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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my review of the Canon RF-S 18-45mm
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f4.5-6.3 IS STM. This is a kit lens for Canon's compact APS-C mirrorless bodies. I've tested
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it on the R50. It also comes in kit with the R10 and R100, along with probably some future
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bodies as well. So the MSRP for this particular lens, buying it alone is $299, but the price
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drops significantly if you're buying it in kit. With one of these cameras, you can get
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it for about $120 in kit and truth be told, that's probably about the only way that it
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gets sold. It probably sells very little as a standalone lens. So this lens, like most
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of these compact kit lenses, it does have some optical flaws, but it also has some strengths
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to it. It does have an image stabilizer, has fairly good autofocus, reasonably good sharpness
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and so it helps on cameras like the R50 that lack any kind of in-body image stabilization
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And also the fact that it is small and lightweight makes it a very natural pairing with the smallest
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of Canon's bodies. So in that sense, it could be worth considering, but we're going to dive
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in together and to see if that is in fact the case for you
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We'll start by taking a look at the build here. Now, obviously this is a little bit
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more of a zoom range than the equivalent full frame lens that we recently looked at, which
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is the 24 to 50 millimeter RF lens. And so that obviously is a more constrained zoom
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range. Here we have a little bit more though. Obviously we have lost some of the zoom range
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compared to earlier kit lenses. Going back to the original kind of formula for Canon
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was 18 to 55 millimeters. So in this case, we've dropped 10 millimeters in order, I think
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to get an even more compact size. Unfortunately, we have also slowed down when it comes to
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maximum aperture. Those older kit lenses were typically F3.5 to F5.6. Here we start at F4.5
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between 18 and 21 millimeters. By 22 millimeters, 22 to 30 millimeters, maximum aperture is
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F5. From 31 to 36 millimeters, maximum aperture will be F5.6. And then of course, from 37
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millimeters to the end of the zoom range at 45 millimeters, maximum aperture is F6.3
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So slower all the way across the board. Now, obviously this lens looks really small and
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compact when it is retracted and in this form factor, but it is what's called a retractable
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zoom lens. And so what that means is that when you power on the camera, if the lens
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is not taken out of that retract position, you just get a message on screen that says
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set the lens to the shooting position. I actually found it a little bit ironic that some of
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the most negative reviews on Canon's own website were for people that bought this lens, they
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got this message and they didn't understand what they do, not realizing that you had to
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put the lens into that zoom or zoom it out essentially to the 18 millimeter position
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before you could take photos with it. And truth be told, if you're completely unfamiliar
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with these lenses, it can be a bit confusing for the simple reason that it requires a fair
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amount of force to the place where you might think you would be damaging the lens to rotate
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that ring enough to where it starts to extend out. It's not a great design. I don't love
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retractable zooms at all because as you can see here, by the time you actually get it
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into the shooting position, it's no smaller. In fact, it's longer than what the old zooms
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would have been, equivalent zooms. And so when it's retracted, it is 68.9 millimeters
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in diameter, 2.7 inches and only 44.3 millimeters or 1.7 inches in overall length. However
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it grows 27 more millimeters when it is extended out. And so when it actually comes to using
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the lens, it's not nearly as compact as what the initial form factors suggest. It weighs
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in at 130 grams or 4.6 ounces. So yes, this is an incredibly lightweight lens. And so
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that does give it some strengths when you pair it with such a lightweight body like this. If the goal is to travel small and light, it does achieve that purpose. Everything here
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is plastic as is unfortunately the case with these type lenses from Canon up to and including
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the lens mount. And so it doesn't feel very nice. It feels pretty cheap in hand, so it's
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lightweight, yes, but it does feel cheap. And so if you're looking for something that
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is kind of pleasing in terms of the ergonomics of it, look elsewhere. I did notice that the
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zoom ring when I was trying to do small, precise zooming, it was when I was testing for the
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maximum aperture and trying to do very small zooming increments, I found these zoom rings
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just a little bit gritty, not quite as smoothly damped as what I would like. Part of that
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kind of cheap feeling to it there. Better is the control ring at the front, which could
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actually be serving as control or as be used for manual focus. Unfortunately, there is
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no switches here to control that function. I actually prefer the weight on the 24 to
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50 millimeter. This is quite light. And while it works okay for manual focus, it doesn't
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really have the kind of damping to make it feel as precise as what I would like. Now
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the IS system here, image stabilization is rated at four stops and then six stops for
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using it with a camera equipped with IBIS. And so they're, you know, that's most of them
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don't have that, but of these cheaper bodies, but in case you are using that on one with
