Canon RF 85mm F2 Macro IS STM Definitive Review 4K
Jul 19, 2023
Build and Features 02:22 | Autofocus Performance 08:16 | IBIS Performance 14:40 | Image Quality Breakdown 16:35 | Conclusion 26:23 | Video Sponsored by Ridge Wallet: https://www.ridge.com/DUSTIN Use Code “DUSTIN” for 10% off your order | Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a detailed review of the Canon RF 85mm F2 Macro IS STMM zoom for mirrorless. | Read the Text Review https://bit.ly/RF85Mreview | Visit the Image Gallery https://bit.ly/RF85Mimages | Purchase a Canon RF 85mm F2 Macro IS STM @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3qoFUQF | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/2qcnd | Amazon https://amzn.to/38MZBMc | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3ieOdvo | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/39y4A2l | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3suRYli | Ebay http://bit.ly/RF85Mda
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0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my definitive review of the new Canon RF 85mm F2 Macro IS STM lens
0:21
I'm currently filming on it with the EOS R5 to give you a sense of video performance for tracking my face during the segment
0:28
and a little bit of an idea of how the footage looks in general out of the lens itself
0:35
Now, of course, today we are doing the definitive review, so that means we're going with a longer format, more detail about pretty much everything
0:42
And if you want a quicker breakdown, then I recommend that you check out the standard review instead
0:48
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1:20
so in that name there are some various initials and i'll give you a quick breakdown of what they
1:27
mean obviously maximum aperture of f2 which is slightly wider than what we often see on a macro
1:33
lens but this is a one to two macro rather than a one to one which means it gives you a half size
1:39
magnification rather than what they would call a life-size magnification a true one to one ratio
1:46
So nonetheless, that's very unique for an 85mm lens because typically 85mm lenses give you a magnification of somewhere on average between 0.11 times and 0.14 times, certainly not 0.5 times as we have got here
2:03
And so that is a very, very useful amount of magnification. And so it has a macro designation on it
2:10
You can argue as to whether or not that's warranted or not. IS means it has Canon's image stabilization built into the lens, and then SDM refers to the stepping motor that is the autofocus component of the lens
2:23
We're going to start today by jumping in and taking a look at the build and the handling of the lens itself
2:29
and giving you an idea of what's here and what's not here. Let's take a look
2:34
So first thing that stands out is that the lens is fairly compact for a macro lens, even though this is 1-2 rather than 1-1 macro
2:43
It has what has become a pretty standard finish for Canon RF lenses
2:48
I like the finish mostly because it's really resistant to both fingerprints and scratching
2:54
It's the kind of finish I think that will hold up really well. It's got a light flocking and is almost matte in its appearance
3:00
and as we've seen there's a little extra bit of style with the ring here that's near the mount
3:06
that's kind of more of a silvery platinum color and so just gives a little bit of a contrast that
3:11
makes it the lenses look just a little bit more upscale I think than what the EF lenses did but
3:17
everything is pretty straightforward here in terms of the appearance. We have two rings we have got
3:22
the manual focus ring and more on that in just a moment and then we have the control ring. So when
3:29
it comes to the manual focus ring this is a focus by wire and as you will see it takes a lot of
3:36
rotations to get us from minimum focus to or excuse me from infinity to our minimum focus distance and
3:44
so you've got to just do many many many rotations to get much of anywhere and so it is a somewhat
3:51
frustrating lens to manual focus there's also a fair amount of drama there because you hear the
3:58
focus motor all the time while you're manually focusing because it's not a silent focus motor
4:05
And so anyway, it's not the best part of the lens design here. It does extend obviously when you
4:12
are focusing towards close focus. And so you can, you know, extends out about three centimeters at
4:19
its maximum. So you're probably going to want to put a setting inside that when you turn the camera
4:23
off, it then will retract the lens. Because otherwise, if you have that inner barrel
4:29
continuing to extend, I'm just afraid it will provide a little bit of a liability in terms of
4:34
bumping it. Now, in some ways, what stands out to me here is not so much what is present, but what
4:40
is lacking. What's here is reasonably nice. As I said, the finish is fine. You know, the materials
4:46
