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Canon RF 24-105mm F4L IS: Image Quality Breakdown | 4K
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Jul 26, 2023
Canon RF 24-105mm F4L IS: Image Quality Breakdown | Photographer Dustin Abbott gives a detailed breakdown of the image quality (optical performance) from the first kit lens for the EOS R system - the Canon RF 24-105mm F4L IS. Visit the Image Galleries: http://bit.ly/RF24105ig Purchase the Canon RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/2qCEghi | Amazon https://amzn.to/2qAY1FY | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/2PNIYqH | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/2Qx3yJ2 | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/2zGY8nT | Ebay http://bit.ly/RF24105L Purchase the Canon EOS R @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/2A6H9wI | Amazon https://amzn.to/2FasIvN | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/2qDzCj7 | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/2AVnKPq | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/2OzhErJ | Ebay http://bit.ly/eosRdla Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/shop/dustinabbott Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Make a donation via Paypal: paypal.me/dustinTWI Get a discount off all Skylum Editing Software (Luminar, Aurora HDR, AirMagic) by using code DUSTINHDR at checkout: http://bit.ly/LuminarDLA Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | Check me out on: Personal Website: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Google+: http://bit.ly/24PjMzv | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Twitter: http://bit.ly/1RyYxIH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu My filming setup: Sony a7R III: B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2D6ibNO or Amazon: http://amzn.to/2CNxOvH | or | Sony a9 @ B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2HyWIyt or Amazon: https://amzn.to/2s1vYE0 Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 RXD @B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/2FA00la or Amazon https://amzn.to/2G2kaEr Lights: Rotolight AEOS @B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/2IK7mqV | Genaray Contender @B&H Photo: https://bhpho.to/33HbGNM | and Aputure AL-MW: https://bhpho.to/2N3MtZV
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you a image quality breakdown of the new Canon
0:11
RF 24-105mm F4LIS USM. And so if you missed my first look episode at this lens, I broke down
0:22
you know, its build, its design, some of the new features that are inherent to the RF mount
0:28
designed for, and this is specifically obviously for Canon's new EOS R full-frame mirrorless system
0:35
And so in this episode, we're going to take a closer look at the image quality. And you've
0:41
heard me say probably already in either the EOS R review or in my first look at the RF that
0:47
or RF 24-105 I should say, that I definitely think that this is superior to previous versions
0:53
of this focal length lens that Canon has made. So here we're going to see how
0:58
So we're going to jump in now and take a look at the image quality from the new RF 24-105 L series lens
1:05
So let's get started by looking at what happens when you apply the profile correction
1:10
Now, obviously somebody didn't get the horizon perfectly leveled here. I won't say who
1:16
But anyway, as you can see, there is definitely some pronounced vignette wide open
1:21
and there is also some fairly obvious barrel distortion that you can see. Now, when I apply
1:27
the standard profile here in Lightroom, it corrects pretty well. It seems to me that there's
1:33
almost a hair of overcorrection. I'm seeing just a little bit of a pin cushion vignette that is
1:40
there. So, I mean, the profile may be a hair too aggressive, but that gives you an idea of how it
1:47
corrects. And so it clears up pretty nicely, but definitely at 24 millimeters, those things are
1:53
going to be a factor at F4. So we'll take a look at how the vignette clears up of its own accord
1:58
So here at F4 and moving on to F5.6, you can see that there is some lift, but certainly vignette
2:05
remains. At F8, there's also a mild improvement towards extreme edges. And moving on even to
2:15
f11 you can see you know a little improvement but I would say that there is always some vignette
2:23
and it never completely clears of its own accord at 24 millimeters. So if we take a look in the
2:29
center of the frame here we can see that at f4 compared to f5.6 we can see that center of the
2:37
frame sharpness resolution contrast all looks actually really really good here at 24 millimeters
2:43
This is definitely a strong center performance, and you can see that there's relatively little improvement going to F5.6 because the center is already very good
2:54
Now, if we move off center of the frame but off to the edge, what we find is here's where you start to see an improvement with the stopping down
3:03
we can see that that center core is about similar, but as we start to move off to the outer third
3:10
there's definitely an improvement in more resolution showing up there. Also a reduction
3:15
to some of that haze, loss of contrast. And so definitely center performance, very strong
3:21
but stopping down helps to improve the edge performance. Looking out into the corners at
3:26
f5.6, you're getting a fairly decent performance. Now I do see a little bit evidence of some lateral
3:32
chromatic aberration there and we'll come back to that in just a moment. Now comparing f5.6 to f8
3:39
in the center of the frame the biggest thing that stands out to me is that we've got a brighter
3:44