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IBIS, it will have that extra bit of stabilization because the two systems will work in concert
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with each other. Stabilizer behavior is pretty good here. I could do handheld video fine
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I could shoot in lower light situations at lower shutter speeds, but there is kind of
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a practical limit. And I doubt you're going to get four stops or six stops comparatively
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at the 18 millimeter position because your shutter speed would be so low. Now, unlike
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the 24 to 50 millimeter, there are seven blades here like that lens, but they are rounded
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rather than straight. So the aperture shape looks a little bit more pleasing. And if you're
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stopped down a little bit, it will retain a bit of a circular shape. Front filter threat
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is a very small, but common 45, 49 millimeters. Your minimum focus distance is varies a little
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bit. And so at the 45 millimeter end, 45 centimeters is actually the minimum focus distance for
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auto-focus. You're only going to get 0.16 times magnification. However, this lens is
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actually capable of quite a bit more magnification if you will manually focus. And as you can
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see here from my result, that's actually a 0.26 times magnification, far more useful
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but again, you'll only achieve that through manual focus. And on that note, let's talk
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about auto-focus. Auto-focus here comes from the lead screw type STM focus motor. And the
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focus motor for stills is very, very quiet. You have to put your ear right up next to
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it to hear a very faint whirring. I did hear a little bit more whine when I was doing actually
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my video focus pools. For some reason, the focus sound was a little bit more magnified
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for that setting. I found that the focus was quick overall, but what I did find indoors
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as you can see in this test, is that there is a completely unnecessary defocus during
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the focus process that actually slows down focus a little bit. I didn't see that the
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same way out of doors. And so it could be something to do with the lighting situation
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Obviously, a lens like this, it is slow in terms of the amount of light that it allows
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in. And so in lower light conditions, it will slow down because the focus system is having
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to work ever more hard because it has less light to work with. Overall, however, I did
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see good focus accuracy. No issues with that. Up close, sometimes focus is strong because
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it's not super sharp up close, but if you're shooting near minimum focus distance. But
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overall, I found focus action to be good. And you can see from these shots of Nala
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for example. And by the way, she was rolling around, moving, but because I had enough shutter
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speed to stop the action, you could see that focus was good and the end results are nice
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When it comes to the focus pulls for video, I did notice a little bit of focus whine as
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noted, but I also found that the focus pulls themselves were smooth and nicely damped
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Good confidence to them. There is minimal focus breathing there, so that does help the
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overall smoothness of the appearance. I got a reasonably good result also with my hand
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test. I did find that the R50 tended to really underexpose a lot of times in video, and so
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I've had to recover these a little bit and brighten them up. This would be a very nice
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little inexpensive gimbal lens. You pair this body and this lens and it really kind of opens
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up the options you have for ever smaller gimbals that you could use. And so that could be nice
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on the fly to get smooth video work from that. Those focus transitions are pretty nicely
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damped and so I think it would work well for that application. So overall focus is
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for the most part a strength here, I would say. So finally, let's talk about image quality
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I'll give you a quick overview of the image quality performance and then if you want a deeper dive after my conclusion, we will jump into that together. So once again, we have
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heavy vignette and distortion as we saw in the 24-50, though not anywhere near to that
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kind of level. In this case, I had to correct a plus 35 for the barrel distortion at 18mm
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That's a lot of correction, but to be fair on the 24mm, I literally had to max out the
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slider and that still didn't do it quite perfectly. So obviously not a strength. Canon really
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really relies on electronic corrections, AI corrections to give you the final end result
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In fact, in camera, you can't even disable the distortion correction. It's going to be
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on no matter what and if you're using Canon's DPP software, you also can't defeat it there
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So in Lightroom, I could and so I can see that Canon leaves a whole lot of extra frame
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to allow for those AI corrections to take place of that distortion. Again, it's more
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of a hybrid lens in the sense that it's not pure op cool. It is also some electronics
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to give you an end result. I don't love that approach. I think it's kind of lazy to be
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fair, but it is what it is and that's part of what makes this lens inexpensive. I did
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find that vignette and distortion got a whole lot better as you begin to zoom in by 24mm
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and 28mm, already starting to improve and throughout the rest of the zoom range, distortion
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is much much lower. Not really an issue after that. I did find some mild amounts of longitudinal
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chromatic aberrations. Again, because there is such a big depth of field, such a slow
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lens, you end up with a lot in focus so less opportunities for there to be fringing before
