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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my standard review of the new Canon RF 70-200mm F4 LIS USM
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I'm actually filming on it at the moment with the Canon EOS R5, so it gives you a little sense of how well it does in terms of tracking my eye, my face
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and then of course a little at least a little taste of the image quality that you can get for
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video use. Now this is a lens obviously that has been really anticipated and many of us were
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surprised at how small Canon was able to go with the f2.8 version of the lens but they've taken it
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to a whole other level here with the f4 version and so it certainly is a very intriguing lens in
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that this is a highly desirable very useful focal length that allows you to go from short telephoto
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to full telephoto at 200 millimeters, very versatile, a great event focal length or zoom range
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But Canon has managed to give you the flexibility of all of that in an incredibly compact package
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which is going to make it a very attractive lens with only one downside out of that arrangement
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that we'll talk about in just a second. Now, today we're doing the standard review
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And so if you want more detail and a highly detailed breakdown of the image quality
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I recommend that you check out the definitive review instead. So as I noted, this is a lens
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that is incredibly compact. In terms of the weight, it's lighter than any of the 70-200
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lenses that we have seen, but not by a big margin. In fact, a few years ago in 2018
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Canon released the EF 70-200 F4 LIS Mark II, and that lens weighed in at 780 grams
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This lens is 695 grams, so it's less than 100 grams different, which is significant when you're only talking about 690 grams, obviously, but that's not the huge differentiating factor
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That big factor is the fact that this lens is only 120 millimeters in its retracted length, whereas the last L Mark II lens was 176 millimeters
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And so it is incredibly compact and 26 millimeters shorter still than was the 70-200mm f2.8 LIS, the RF version of the lens
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And the RF f2.8 lens is nearly 1100 grams. And so this lens is significantly lighter and smaller
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Now, interestingly, it's actually a hair larger in diameter. It is 83 versus 80 millimeters, and the filter size grows from 72 millimeters to 77 millimeters
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It's not a bad swap, in my opinion, because 77 millimeters is definitely the more common
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filter size, and so it'll give you a little more flexibility in what you put on front and maybe
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what you share with in terms of that. It has nine rounded aperture blades, and so as you can see
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it keeps a nice circular shape. Now, it is not an internally zooming lens. So how Canon has been
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able to accomplish this much abbreviated length of the lens is by making it an externally
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rather than internally zooming lens. And so the inner barrel will extend significantly
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when you are zooming out to 200 millimeters. And so for some people, I know that there is
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concerns over any kind of externally zooming lens and a feeling like it's going to be
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prone to dust and moisture intrusion. I will say having used a number of such
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lenses and some of them like the Canon 70 LIS long term and used it on a lot of travel in a lot of different countries I had zero problems with dust and moisture intrusion into that lens And I think
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that you can buy this lens with confidence that Canon recognizes that L-series lenses are used
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by professionals and particularly a lens like this is going to be a very popular lens for travel
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And so it has a gasket at the rear mount. It has flooring coatings on both the front and rear
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outermost elements and then it has a number of seals throughout the lens and that is at all of
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the different switches on either side of any of the rings. Lots of seals there I think that Canon
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has accounted for this being used professionally. Now as I noted the area where you lose out in this
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design is that at 70 millimeters the rear element is almost flush with the rear of the lens
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and it moves forward a little less than two centimeters when you fully zoom out towards
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200 millimeters. But what it means is there is no room physically to mount an extender or
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teleconverter. So this is a lens like the F2.8 RF lens that is going to have to be used bare lens
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alone. It will not work with extenders. And so that is, you know, for some people that is a
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significant loss. It changes the nature of how they use the lens. For many other people, it won't
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be a factor at all. Canon obviously felt that they had, you know, more traction with the compact
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design than what they did with the design that supported teleconverters. And my only lament on
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that front is that we have in the EOS R bodies, particularly the R5 and R6 right now, bodies that
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can autofocus effectively with very small maximum aperture combinations. And so we have, in essence
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It's theoretically the ability to use teleconverters more effectively than ever before, except for it seems like most of these lenses, you can't use a teleconverter with them
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And so that is certainly a downside on that front. But overall, everything is here as it should be
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It has an effective image stabilizer on the lens itself, and that stabilizer can be selected in three different modes through one of the side switches
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And those are the standard mode. The second is a panning specific mode. The third is what's often known as dynamic mode where it
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doesn't try to stabilize the viewfinder so it doesn't get in your way if you're following erratic
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action but what it does is it stabilizes right at the point of capture and actually you get your
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highest rating from the stabilizer using mode three. And so in this case that is a rated I
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believe five and a half stops of stability and then up to seven and a half stops if paired with
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the R5 or the R6 and their in-body image stabilization. I was able to get this shot at
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0.3 seconds and at 200 millimeters handheld on the EOS R5, so high resolution, and you can see
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it's nice and steady. Now, I couldn't do that every time, probably about 40 or 50%, but certainly
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particularly when using mode three, I could get a higher keeper rate in that kind of situation
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also this landscape shot i shot at one tenth of the second in the early morning light and it is
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nice and stable as well so good things they're also very good this lens has canon's nano usm
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which is probably my favorite canon focus system right now and it delivers extremely quiet extremely
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fast but also very accurate uh auto focus and so for stills use it is it is fantastic now at this
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time of year, it's been very, very wintry, very deep snow. There's no indoor events taking place
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right now because of COVID restrictions. And so my ability to shoot action has been extremely
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limited However this is the same focus system that we saw in the F2 version So as you can see from this sequence I had no problem on the R5 or R6 bodies tracking action with that lens And I can tell this lens is going to be the exact same And so a really
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good autofocus, very good eye detect. I did use it extensively in an event that I was at, a religious