are engineer plastic on the outside, but it feels tough enough. There's a little bit of a density to
4:50
it weighs in at 500 grams, which is about 75 grams heavier than the 85 millimeter f1.8 lens
5:00
But that's, you know, of course, we've got image stabilization here. We've also got one to two
5:05
macro capabilities. And so I'm not sure that you could really compare one to the other
5:09
but because the lens is fairly short relative to what you've got here, it feels somewhat dense
5:15
It is only 90.5 millimeters long, and so that's considerably shorter than, you know, say my 100 millimeter f2.8 LIS macro lens is over 30 millimeters longer
5:28
And so it is nice and compact for traveling with. But what's lacking here is the fact that we have no lens hood, and unfortunately Canon persisted not including the lens hood with any of its non L series lenses
5:41
They also refuse to do any kind of weather sealing, even a basic sealing, on anything but their L-series lenses
5:48
And lenses like this come packed basically in bubble wrap inside of a box
5:53
I mean, presentation is lousy. And so I do have to knock Canon for that
5:58
This is, you know, it's not an expensive lens, but it's a $600 US lens
6:03
It seems like it maybe should deserve a lens hood, which they're going to charge an additional $50 for
6:08
and you know these days there's a lot of far less expensive lenses than this that do come with
6:14
weather sealing and so I do want to criticize them on that front. The lens is 78 millimeters in
6:20
diameter, has a 6-7 millimeter front filter thread which is obviously pretty common. There are nine
6:26
rounded aperture blades inside and it does a pretty good job of keeping a circular aperture shape
6:31
as you can see. Our minimum focus distance is 35 centimeters and so that is you know from the
6:38
sensor and obviously if it's a one-to-one macro you would get a lot closer than what you do under
6:43
that circumstance. There are three switches on it. There is an on-off for the stabilizer, an AF-MF
6:49
and then a three position focus limiter which you will probably want to utilize because focus
6:54
isn't particularly fast here and also I think you'll get a little bit more confident focus if
7:00
you engage the focus limiter appropriately. So overall I mean the lens has a I would say a pretty
7:06
nice feel to it. It looks good mounted on the camera, but I do have some disappointments about
7:11
what they choose to not include with a lens like this that certainly deserves to have a lens hood
7:17
at the least included So as you might be able to tell my kind of continued frustration with Canon any non L series lens from Canon is that they continue to really kind of nickel and dime all the little things like a lens hood which they want to charge you an additional 50 bucks for and even the packaging that the box comes in
7:38
which is basically bubble wrap wrapped around the lens inside a cardboard box
7:42
It just seems, you know, uncompetitive considering what the rest of the market is giving us at this point
7:49
and very often very inexpensive lenses come with a lens hood and much better presentation
7:54
Some of them even come with weather sealing, which certainly has not been the case of any of Canon's
7:59
non-L series lenses. And so my disappointments, I guess, are focused more on what's not here
8:05
necessarily, more so than what is that is actually here. The lens itself is fine and functions well
8:12
there other than the extremely low manual focus. So that kind of leads us to a discussion of
8:19
autofocus in that I think the STM motor here really is the weak link in the optical design
8:26
and the overall engineering of the lens itself. STM used to mean something when it first came out
8:34
It was really, you know, stepping motor was designed to start to embrace the transition at
8:38
that point to live view type focus, but moving towards what would eventually become mirrorless
8:43
and that it's smoother in making focus transitions. So it's a little more tuned to the reality of video AF, for one thing
8:52
but also a little bit better suited often to the kind of focus that we see on mirrorless cameras
8:58
But as STM has kind of developed, it can mean a wide variety of things
9:02
In some cases, an STM motor is super quiet, super fast, you know, all kinds of good stuff
9:08
This is not one of those kind of STM motors. In this case, the lens focus motor feels really unsophisticated
9:17
It is not particularly fast. And so, as I noted, with manual focus, you find that even in making manual focus changes
9:26
everything, of course, you know, it's focused by wire, so it's routed through that focus motor
9:30
And so, there's just a kind of a groan with every rotation. and also making that full rotation from manual focus, minimum focus distance
9:39
all the way out to infinity, maximum focus. It took, I counted, 21 rotations of my wrist to make that amount of change
9:48
So incredibly, incredibly slow and thus incredibly frustrating. You're not going to love manually focusing this lens