image. I mean as we're moving you know just this is a standard one stop in both aperture and shutter
3:50
speed and so it's not just that and so I think that there has been some vignette that's kind of
3:55
going across the frame that is starting to lift and so you're going to get a brighter image there
4:00
at f8. Looking towards the edge of the frame, there is fairly little improvement to resolution
4:09
towards edge of the frame. At f5.6, you're basically getting about as good as you're going
4:14
to get at 24 millimeters. And so fairly good, I mean, very strong in the center of the frame
4:20
Edges never quite catch up from what I can tell. And so we'll take a quick look at the other side
4:26
and yeah, the same appears to be true there. There's not really on the edge, there's not
4:31
really much of an improvement, if any, stopping on down to F8 and so, you know, that's basically
4:38
what you're going to get and you can see that green, that's lateral chromatic aberration
4:44
and as you can see, it's still there on the F8 version. The nature of lateral chromatic
4:48
aberrations is that they show up on the edge of the frame, you can see it again here, but they don't necessarily clear up by stopping down unlike longitudinal chromatic aberration
4:57
Fortunately those are really easy to correct for. Now if we move on to 35 millimeters and none of
5:03
these that I'm showing you are now corrected and so you can see that for the most part the barrel
5:09
distortion is gone. If anything there is just a little bit of a pin cushion distortion that is
5:13
there at 35 millimeters. You can also see the vignette is a lot less heavy and at f5.6 it's
5:21
fairly clear and so it looks pretty good. Once again we see a brilliant center of the frame performance, even wide open at F4, it
5:29
looks really great center of the frame And the biggest thing that I seeing looking at the F5 image is that there is a little bit a brighter image And so either a little bit better light transmission at that point or some
5:41
vignette that is clearing. Now in this case we can see a little bit more of an improvement along
5:48
the edge of the frame. Although I do think that at 35 millimeters the F4 result is reaching closer
5:54
out to the edge of the frame. And so f5.6 looks a little bit better than f4, but f4 looks better
6:02
at 35 millimeters than it did at 24 millimeters. Looking off towards the extreme corner, we can see
6:11
that there definitely is some resolution at f5.6 right into the very corner of the frame. And so a
6:17
pretty strong optical performance at f5.6 here. Now we see a similar pattern between f5.6 and f8
6:24
as we did at 24 millimeters. As you stop the lens down, you get just a little bit brighter image
6:30
that exceeds the amount of stops that you have stopped down. And so something to bear in mind
6:37
there. We also see a similar pattern where we're only seeing a very mild improvement off towards
6:43
edges of the frame stopping on down. Now, I do think that there is a little bit more of an
6:47
improvement here than what we saw at 24 millimeters. But also note that you may be
6:55
hard-pressed to see some of this in real-world applications, and so it's mild. It's not anything
7:01
significant when you stop it down. Moving on to 50 millimeters, the one thing that does stand out
7:05
to me is that the distortion pattern is a little bit odd. The top behaves a little bit like pin
7:10
cushion distortion. The bottom really kind of behaves a little bit like a bit of barrel
7:14
distortion. I've not seen that too often. And so it's kind of just a weird distortion pattern. It's
7:20
not pronounced as you can see, but neither is it perfectly square here either. Once again, center
7:26
of the frame performance is pretty well near perfect at F4. And so if you're composing center
7:33
of the frame, you're going to get really fantastic results at, you know, just about every focal length
7:38
here. Now, what I will note is that the improvement at F5.6 on the edge is the best that we've seen
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so far, and so at f5.6, I would see you're getting the most consistent corner-to-corner performance
7:49
that we have seen at this point. We can see the vignette is there, but not particularly heavy
7:56
and looks pretty good when you've stopped down to f5.6. We see a similar pattern in that
8:01
the image at f8 is brighter comparatively than the image at f5.6, just something about the way
8:08
that the lens behaves. Center of the performance, or excuse me, center of the frame performance looks
8:13
great and I can see a little bit of improvement here at f8 which means that at 50 millimeters and
8:19
f8 you're really getting a very very strong optical performance. Now at f8 the distortion
8:25
pattern looks like a little tiny bit of pin cushion but mostly distortion free at 85 millimeters
8:31
Once again center of the frame looks pretty great and so I'm very impressed with center
8:36
performance on this lens. So again if your photography style is a lot of things towards
8:41
the center, you're getting really great results wide open or at any focal length for that matter
8:48
wide open. Looking here, we can see that there is some improvement into the edge. Part of it is
8:52
vignette lift because actually this is not a bad result. There's a little bit of haze there
8:57
that clears up some at f5.6, but once again, as we saw at 50 millimeters, this is a fairly strong
9:03
performance. You can see an uptick in the contrast and some of the detail in there
9:07
So anyway, looking pretty good at 85 millimeters We see the same pattern again as far as the light transmission
9:14
