to adjust your ISO's manually, as the camera will try to crank up the ISO's a bit to keep the shutter speeds a bit on the high side. I believe this is a combination of being on the safe side to keep handheld images crispy, and because Canon Markets the lens at being great for handheld work. It is true, it is very good at this. If there is one limitation it is that it is a Prime lens meaning it is not a zoom lens so the focal length is not adjustable. You also have a 20ft minimum focusing distance, so you have to get used to that and also you can't tweak your composition the way you can with a zoom lens. You need to use the sneaker zoom mode for that. On the plus side, prime lenses are very good at handling distortion and chromatic aberrations and this lens is no exception. It is very sharp at the edges and pretty much purple and green fringe free. I'm very happy with this purchase and would encourage it's purchase knowing it's positive attributes as well as it's limitations. EDIT: After using this lens for a few months now, I like it even more. I found that when shooting in RAW and using DXO Photolab 4 and the new Deep Prime noise filter, I can shoot at very high ISO's (up to 25K) and get very usable results. It sounds to good to be true, but it's not. You can push your ISO's to unthought speeds. This now allows me to get way more flexibility with the lens, and it's a real blast to use, even in relatively dim conditions. Before the new Photolab 4 update, I could only shoot to about ISO 6400 before the image started to suffer, but the new version of software makes this lens just about perfect.

Didn’t pay attention to the fixed lens part. Wouldn’t recommend for wildlife. Mainly birds, manual focus works better than auto focus. Could be better quality as well but fairly durable.

Pros • Affordable ( Compared to most other wildlife lenses) • Extremely Light (Able to be handheld) • Great Image Quality • Insane 800MM Range ( for the price and in general) • Good AF • Compact (compared to others) • GREAT in sunny conditions Cons • F11 (Can sometimes be a pain) • Limited Auto Focus Area • Not Weatherproof • Good in cloudy conditions. Bad in gloomy/dark/shadow conditions • Autofocus might not be fast enough for fast moving subjects • no zoom When I say "a few things to consider", don't let that fool you into thinking it's a bad lens. Every lens has a drawback, you just have to work around those limits. Sure the RF 400mm f2.8 or RF 600mm F4 are much better in terms of image quality and you can open up the aperture to shoot in darker conditions, but for most people, they aren't worth $11,000 more than the RF 800MM. Plus, they almost weigh 3x more than the RF800. What you get here is basically a fantastic "Starting Wildlife Lens" that costs less than 10% of the best wildlife lenses, but performs 80-90% as good as the best wildlife lenses and will help you learn the rules of wildlife photography. The biggest rules with this lens are... 1. Get as close as you can to isolate the subject (blur the background) 2. Try to shoot during sunset/sunrise only (Having an F11 means you need direct sunlight for most shots so you don't have to crank your ISO up too high) 3. Have the background be FAR away from the subject to get a blurred background. I learned these rules by simply searching on Youtube for bird photography help. The best two educators on bird photography I like the best so far are Duade Paton and Jan Wegener. Using their tips, I was able to quickly capture the quality photographs I have attached. Go check them out! In conclusion, once you master some basic wildlife photography rules, you'll probably never need to upgrade this lens. But if you really love wildlife photography and wish to upgrade in the future, you'll be ready with all the experience you learned while using this lens.

I love this lens. Canon has managed to fit 800mm of reach, very good image quality, relatively light weight, relatively small size, and a reasonable price into the same package. That said, compromises in the form of a fixed f/11 aperture and no weather resistance were required. Worth the trade in my opinion. Used properly within its specifications it produces spectacular images. Autofocus is limited to the central region of the frame, but is responsive and accurate within that space. In bright daylight high quality bird-in-flight pictures are easy. As the clouds roll in or you find yourself in otherwise shady areas it’s probably better to select stationary or slower moving subjects as maintaining a high shutter speed will drive your ISO through the roof rapidly. Want to shoot handheld at night? Just don’t. For a lens aimed at amateurs and enthusiasts getting the most out of it requires some pro technique. Careful framing to allow autofocus and subject separation from the background, awareness of the direction and intensity of available light, and well-chosen camera settings (including the metering mode) to ensure the shutter speed is optimized for image stability and your choice of subject. Still, as far as capability and usability for the price, as of this writing nothing else comes close. Highly recommended.