9:55
which is a problem when you consider the fact that macro lenses
10:00
are probably the most likely of any autofocus lens to get manually focused at some point
10:06
And mostly because, you know, your focus options are incredibly tiny at macro distances
10:13
And so sometimes fine tuning by manual focus is going to give you your best end result
10:18
This lens is pretty frustrating to do that with. And so that immediately stood out to me, as did the amount of sound and just kind of overall
10:26
crudeness and autofocus. and so this is not an internally focusing lens it is front focusing so the front series of elements
10:34
is what moves in and out from the front of the lens to achieve focus and as you can hear and
10:39
see from this video sequence here it's not particularly quiet in operation
10:57
the other thing that you may have been able to see there is that focus is quite slow and that's
11:06
not video focus that was um for stills type focus just just having a you know full-time servo af
11:13
going there and so you see that focus changes are not super fast the other thing was is that
11:19
if you noted towards the latter part of that sequence i moved the object that it should have
11:23
going from a close focus to a distance focus, move the close focus object out of the way
11:29
and you see that nothing happened. And I did observe that, that sometimes focus just seemed
11:33
to stick. And rather than being intuitive and moving, it just wasn't really all that fantastic
11:40
Now, there's a pro and a con when it comes to doing video AF. And so first of all
11:47
let's take a look at the focus pulls test that I do, and then I'll give you some observations
11:51
beyond that. So as you noted, focus sound wasn't as loud as what it is in stills operation
12:13
but you may have also noticed that the major focus change was incredibly slow. And I think
12:18
that what Canon has done to keep focus noise down is to detune the focus speed in video AF pulls
12:25
to where it is incredibly slow. Now, the problem with that is that it makes it essentially unuseful
12:32
for certain kinds of shots. You know, for example, I was actually shooting a segment for one of my
12:38
sponsors of my video, and so I wanted to remove a close object and have it focus on the object
12:44
before. So start off focused in something close, move it out of the way, transition to the further
12:49
object. First of all, I found it nearly impossible to get the lens to focus and just stay focused
12:55
on my foreground object. So that was frustrating. And then when I moved it out of the way
13:00
it took so long to make it to an object that was only about three and a half, four feet away
13:06
one meter away. And the byproduct of that is that the shot was unusable. It just took too much time
13:12
to make that focus transition. And, you know, in many cases with filmmaking or in this case
13:18
you know, kind of filming a commercial, you're only taking, you know, little two or three second
13:23
maybe five second tops clips and running them all together. And so it was just unusable for it. And
13:29
I actually utilized the, you know, much less expensive 50 millimeter F1.8 STM to get the shot
13:35
and so autofocus was just frustrating in general now upsides is that most of the time i was able
13:43
to get the result that i wanted you know focus accuracy was fine once it achieved focus
13:48
ief worked fine um you know and in this sequence of portraits of myself i had a
13:54
a my 13 year old son who's saying i'm having a hard time keeping things steady dad but ief worked
14:00
so well that, you know, he was able to get accurately focused results. And, um, most of
14:06
these are straight out of camera. They look great. And so, uh, that's, that's the upside there
14:10
but there were situations where I just could not get for the life of me, could not get it to focus
14:15
on a foreground object. And, um, you know, if there was any kind of busyness in the background
14:21
And so I, I just found it in many situations to be frustrating to use. And that is a sad
14:26
state of affairs for a brand new lens on a camera the eos r5 that i use for this test that has an
14:33
amazing focus system and so i know it's not the camera which means that it is the lens now when
14:40
it comes to the image stabilization that is there obviously that's that's worth definitely worth
14:45
having when it comes to having a lens it's going to be used for macro work sure if you look you
14:49
know at the basic stuff it say you know up to five stops of stabilization that rated for digging a little deeper into their literature shows that they have a kind of a standard rating for standard distances and then a second rating for macro type distances
15:04
And in that case, you get up to three stops. I actually kind of like this honesty because that's the way that it always is
15:11
Things are much more demanding at close focus distances. And that's about what I found