I mean, the F8 example is clearly brighter than the F5.6 Resolution-wise, they look pretty much the same in the center of the frame
9:22
You know, also pretty typical And we see that there is a very mild uptick at F8
9:28
In the edge of the frame and up here in the corner It's very mild, but just a little bit there
9:34
So F8 appears to be, you know, kind of optimal aperture for, you know, landscape if you're looking for sharpness across the frame
9:43
Now at 105 millimeters, once again, we see a mild amount of pin cushion distortion there
9:49
Not too bad. And we can see that there is some vignette, a little bit heavier once again at the end of the focal range, you know, as to be expected
9:57
But we can see that it mostly clears up by F5.6. center of the frame once again we're looking pretty good now I can see here I can see a little
10:06
bit of improvement at f5.6 by comparison typically zoom lenses are strongest in the center of the
10:14
zoom range and you know weakest along the edges and my experience with 24 to 105s is that they're
10:21
typically weakest at 105 millimeters in this case this isn't too bad we can see there's a little
10:26
bit of haze there, so a little loss of contrast, but you can see it's definitely a more contrasty
10:32
image at f5.6, but at the same time, in the center of the frame, it looks quite good. Off at the edge
10:38
of the frame, resolution is there, contrast is down a little bit, and contrast picks up a little bit
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at the f5.6 result, and so you're going to get some improvement there. Stopping on down to f8
10:53
as per usual gives us a little bit brighter image and just a little bit more resolution
10:59
and contrast at the edge of the frame. So I would say across this focal range F8 pretty
11:05
much represents optimal aperture Now this image is actually from the 24 F4 LIS Mark II And one of the things that bugged me about that lens is that there is a fairly pronounced amount of chromatic aberration
11:22
purple fringing that is seen here. And so you've got fringing along the edge, you can see some green fringing there
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but when you have it in the center of the frame, that's where it tends to show up more often
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And so it had both some lateral and some longitudinal chromatic aberrations
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And you can see that in evidence here. And so that kind of bugged me about a modern lens like that
11:44
So if we look at the new RF 24-105, one thing you're going to notice is that towards the center of the frame
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you're not getting any of the longitudinal chromatic aberrations. And so I want you to note how much crisper the edge of the detail of this looks
12:01
And so the byproduct of that is that, stepping back again for a moment
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you'll note that there is more of a three-dimensional, this is sometimes what we call a 3D rendering
12:12
where the image, because there's no blurred edges, it feels crisper and it feels like there's more of a cutout of that
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which is obviously an effect that most photographers are looking for. And so improved contrast, a better transition on the edges that gives you more detailed looking images
12:31
Now I did find as I hunted that there is, as we saw on the brick wall test, there is a little bit of lateral chromatic aberration, a little bit of green fringing that you can see here
12:42
But as we look towards the center of the frame, it's not really the longitudinal variety that the L Mark II show
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Because if you look at the bouquet highlights here, for example, you're not really seeing any kind of green fringing on them
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And so, I mean, frankly, to me, this is a much better result than what I was able to achieve with the L Mark II lens
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I also found that real-world results shooting faces that I felt like everything was just nice and crisp in terms of the global look of the image
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This is somewhere around 50 millimeters here, and so you can see skin tones look nice
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A pretty fair amount of detail on the face. I can tell that the shutter speed is a little bit low here, but at the same time, if you look at the image globally, it looks really nice, nice and crisp
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And here is one zoomed a little bit further in. Once again, you can see a lot of good textures and skin tones look good
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And again, the global image has a nice three-dimensional quality to it
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And so, you know, kudos to Canon. That's certainly an improved look from the L Mark II
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Now here is a landscape image that's had some mild corrections to it
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I've brought shadows up a little bit and brought the sky down a little bit
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But as you can see, we've got a nice amount of detail in the frame for a landscape image
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You can see lots of detail information there. And the combination to that of the EOS R, it's producing really nice looking images