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and after the plane of focus. I did see more of the lateral type chromatic aberrations
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near the corners of the frame. Fortunately, those are fairly easy to correct for. Sharpness
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is fairly good here. Not exceptionally good, but fairly good outside of the corners. The
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corners are typically a little bit soft throughout the zoom range. They will improve a little
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bit as you stop it down, but they never get great. So if you're looking for perfect sharpness
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across the frame, better options out there exist. The bokeh quality is so-so. It's not
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bad. Again, there's going to be relatively few opportunities to create that. Slow maximum
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aperture means that there's not a whole lot of subject separation that's taking place
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but the bokeh quality that's there is okay. And then the flare resistance is actually
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fairly strong here. That is something that the lens does pretty well, which is handy
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since it doesn't come with that lens hood. So you're going to have to buy that as a separate
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accessory if you want a lens hood. You might be able to get away without it here, however
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if you don't want to mess with that. So in conclusion, this lens is about what you would
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expect from an inexpensive compact kit zoom type lens. There's nothing special, but it
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is a useful lens as far as it goes. And I think it's particularly useful for an inexpensive
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video lens, inexpensive gimbal lens, if you are so inclined. If you're looking for more
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of a one lens solution, while it is bigger and heavier and more expensive, I think it's
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probably worth the investment to the RF-S 18-150mm lens. It runs about $500, but it's
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still relatively compact and lightweight. It actually offers a better image quality
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a little bit fat, brighter maximum aperture over the equivalent range. And obviously it's
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going to give you a whole lot of additional zoom, you know, 105 additional millimeters
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of zoom on the telephoto end. And I can tell you that makes it much more practical if you
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don't like to change lenses. So if you're considering this lens, but you want that versatility
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I would save the money towards getting that larger RF-S 18-150mm lens instead. I hope
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that this has helped you make a decision. If you want more information, there is a link to my written review in the text below, buying links. And now if you want a deeper dive into
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the optical performance, let's jump in together. Okay, so we'll start by taking a look at this zoom range for a moment. On the left, you have the scene composed at 18mm
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on the right at 45mm. You can see that there's obviously a lot of potential framing options
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throughout that zoom range. Now, as alluded to previously, Canon really relies on electronic
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corrections to help with things like distortion and vignette. This is what it looks like as
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in either a JPEG form or in a RAW after being corrected. Now, just for curiosity's sake
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in the viewfinder, I actually had this framed right outside these outer lines. You can see
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with the uncorrected result in RAW here that there obviously is a tremendous amount of
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additional frame that is left to allow for correcting that in with the correction profile
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Now, here's what I was able to achieve via my manual corrections. We'll take a look at
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what went into getting this result. So, I used a plus 35 to correct for the barrel distortion
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and so you can see that correction here on the edges. Now, you can also see that I had
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to go ahead and crop in a fair bit to get to the correct framing on my test chart. So
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what that tells me is that if you wanted to shoot in RAW and then not crop in as much
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as I could, you could get a little bit wider angle of view if that's something that interests
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you. Now, you probably would deal with some additional vignette if you leave more in the
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frame because even cropping into where I did, I had to dial in a plus 83 to deal with that
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vignette effect there in the corner. Now, fortunately, as we move on in the zoom range
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things start to really clean up a lot more. Obviously, there's still a bit of barrel distortion
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here and you can see the profile correcting that, but you can see that it isn't nearly
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as significant nor is the vignette. By the time we get to 45mm, you can see that there's
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basically no distortion hardly that's being corrected there, just a bit of vignette. Now
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there is some potential for some longitudinal chromatic aberrations. Now, the reality is
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you can see that fringing, particularly after the plane of focus. The reality is though is there's going to be so few situations where you actually are able to really put much out
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of focus that you're probably not going to struggle with that very much. More likely
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is you will see some of these lateral chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame. You
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can see some color fringing at various spots here. The fortunate thing is that all of this
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is something that cleans up with that one click or correcting in camera for JPEGs. Now
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if we take a look at resolution here, I'm showing the results at 200% magnification
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This is on a 24 megapixel sensor from the Canon EOS R50. So, here in the center of the
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frame, we can see a decent amount of resolution and contrast. It doesn't look too bad. All
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the fine letters are not like perfectly resolved there, but it doesn't look bad. Mid-frame
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also looks fairly decent. There is a little bit of a dip in contrast and detail there
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but still looking fairly good. We can see as we start to track even from this edge of