15:17
I found that if I tried to get five stops up close, things were just shaky and blurry
15:22
and I really did not achieve successful results. However, if I moved out to the Christmas tree distance, which was a couple of meters away
15:31
I was able to get a five-stop hand-holding result. I believe this is at 0.4 seconds or something like that
15:42
and I was able to get a successful result on that. and you know and it was okay also for hand holding video shots but if you try to get up close even
15:49
having the in-body image stabilization of the r5 you can't really separate out you know either both
15:55
systems are on or no system is on there's no just having one or the other on so they're supposed to
16:00
work in harmony but i didn't actually get i didn't see personally better than five stops combining the
16:06
two things together your mileage may vary obviously but bottom line is that having image stabilization
16:12
certainly helps, even if it's not as much at macro distances. It means that if you're using like a
16:17
more moderate, in this case, a 1 40th of a second shutter speed, I was able to get a nice handheld
16:22
macro result, which I wouldn't be able to get without stabilization. And of course, for video
16:27
work, it's going to be useful. And if you have a camera without in-body image stabilization
16:32
even more useful to have IS in the lens itself. Now, if things have seemed a little bit negative
16:38
to this point, the good news is that they're about to get radically better. And so as we take
16:43
a look at the image quality, there's definitely a lot of optical strengths to the lens, even if the
16:48
autofocus is not really all that special. Let's jump in. Let's take a look. First of all, you can
16:52
see that there is a bit of a pin cushion distortion pattern, a little bit of squeeze in the middle
16:58
and then you can definitely see some vignette towards the corner. Vignette has been kind of a
17:03
symptom of most of these RF lenses so far with often this kind of seeming to be the thing that
17:09
the engineers don't work quite as hard to correct for. Now while the standard correction profile
17:14
will clean everything up just fine I did want to do a manual correction because that allows us to
17:18
actually see what's going on here. So a minus four you can see it's a good linear distortion so it
17:24
cleaned up no problem there. Then yet I dialed in a plus 65 and moved the midpoint all the way over
17:30
which gave us a pretty even performance. We have got somewhere close to three stops of vignette in
17:36
the corner, but you know fortunately these days cameras are quite good at shadow recovery and so
17:41
vignette usually recovers quite well. Now we can see from our longitudinal chromatic aberration test
17:48
that before the plane of focus everything is quite good. We can see there's a little bit of a green
17:54
fringing after the plane of focus with contrast being fairly strong as a result. In a real world
18:00
test here we can see that you know a little bit of purple fringing before the plane of focus but
18:05
you know everything is actually held up pretty well you can see a little bit of fringing along
18:09
the frame but it's actually done fairly well considering this type of subject I find to be
18:14
a really demanding and difficult one likewise here there's you know there's a couple of factors
18:20
at play here you've got a very white you know patch of snow on there against a darker background
18:25
also a bleeding to out of focus and so two spots we'll look at up here you can see that there is
18:32
basically no fringing taking place here and as it transitions to defocus it's also done quite well
18:39
and so you can see that longitudinal and lateral chromatic aberrations are pretty strongly controlled
18:44
and as a byproduct of that contrast wide open is quite good so we'll take a look at our resolution
18:51
and contrast here. Now this is at 200% on a 45 megapixel Canon EOS R5 and so a really demanding
18:58
test here but you can see that wide open everything looks really fantastic. Good contrast, good detail
19:05
moving towards the mid frame also an excellent result. You can just see all the crisp detail in
19:11
the paper itself and you know making up the face of the Prime Minister there. Moving down into the
19:17
corner even you can see a really nice even performance you know a slightly less contrast but
19:22
detail is not falling off you can see even the fine details in the the money there are rendered
19:29
quite well no real evidence of longitudinal chromatic aberration showing up with blacks
19:34
and whites transitioning without anything showing in between so a really really strong performance
19:40
there and very even across the frame too now since the announcement of this lens a lot of you have
19:46
asked me to compare it to the RF 85mm f1.4 from Samyang their autofocus lens there and so stop
19:53