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Now you will note in this case there is some fringing that's showing up out on these trees
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part of that is the recovery type process that tends to emphasize those things and that I have
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really along this transition I've really pulled that sky down and so it highlights those things
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a little bit you could do some work to eliminate that which I have not obviously but anyway I mean
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if you're just looking at the amount of detail that the lens can produce for landscape images
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obviously that is that's a very pleasing result I'll show you another couple of them let's take
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look at our focal range here just for the curiosity. So 67 millimeters, the last one was at 24 millimeters
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And so if we look here, so 67 millimeters, midway through the focal range, we can see once again
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that we've got nice crisp detail and a lot of detail there. I mean, if you look into all these
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needles. There's a lot of information that's there. And, you know, in this case, we can see
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that chromatic aberration is not as pronounced here, probably because there was a little less
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recovery work done on the sky. Here's one where I think that the color really kind of pops on
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Obviously, it was a good time of day in terms of some golden hour light, but you can see that
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color rendition for landscape images is really quite nice. Canon's done a very good job with that
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here's another image that shows off you know great great color I mean and this is right out
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of camera lots of detail again if you're composing in the center of the frame this this lens really
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really delivers even at maximum aperture it's really great looking so for this kind of shot
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where edge performance where it's a little bit a little bit weaker doesn't matter so much you know
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who cares it just looks it looks amazing once again here very very good color rendition you
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know it's accurate color to what I saw that you know is a very cool light here in the shadow
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and what helps this image to look crisp is as you can see and I've done nothing to eliminate
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chromatic aberrations here you've got areas which are catching light which is why I took the shot
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so they really stand out and chromatic aberrations are really quite well controlled there at the
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center of the frame byproduct of that is you've got really crisp looking details and again you've
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got some of that three dimensional quality that I think makes the lens a standout
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compared to older versions of the 24-105. Here one that also shows off some kind of real world bokeh and so as you can see zooming into it there great detail and again look at those transitions this is really what makes a huge difference because on lenses that have more
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chromatic aberrations it's in that transition to where things kind of blur there's no crisp lines
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and that really holds it back to me in this case though everything looks crisp detail is great and
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the bokeh quality looks pretty great there nothing to be complained about and you can see in this
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case, it looks fairly busy to me. It's not so much the onion in that it's not defined concentric
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rings, but the inner circle with these kind of bright lights is busy. And so that's just something
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to look out for. Now, F4 lenses are rarely my top pick when it comes to shooting Astro, but
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all things considered, this one isn't too bad. As you can see, center of the frame
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you know, we've got some good results, nice crisp star points. Off towards the edge
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you've got a little bit of distortion along the edge and a little bit of stretching of star points
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At the same time, I don't see a lot of actual coma in that we don't see the stars kind of growing
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wings. You can see they're distorted a little bit here, but it's, you know, as coma goes
