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Canon RF 24-50mm F4.5-6.3 IS STM Review | Worth 200 Bucks?
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Apr 16, 2024
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a thorough video review of the Canon RF 24-50mm F4.5-6.3 IS STM kit lens. Is it worth adding in kit with your new camera? | Read the Text Review: | Visit the Image Gallery | Purchase the Canon RF 24-50mm IS @ Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/4hpbs | B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/49sxBcL | Adorama https://howl.me/cl3dA870jym | Amazon https://amzn.to/4aAM4Vp | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/4aWuoDc | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/3PYKVic | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/4aTnI98 Purchase the Canon EOS R8 @ Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/4hcao | B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/4cObGzq | Adorama https://howl.me/clY2BoQQjUt | Amazon https://amzn.to/49vto82 | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/49vtJrk | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/3TOfY0Z | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3vGUfQC Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch | Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | On the Web: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu Follow Craig @ https://www.instagram.com/craigstoffersen/ Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Adorama: https://howl.me/cjU0LKdp3LN Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan Sony Canada: https://www.thesonyshop.ca/?ref=abbott Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HrY64d Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/3qG1p18 Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Into the AM Clothing: https://bit.ly/intotheAMda and use code DUSTIN10 for 10% off Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents: =============================
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you a review of the newest of Canon's
0:15
full-frame kit lenses, and that is the RF 24-50mm F4.5-6.3 IS STM lens
0:24
This is developed initially as a kit lens to go along with the Canon EOS R8, and it
0:30
is cheap, it's lightweight, and obviously it is probably not just for the R8, but for
0:36
future budget full-frame cameras as well. MSRP on this lens, if you buy the lens alone, is $299
0:44
You can get it for about $200 in kit with the EOS R8 at the moment
0:48
Now, as we're going to see today, it does have some serious optical flaws, but it does
0:53
offer up good autofocus, it has pretty good sharpness, and it has an image stabilizer
0:59
which is obviously important for cameras like the EOS R8 that don't have in-body image stabilization
1:05
So, the question to be answered is, is this lens worth getting if you're considering purchasing
1:10
an EOS R8 and considering getting the lens in kit? I'll do my best to answer that question for you today as we dive in
1:18
So, we'll start by taking a look at some of the physical build and design here
1:22
We noted that this is a variable aperture zoom lens, means it starts at f4.5 at 24mm
1:30
and ultimately it is f6.3 on the telephoto end. Unfortunately, that's not a fast aperture to begin with, and it slows down really fast
1:37
In fact, you don't actually get out of 24mm before it slows to f5
1:42
So somewhere around 24.5mm, it switches from f4.5 to f5. So between 25 and 31mm, it is f5
1:52
At 32mm to 38mm, it becomes f5.6. And then from 39 to 50mm, it is f6.3
2:01
So it gets dark really fast. And so this is a lens that works better in good lighting conditions, as we're going to explore
2:10
Now, it is a compact lens when it is fully retracted. This is what's called a retractable zoom design
2:16
By the way, I hate retractable zooms, just to get that out of the air
2:20
So if you try to use the lens before you extend it in the position, you will get a message
2:25
on the screen that says, set the lens to the shooting position
2:29
So that requires a fairly aggressive amount of force to kind of get beyond that initial
2:34
lock and zoom it out to this point. So there is a pretty dramatic difference between in the retracted shape and then in the extended
2:42
shape at 24mm to start shooting, which is actually, ironically, the longest that the
2:48
lens gets. So the lens in its dimensions, it is 68.6mm in diameter, that's 2.7 inches
2:55
And when retracted, it's 58.4mm or 2.3 inches in length. It is lightweight, weighs only 210g or 7.4oz
3:05
Now as you can see here, though, it does grow a considerable bit
3:10
It grows about 30mm when it's extended in the 24mm shooting position
3:15
And so when you're actually using the lens, it's not nearly as compact as what it seems
3:19
when it is retracted. This unfortunately is one of those rare lenses where everything is plastic
3:25
And frankly, Canon is the only one that I see doing this anymore
3:28
But even the mount itself is plastic. And so, you know, the lens does have a slightly cheap feel to it
3:35
Now to counterbalance that, I have found that Canon's RF lenses, even the budget ones
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seem to hold up just fine. So I don't actually have serious concerns about the overall build here
3:47
But if you're looking for something that feels substantial and well-made, look elsewhere
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There is no weather sealing here. There's no included lens hood. Canon has a policy when it comes to non-L series lenses
4:01
And frankly, it's not all that competitive at this point. You're going to have to pay an additional around $25 for a lens hood
4:07
Though I will link in the description to a budget one that you can get for about $10
4:12
Because this lens could use the lens hood, as we'll see in just a moment
4:18
Now once you have this extended, the zoom ring moves smoothly. This is what I would call a rocker design, in that it's actually at its shortest length
4:27
in the center of the zoom range. And so it's most extended at 24mm, extends to its shortest position, or retracts to its
4:35
shortest position at around 28mm. And then by 50mm, it is extended back out again, though not as far as at 24mm
4:44
Now on a positive note, I do appreciate the fact that we have got a couple switches on
4:48
the side of the lens. One of these is the on-off for the optical stabilizer, image stabilizer, that we'll get
4:54
to in just a moment. Then the other switch gives you a three-position switch to where you can have auto-focus, manual
5:00
focus, but then also control. So that is going to affect what this front control ring does
5:06
The control ring has been an integral part of Canon's RF lens mount designs
5:12
It's one of the best features because it provides you a customizable touch point, not just for