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event. And it was continually, even when I was just kind of waiting for that perfect moment
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where I captured someone's face in a way that, you know, was somewhat flattering. So people don't
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hate me for taking the picture. And it was constantly tracking the eye very accurately
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And whenever I click the shutter, I got very well focused in results. And so I'm happy with
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the autofocus. Also good for focus pulls, though with a little bit of a final settle in some
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situations, as you can see. Let's take a look at our focus pulls. So obviously incredibly quiet, no problem there
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But my only complaint is that in the shorter section, almost like a visible stepping took place
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it actually surprisingly gave me smoother results with the longer pull from the background to the foreground
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and so on and so forth. So autofocus, a huge plus, build, a huge plus
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Image quality, also a very big plus. And so the lens does have a little bit of barrel distortion
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at 70 millimeters, a light amount of vignette, easy to correct, very linear
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Then if we switch over to 200 millimeters, it changes inverts to a pin cushion distortion
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also only a minus three to correct it. Now vignette is heavier, about three and a half stops
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But again, because it's a first party lens, it does get really good profile support
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to help to correct for that. However, it is certainly an optical flaw
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There was a minimal amount of lateral chromatic aberration, not bad, and longitudinal chromatic aberrations
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were actually quite well controlled and were not any kind of real world factor
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in any of my images, including this shot of a cat with light coming through fur and the whiskers
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We have a new kitten. This is a place where there would often be a lot of longitudinal chromatic aberrations
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as you transition either before the plane of focus or after the plane of focus
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Nothing there, as you can see, so good results there. Image quality at 70mm is very consistently good across the frame
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Very good in the center, very good in mid-frame, and almost as good off in the corners
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Stopping down to f5.6 gives you a little bit of extra punch in terms of contrast
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but a very strong, very even performance across the frame. At 100mm, essentially the same story
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I think just a hair less contrast in the corner at f4
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but again at f5.6 it sharpens up nicely. At 135 millimeters I saw a little bit of a dip in terms
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of contrast and sharpness. Center of the frame still pretty good. Mid frame excellent but a
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little weaker in the corner and in this case at f5.6 it didn't sharpen right up. It took stopping
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down to f11 but where I saw exceptional corner performance. So definitely the weak point in the
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corners relative to the other parts of the zoom range. But back at 200 millimeters, we're back to
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a strong performance, very similar to what we saw, say, at 100 millimeters and really excellent
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center mid-frame and corners also good with, again, a little bit of a contrast uptick at f5.6
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Very strong resolution, even on a 45 megapixel body, and so great to see there. I also felt like
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the bokeh was nice from the lens. Now, obviously, you don't have the ability to create as
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shallow a depth of field is what you do with the F2 version But nonetheless the quality of the background blur was quite nice Only negative is that there is some fairly strong deformation in the geometry you know kind of a cat eye or lemon effect along the edge of the frame it gets
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better at f5.6 and is nice and consistent across the frame at f8 you
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have the ability to create a nice amount of blur when you get up close because
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you can focus down to only 60 centimeters and have a very useful 0.28
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times magnification and performance is quite strong. A little bit better at f5.6 but very good
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even at f4 and so that allows you to isolate subjects and have a really creamy background
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because of the compression of that longer focal length. So you definitely have potential to create
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a lot of nice blur from this lens. I didn't have a chance to do serious portraits, just self
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portraits, but as you can see from a few of these shots there's lots of detail, all of these being
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wide open at different focal lengths and so you know strong performance there and nothing certainly
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a lens that you could use for these kinds of situations and in fact in many cases when shooting
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portraits unless you're shooting full body you probably don't even want f4 particularly at the
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longer ends of the focal or excuse me f2.8 at the longer parts of the focal range so f4 is actually
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plenty in many situations and so you know definitely something that could double well for that flare
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resistance is also excellent and as I pan across the sun at wide open f4 there's basically nothing
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to see and stop down to f11 also basically nothing to see and so it does a great job in that
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Overall we've obviously got a very great performance everything from the you know the
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autofocus performance to the image stabilizer to the image quality and so at the end of the day this
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is going to be a lens it's going to be very useful for those that either don't need f2.8 or
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they don't want to pay for what it costs to get f2.8 because while this lens is still expensive
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$1,599, $1,600 US dollars, it is $1,100 cheaper than the f2.8 version. So obviously that's going
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to make it more manageable on your wallet if you decide to purchase it. I see this as being a
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really great lens for landscape photographers. It can travel light, backpack it, and it's going to
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deliver beautiful results for that. And often telephotos can produce some really amazing
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landscape images. It's going to be a fantastic travel lens because it fits even attached to my
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R5. It will stand upright with the lens hood reversed, even in my small seven liter messenger
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bag. That's pretty impressive to me. And so that makes, there's room still to put another good
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size lens, even in a small messenger bag. So for travel, that's really, really compelling
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and obviously for someone that wants to do any of the 70 to 200 millimeter things you can do
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and you don't need f 2.8 it's going to be a great lens for that so kudos to
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canon basically the only thing we've given up is tele or teleconverter compatibility but we've
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gained a lens that is just so much more easy to bring along and use and so as a result i think
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it'll get used more often than those of you that have owned the you know the f4 70 to 200 millimeter
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lenses in the past. I'm Dustin Abbott. And if you'll look in the description down below
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you can find link, uh, linkage to my full text review, also to an image gallery there. If you
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want to check out photos, there are buying links. If you would like to purchase from one of these
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retailers and help to support this channel, uh, beyond that, there is also linkage to follow me
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button right here on YouTube. Thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in