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it's relatively mild. And so, I mean, again, I wouldn't choose this lens specifically for
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shooting astro, but as you can see, if it's a kind of a secondary priority for you, something
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that you occasionally do. I don't see any reason why this lens can't pinch hit and do some astro
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work. We'll take a look at flare resistance. This is an area where there is some weakness of this
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lens. And so we can see that I'm giving you both a look at the wide open f4 and then stop quite a
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bit down to f11. So we can see that as far as the veiling with the lens goes, it's not really too
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bad. You've got a little bit at the epicenter of the sun here. Stopping down, you can, you know
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everything becomes a little bit more pronounced. And so here where you've got some mild ghosting
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blobs, at f11 they become more pronounced, they become larger, and frankly, they become more
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destructive. And so you will need to be careful at 24 millimeters in composing how you put the sun
19:00
because flare resistance, as I noted, in terms of retaining contrast, it's not bad
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In terms of ghosting, it isn't great for sure. We see something similar at the 105 millimeter end
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of the range. Once again, contrast holds up reasonably well. I think there's maybe a little
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bit less contrast here, but we're also going to see that the ghosting artifacts, the further you
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stop down, the more destructive and dominant that they become. And so at 105 millimeters
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I would say keeping it at, you know, maybe F 5.6, if you can, is going to keep you from getting as
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destructive of ghosting artifacts and, you know, just a little less dominant of the image
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Last thing I want to show you is just looking at things near minimum focus. And so you, you know
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as you can see here, you can get a pretty nice reproduction ratio, blur out backgrounds, you know
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on the plant pretty significantly here. We can also see that in this bright light that's here
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there's a little bit of light bleed really, really close. And so I would say that at minimum focus
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there's a little bit more like what I would call a veiling that's there, loss of contrast
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as compared to some of the images we saw of the leaves in the forest from a little bit further
20:15
back. At the same time, there is a pretty nice amount of detail there. And so again, this is no
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macro lens, but it's a kind of do-everything lens. And so it doesn't do a bad job, again
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kind of in a pinch to deliver a near macro-ish type performance for you
20:37
And so as you can see, this lens actually delivers a really, really impressive performance in the
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center of the frame. And depending on the focal length, it lags a little bit on the edges. In
20:46
In some cases, it sharpens up nicely. In other cases, there's still maybe a little bit left to be desired in the extreme corners
20:53
But what we also see is it is delivering more crisp images, better contrast, more three-dimensional rendering, less chromatic aberration, and thus a much more sharp and definite edges on things
21:07
And so byproduct of that is that I find that I've really liked the look of images right out of camera from this lens camera combination
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And so obviously there's, you know, you've got four lenses to choose from at this point with the EOS R
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But I don't think you're going wrong by adding this lens to your kit
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It is, you know, I think relative to performance, it is reasonably priced since you're paying the same price for, as with previous 24-105L lenses
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but you're getting more for your money, both in functionality and also in the image quality itself
21:43
Now, stay tuned for my final review. I'll break all of this down. I'll take a look at the autofocus
21:47
performance. I'm also going to take a look at the image stabilization and how well that works
21:53
and I'll render you a final verdict on it. And so, in the meantime, you can take a look in the
21:58
description down below and take a look at the image gallery if you'd like to see more photos
22:02
from this lens. And of course beyond that you can also follow me there on social media
22:06
or sign up for my newsletter, become a patron and help support what I'm doing here. And if
22:11
you haven't already, please click that subscribe button. Thanks for watching. Have a great day