5:18
the lens benefit, but also for the camera's benefit. So it gives you just one more ring that you can assign a variety of values to
5:24
In this case, if you utilize it as in the control mode, whatever you have it assigned
5:30
to, it will do that function. But in manual focus mode, it actually has a nice dampy to it and a nice feel to it
5:37
So manual focus is actually nicely implemented here. Now the stabilizer itself is rated for four and a half stops when used just by itself
5:46
If you're using it on a camera that has in-body image stabilization, Canon says it will provide
5:51
up to seven stops. My experience, there is a practical limit for that, and I doubt that you're going to
5:56
be able to handhold anything near what the equivalent of 24 millimeters less seven stops
6:02
is going to be. That is into the seconds, and you're not going to get stable results handholding that
6:07
However, where it's really useful is obviously going to be for handheld video work, and then
6:11
also a little bit of an offset when you're shooting in dim conditions and you don't want
6:15
to crank the ISO, you can handhold a little bit slower results and get stable shots out of it
6:22
Now we have seven straight aperture blades here, and so nothing fancy when it comes to
6:28
the aperture. We have a 58 millimeter front filter thread. Minimum focus distance is 30 centimeters at the 50 millimeter end, so that's not all that
6:36
close and your maximum magnification is just 0.19 times. So there's a lot of alternative zoom lenses that are going to best that end result
6:46
Now as mentioned, autofocus is a strength here. We have a lead screw type STM focus motor
6:52
It is fairly quiet, and it is also nice and quick, and as you can see here, both indoors
6:57
it is going quickly back and forth. Not bad for such a slow lens that even in indoor lighting, it focuses fairly quick
7:05
though if you get into really dim conditions, it will slow down a little bit. Now outdoors, it's nice and snappy, near instantaneous focus changes, and I also found that my accuracy
7:14
was good. I shot just a few portraits with it as a part of a broader session, and I got accurately
7:20
focused results there, and I also found when moving around in video mode, which by the
7:24
way, on the R8, you're using pretty much the same focus system for video, you can see it
7:30
stays locked on on the eye, and in the actual video footage, you can see it's smooth and
7:35
it is staying well focused on the eye. Also positive for video on the video front is that rather than being really snappy back
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and forth for video focus pulls, I found that it had a nice controlled damping, but with
7:47
good confidence. It arrives at the destination, no pulsing around, comes back, and it's smoothly damped
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It also worked fine for my hand test, and I had to be a little bit more patient because
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it is controlled rather than snapping back and forth, but good results there, and I think
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that again, probably the greatest application for this lens may be as a video or gimbal
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based lens because it does show really nice focus transitions, smoothly damp, and so as
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a byproduct, it's going to perform well without kind of jumping back and forth
8:18
There is some focus breathing there, but the fact that it's nicely damped helps to mitigate
8:23
that somewhat. So autofocus, a definite strength here. Let's talk image quality
8:28
Now I'll give you the big optical deep dive afterward if you want that information, but
8:33
I'll give you a quick overview here if you're here for a quick review and to get on your way
8:38
This lens has unbelievable amounts of distortion and vignette. I think the worst that I've actually ever seen out of hundreds of lenses that I've tested
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before, and so on the 24 millimeter end, Canon leaves tons of extra room if you actually
8:52
disable corrections, which you can only do, by the way, in third party software
8:56
You can't even turn off distortion correction in camera. You can't turn it off in Canon's DPP software as well
9:03
So this is an always on kind of thing, but in Lightroom, I could see it without in the
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RAWs without, and I had to max out, literally max out the correction, and still there's
9:14
a little bit of barrel distortion that's left after maxing it out at 100%
9:18
I'd do the same with the vignette, slide it all the way out to 100%, and as you can see
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there is a tremendous amount of extra image that is left there that Canon leaves
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When I frame that shot, and the JPEG would show it framed perfectly tight on my test
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chart, but there's all that additional room to allow for all of these electronic corrections
9:36
to take place. So Canon is clearly heavily relying on electronics to help to offset for optical deficiencies here
9:45
There is a mild amount of fringing, though with a shallow depth of field, or not very
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shallow depth of field, I should say, with a lens with a slow maximum aperture like this
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you're not going to have very narrow depth of field shots, and so there is some fringing
9:59
but you're not going to see it very often. There is a tiny bit of lateral chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame
10:06
They're very easily correctable. That's a non-issue. I actually found that sharpness was fairly good
10:11
It does suffer a little bit at 24mm in the corners because there's so much correction
10:15
taking place, but frankly, because Canon is cropping off so much of that image, you actually
10:21
what's left is kind of gotten out of the worst zone, and so I actually found sharpness
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to be fairly consistent across the frame and across the zoom range as well
10:30
It doesn't sharpen up a lot as you stop it down. Contrast improves a little bit
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Detail improves a little bit. Mostly what you get is a brighter image because of vignette starting to reduce, but it actually
10:42
held up fine. I did test it on the R8, but I did a few parallel comparisons on my higher resolution EOS R5