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this build down to the right edge that it's softening up. And as we get towards the corners
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they look considerably softer. So, stopping down to f5.6, it brightens things up just
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a little bit, but not a lot of additional detail there. By f8, things starting to look
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a little bit better. And from f8 to f11, it's more of a standstill, not a huge improvement
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there. If we kind of look around, we can see that I would say there's a little less contrast
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at f11 than what there is at f8. We'll take a look at centering here. We can see that
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we are getting a nice even result in the various corners that I'm looking here. I mean, nothing
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looks amazing as far as these corners, but they all look kind of averagely the same
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Now, after f11 in particular, you're going to start to run into diffraction. And so
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you can see by f22, which is minimum aperture at 18 millimeters, that the image is considerably
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softened due to the effects of diffraction. Now, by 24 millimeters, maximum aperture is
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already to f5.6. By 24 millimeters, maximum aperture is now f5. We can see that the center
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results look very, very slightly better, but mostly the same. Midframe is a little bit
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better. You can see just a little bit better defined detail. Most significantly though
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is the corners are much better. And in fact, you stop down to f5.6, not a big difference
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but by f8, corners are looking brighter and reasonably sharp. And that is about as good
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as you're going to get when it comes to the zoom range, when it comes to corner performance
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By 35 millimeters, maximum aperture is f5.6. And while the center of the frame looks about
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the same as what we saw at 24 millimeters, you can see that there's a little bit less
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contrast at the midframe result. But most importantly, unfortunately, we are back to
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much softer end results in the corners. And even if we stop down to f11, that is about
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as good as you're going to see as far as corner performance. Now, by the end of the zoom range
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at 45 millimeters, you can see that once again, we are about equal when it comes to
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the center of the frame performance. The midframe is a little bit of a regression and the corners
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are, if anything, just a hair softer still. Going back to this other side, you can see
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that in this midframe, it's about the same, not really any improvement on either side
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If you stop down a bit at 45 millimeters, you're going to see a very mild improvement
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but you can see that at no point are we really getting super sharp results. It still stays
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a little bit soft in the corners. Now, somewhere around that 24 millimeter area is obviously
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going to be peak performance. So this kind of real world shot is pretty close to that
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And you can see it does look pretty nice. Detail is good towards the corners, often
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to the distance. There's good detail there and all across the frame, a fairly consistent
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result. So at its best, this lens can produce fairly good looking images. Here's a shot
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with really nice lighting. And so it helps. This is 45 millimeters F7.1. And we can see
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that as we just kind of scroll throughout the image, detail is holding up towards the
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edges of the frame. Everything looks nice and crisp and not too bad. A pretty good result
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there. Now, I noted earlier that if you manually focus, you can get a higher level of magnification
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that does come at a bit of a penalty though. You can see that contrast is really quite
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low here. If you're trying to do that wide open and remember wide open in this case is
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F6.3. And so if you stop down a bit very quickly, you're going to need a lot of light to achieve
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that up close result. Now, flare resistance was fairly decent. You can see here that I've
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got a little bit of a ghosting artifact, kind of like a shaft of light coming through there
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But for the most part, firing into the direct sun here, contrast has held up pretty well
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So finally, we'll take a closer look at bokeh. Here, you know, I'm pretty close to the subject
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and, but because the background is not all that far away, you can see that things are
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just not very highly defocused. And so they are slightly out of focus relative to the
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subject. Subject looks fine here. But as we go towards the out of focus area, it's only
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a bit out of focus. And this is, you know, fairly close to the subject. Here I'm closer
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still to Nala and the background is further away. And so in this case, the bokeh looks
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a little bit better. As you can see, everything is not strongly blurred out, but the blur
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is not ugly or distracting looking. Now, in this case, the ratios are not quite as favorable
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and you can see that, you know, subject looks okay. And the bokeh is, well, it's, it's
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it's only so, so there's definitely more edging than what I would like. This is probably the
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best of the images. Now you can see we are dealing with, because I'm closer, some of
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that softness that comes lack of contrast being close up. There's a reasonable amount
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of detail there, but contrast is not great, but you can see that the background is relatively
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blurred out. So again, about what we would expect, nothing fantastic here and fortunately
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not a whole lot that is utterly terrible. Thank you so much for sticking around to the
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very end and watching the optical comparison. As always, thanks for watching. Have a great
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day and let the light in