down to f2 you can see that the two lenses are fairly comparable with a little bit of a contrast
19:59
edge going to the Samyang which has the advantage of being stopped down it's also by the way
20:04
extremely good optically and so you can see that both lenses are strong but maybe the Samyang has
20:10
an ever so slight edge mid frame they're very very close not a lot to differentiate them and
20:17
moving down into the corner also very close the Samyang has ever so slight better contrast I will
20:24
point out though it's fading a little bit in this bottom corner whereas I think the Canon is holding
20:29
up a little bit better but overall I mean they're without having them if you didn't have them side
20:35
by side I think you would have a hard time telling which lens was actually sharper and more contrast
20:40
contrasty. The Canon holds up out in real world shooting as well. You can see that again on a 45
20:47
megapixel body these needles are nicely defined. There's no kind of smearing of the textures
20:54
Detail and contrast looks good there and as you move off towards the edge of the frame obviously
20:58
we've got a little bit of vignette impact here but you can see that the details are holding up good
21:03
and our contrast even in these you know these areas where it's very very prone to having
21:08
chromatic aberrations. I'm seeing very little of them, however, and so a very strong performance
21:15
Now, what's interesting is as you stop the lens down from f2 to f2.8, you really don't get much
21:20
of an improvement there. It's very good wide open. It doesn't necessarily get better stopped down to
21:27
f2.8, at least on the copy I'm testing. And so you can see that the two results look more similar
21:32
than different. In fact, stopping on down to f4 doesn't produce a marked difference either. Things
21:39
are getting ever so slightly sharper and higher contrast, but not a major difference. And for this
21:45
reason, the Samyang's advantage actually grows if you stop the lenses down, because the Samyang does
21:51
continue to sharpen up more. It's got a little bit more in the tank than what the Canon lens does
21:57
And so here, you know, mid-frame, it's looking fantastic there at f4
22:01
And even down in the corner, you can just see that there's more pop, you know, contrast and just better delineation of the details there
22:09
Even though the Samyang shows a little bit of evidence of lateral chromatic aberration where the Canon remains more neutral
22:16
But this isn't really a knock against the Canon lens. It is incredibly sharp and so you can see in this real shot of the side of a barn these old barn boards have great texture right across the frame this is at f5 I mean the detail here contrast looks fantastic
22:34
on the Canon lens and so I mean it is a very very good lens optically great sharpness great
22:40
contrast our up close performance is also quite good here's what minimum focus distance looks like
22:46
Remember, this is a one-to-two, not a one-to-one. So you're not going to see quite into the fibers the same way you do on a one-to-one
22:54
But what I can also see is that you are getting a pretty nice flat plane of focus here
23:00
And so even though there's a tiny bit of distortion, the plane of focus is flat enough that you could reproduce documents okay
23:08
Maybe not the top pick, but it certainly would still work for that as well
23:12
Here's what I would consider a really, really demanding subject. I mean, lots of potential for chromatic aberration
23:18
A super white background with the snow down beneath. This is a hard shot to really pull off, but I feel like the Canon's done a pretty good job
23:26
Good detail on that. You know, CA doesn't look too bad in the image, and, you know, it's handled that extreme background
23:33
and still produced something with a little bit of artistic merit. I also think that the bokeh is particularly nice from the lens
23:40
So taking a look at bokeh circles, you can see that they're really smooth inside
23:46
You know, the inner line is not too defined, not a whole lot of business in there
23:50
And so, you know, stepping back, it looks really nice. A little bit of geometry deformation, which is almost always the case
23:57
But, you know, overall, it looks quite good. And real-world bokeh also looks really great
24:03
And so this image, again, lots of potential for, you know, chromatic aberration to run it
24:08
and to take away your detail and contrast. but it doesn't. It looks great and it bleeds away to do focus nicely. This image for having a simple
24:16
subject I think looks really fantastic with that lovely kind of creamy out of focus background that
24:22
I really like and you also get the bonus of great detail and delineation on your foreground subject
24:28
which looks fantastic. Here's a similar type example which is frankly I don't have a lot of
24:34
subjects out in nature right now and so as you can see it looks really really fantastic and the
24:39