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which is 45 megapixels. I expected the lens to look worse. In fact, I thought it actually looked a little bit better
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So resolution is a strength for the lens. The bokeh is only so-so
10:58
You know, small maximum aperture, fairly short focal length, and not a very tight minimum
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focus distance means there's going to be rare situations that you can put much out of focus
11:09
The quality of the bokeh is just okay. There is a fair bit of geometric deformation, cat eye effect along the edge of the frame
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and, you know, the quality of the bokeh itself is just okay. I didn't expect much
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That's about what I got. Flare resistance is a bit of a mixed bag
11:26
If you're pointing straight into the sun, it's not terrible. A few little ghosting artifacts
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I found that the wide open sun star looks kind of gross
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Stopping down, it looks fairly good. There is some veiling issues, however, if the sun is right out of frame
11:41
You're getting kind of that spillover light. It will make everything kind of completely lose contrast
11:45
Kind of be nice to have a lens hood there, wouldn't it? And then, so as a byproduct, you may want to get the hood for those kinds of situations
11:54
And so, in conclusion, when I use this lens, you know, it came with the R8 when I got the
12:01
R8 in for testing, so I shot some with it on there. I found that I personally preferred a lens like the RF 28mm F2.8 STM lens
12:10
Yes, it's only one focal length, but it is optically superior. It's smaller and lighter still, and I just enjoyed the overall camera better doing some
12:19
zooming with my feet. Now, of course, your mileage may vary, and what the prime lens doesn't give you that
12:24
this lens does is that optical stabilizer. And so, particularly if you're doing video work, this lens might make some sense to buy
12:31
in kit. If you're just considering a, you know, an inexpensive kit lens or kit style lens for
12:38
your camera, I would probably recommend that you look at the only slightly more expensive
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it's only $100 more, the RF 24-105mm F4-7.1 IS STM lens. It does all the stuff that this lens does, but obviously gives you a much more useful
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zoom range. And yes, it is larger, but it's still under 400 grams in weight, and so it's not going
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to break the bank. And it's also not one of these, you know, crazy retractable zooms, and so I certainly
13:05
consider that to be a strength for it as well. Decisions, as always, and I hope that this has helped
13:11
If you want more information, I do have a full text review linked in the description down below
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There's buying links there. And of course, stay tuned, and we will go into our optical deep dive together
13:29
So let's start by taking a look at the zoom range here. So 24mm on the left and 50mm on the right
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You can see this being a set of trees here, a set of trees here
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There certainly is a considerable difference in framing, but this is not a radical zoom
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ratio either. Now Canon is pretty rigid about the JPEG corrections. As noted, you can't even turn off the correction profile
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So this is what you get in a corrected RAW or a JPEG when it comes in
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You can see it's not perfect, a little bit of bend here and there, but overall doesn't
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look too bad. But here in Lightroom, I can expose what the original RAW image looks like, and you can
14:08
see that it is just a massive amount of additional room that Canon has left for correction and
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an utterly massive amount of barrel distortion. You can actually see that there is some hard vignette in the corner here
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And so Canon is leaving lots of space for the AI corrections to do its work, but there
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is a massive amount to get done here. So here's what is left after I dial in a maximum amount of barrel distortion, which I'm not
14:34
sure that I've ever done with a non-fish eye lens. And you can see that even after that, there's a lot of extra image here
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You can see how much of the distortion is having to be changed. And so I have to then do a manual crop to get into this point
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Now I will say that you could correct this, leaving the uncorrected and get a wider image
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if you don't crop away all that I have here. And so that is an option there
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But you can see that it's not a perfect correction after manual correction, but we're kind of
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close to normal. But it is just an unbelievably, unbelievable amount of distortion
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Now all the way through 50 millimeters, it remains a barrel style distortion and you
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can see it's much, much milder by the time you get to 50 millimeters, as is the vignette
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I could correct with about a plus 12 plus 13 and get a nice clean result and about two
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stops worth of vignette in the corners. Now there will be relatively few situations where you can create a lot of defocused area
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a very shallow depth of field. And so as a byproduct, there obviously is the potential for fringing
15:36
You can see some of the blue fringing here in these places. And so there's the potential for it, but you're not going to see it all that often because
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situations even like this are just incredibly rare. Now you can see here, if I exaggerate things and turn off corrections, there is a little
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bit of lateral chromatic aberrations in some of these transitions. It's not strongly pronounced and it's easy to correct for
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I don't think it's a serious issue. So because this is sold in kit with the EOS R8, I've actually done this primarily on the
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EOS R8. And so it's not nearly as high a magnification or resolution, 24 megapixels versus the 45
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that I usually use for these. You can see looking at this, that in the center of the frame, you know, detail looks fairly good
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Contrast is fairly good. Midframe actually looks a little bit better by comparison
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I would say that it strengthens a little bit through there. And if we look down into the corners, the corners, they're not as sharp, but really
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this isn't a bad sharpness profile. And if I pop around here and look at the other sides, we can see that the copy here is centered
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fairly good with a fairly consistent result all across the frame. Now stopping down to F5.6 makes a little bit of an improvement
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You can see mostly in some improved contrast. Detail isn't radically improved, but contrast definitely is
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And that's true across the frame. You can see that right down into the corners
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Just a little bit more from F5.6 to F8 is available. Then from F8 to F11, things largely hold their own
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But after F11, you'll see some diffraction start to come in F22, which is minimum aperture
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at 24 millimeters here on the right. And you can see that the image has softened due to diffraction
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This effect would be much, much more obvious if you were to look at a higher resolution body
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Now at 28 millimeters, maximum aperture has obviously already closed to F5
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You can see there's a little bit more contrast available in the center of the frame, also
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in the mid frame and down into the corners. You can see again, it's just a little bit stronger performance at 28 millimeters
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And that's true as you stop it down a bit. Now by 35 millimeters, maximum aperture is F5.6
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If we compare back to 28 millimeters, you can see that the results are fairly similar
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I would say that 35 millimeters could possibly be a little bit better in the center of the frame
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However, in the mid frame, they're about a wash and down into the corners, we can see
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just a little bit stronger for 35 millimeters there. So nice consistency thus far
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And finally, if we compare to 50 millimeters, maximum aperture is F6.3
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We can see that looking in the center of the frame, things look about the same as they
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did at 35 millimeters. Here in the mid frame, roughly the same
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And as we scroll down towards the corners, we can see that they also look about the same
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So a nice even sharpness performance. And even more interesting, I shot a test at 50 millimeters on the EOS R5, so 45 megapixels
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I actually expected the image to fall apart on the higher resolution body
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And what I can see instead is that it's actually holding up really well
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It's actually exposing some more details than what we could see here at the lower resolution point
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Yes, I think here, maybe the contrast is reduced a little bit, but looking down here into the
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corner, I'm actually fairly impressed by the amount of detail that's there and all the
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various textures. If I pop over and look at the other side, the same is true there
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And we can see there's just a lot of nice detail. So surprisingly, this lens didn't get worse going on to a higher resolution body
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If anything, I think it's a little bit better. Now, as noted, bokeh is nothing special
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You can see that because it's hard to get things strongly out of focus, you're going
19:17
to get just a little bit too busy for my taste here. You can see there's a lot of geometric deformation as you approach the edges of the frame
19:25
So it's not fabulous. Here's a simpler scene here, and you can see that you can still see some of those same
19:31
effects in the bokeh. The background's a little bit further away, and so it helps this image a bit
19:36
This image really kind of represented best case scenario as far as bokeh, because I got
19:41
as close as I could to this drip of ice here. And you can see that the background was far enough away that it is reasonably soft, but
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don't buy this lens to produce beautiful bokeh. Now you can see wide open that there's a little bit of ghosting artifact here, but flare resistance
19:56
is pretty good. Contrast still looks good. This sun star is just kind of weird looking with that pinch going on there
20:02
I like it much better stopped down at F11, where the blades are a little more defined
20:06
And you can see that it really didn't get any worse as far as the flare resistance
20:11
What is equally true, however, is that if the sun is right out of the frame, you get
20:15
a pretty severe veiling effect where contrast is really lifted here. And so there isn't anything dark in the frame
20:22
Everything is lifted up. So that is one thing to look out for. So definitely some pros and cons when it comes to the optics here
20:30
And particularly when it comes to the vignette and distortion, it's pretty appalling at 24 millimeters
20:35
Thank you, as always, for watching right to the very end. Have a great day and let the light in