background also looks really good. This was essentially the worst shot I saw for bokeh
24:45
just, you know, kind of a perfect storm in terms of a really, really busy background
24:50
And I was far enough away from the subject that it wasn't completely kind of blurred out
24:54
And so you can see things look a little bit busy here, but, you know, frankly, I think a lot of
25:00
lenses would have a harder time with it. And it's here maybe that our maximum aperture of only F2
25:05
maybe hurts us a little bit with this scene. But what we do have is plenty of sharpness and
25:11
contrast even at f2 to show off all of the flaws in my face. And you can see, you know, lots of
25:18
details on the skin textures and, you know, hairs on my face, all of these things. Everything really
25:24
shows up with a lot of detail. So, you know, a nice studio lens, you know, I think maybe the Samyang
25:29
would be the better choice if you're going outdoors for portraits because, you know, the f1.4 option
25:35
gives you more flexibility in terms of your depth of field but for you know if this is more your
25:41
standard kind of portrait I mean I think it's done a great job with this. Finally a quick look at
25:47
flare resistance. I had to use a flashlight because I haven't seen the sun in like 10 days and so
25:52
I had to get this done but you can see that wide open a little bit of a localized veiling not too
25:59
bad though and some ghosting artifacts here. Stopped down to f11 those ghosting artifacts become a
26:05
little bit more apparent but you can also see that the sunburst effect is actually really quite
26:11
nice for a telephoto lens and so the blades have a nice thin look to them which I quite like and so
26:18
you know not a terrible performance here not top notch but not bad either. So I consider those to
26:25
be a very very nice result you know optical flaws they're really not all that extreme a little bit
26:30
heavy on the vignette department and that's been true of most of the the rf lenses that i have seen
26:36
it seems to be the optical thing like zeiss used to do that they don't really try all that hard to
26:42
correct it so if there's anything that goes uncorrected it's for vignette and i think that
26:46
that's probably a safe bet in many situations it's fairly easy to correct for the profile does a good
26:52
job so you know at the end of the day it's there's not really any major optical flaws there to point
26:57
to. As we did see, it compares, you know, fairly well, fairly comparably to the similarly priced
27:05
85mm option, which is the Samyang 85mm f1.4 autofocus lens and an RF mount. I do think the
27:12
Samyang is a little bit sharper, and as we saw, it's definitely a little bit sharper when stopped
27:16
down. And so, but I mean, both lenses are really, really excellent optically. So I, you know, I kind
27:22
of parse it out this way. If you're looking for a purely you're looking for a portrait lens, go for
27:28
the Samyang. It's a great lens. It produces really nice portrait results. An f1.4 is going to give
27:35
you a lot of extra creative options for depth of field. If you're looking for a lens and you don't
27:41
have a macro lens so you want a lens that does you know more general multi-purpose then it's
27:46
it's hard to argue against the Canon as long as you can deal with that you know more deliberate
27:52
autofocus and not as smooth and not as quiet in operation. On paper, I loved the idea of this
28:00
lens. I've never seen an 85mm lens with great magnification, and so to get a near macro lens
28:07
and an 85mm lens I thought was a home run for Canon. The reality is not so much of a home run
28:16
And I think that if Canon had elected to go with like nano USM in this particular lens
28:22
it would have made a world of difference and just given us a smoother, quieter, faster autofocus experience
28:29
Unfortunately, as it is, a great lens optically is somewhat held back by a not so great autofocus system
28:37
And at the end of the day, of course, it's your money and you're going to have to decide whether or not you can live with the autofocus
28:42
I looked at user reviews thus far. They are, you know, overwhelmingly positive. However
28:48
the negative that comes up is, of course, the autofocus itself. And so, you know
28:52
maybe for your application, not a big deal. If you don't mind the autofocus and, you know
28:58
you're more concerned just about the pictures themselves, it produces beautiful images, go for it. If you're going to want to shoot video and autofocus is something that's important to
29:07
you, you may need to look elsewhere to find a lens that's going to satisfy your needs
29:12
I'm Dustin Abbott. If you'll look in the description down below, you can find linkage to my full text review
29:17
Also to an image gallery. There are buying links there as well if you want to purchase one for yourself
29:22
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29:26
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