When I began to wholesale move to mirrorless, there were certain beloved lenses that were very slow to leave my kit. I had a whole kit of Canon EF lenses, and initially I just adapted those lenses to Canon RF and even Sony. Certain third party lenses slowly began to leave my kit to be replaced with other lenses, but I had a core kit of L series lenses that I found it hard to say goodbye to. Lenses like the 24-104mm F4L IS, 100mm F2.8L Macro, the 70-300L, the 100-400L II, and the 35mm F1.4L II. One by one those lenses slowly got sold off over the years. The last of them remained until 2023, and that was the Canon EF 35mm F1.4L II. I loved that lens. Built like a tank, sharp as a tack, and with utterly reliable results that I consistently loved. It was hard for me to say goodbye to that lens, largely because there really wasn’t an RF replacement for it.

Pretty much everyone wondered when Canon would come up with a replacement, as the RF 50mm F1.2L was one of the early RF L series lenses, coming to market in 2018. I reviewed it in 2019 after finally taking the plunge and buying the extremely flawed Canon EOS R body. That means that six years have gone by without a pro series 35mm lens on RF mount, with the only 35mm prime being the RF 35mm F1.8 IS. But the wait is over, and the Canon RF 35mm F1.4L VCM has finally arrived. Is this the one you’ve been waiting for? You can get my findings in the video review here, or keep reading.

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Thanks to Camera Canada for sending me a review copy of this lens.   As always, this is a completely independent review.  All opinions and conclusions are my own. *I have done this review on my Canon EOS R5 camera.

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Canon’s earliest full frame mirrorless cameras (the EOS R and the EOS RP) were severely flawed cameras, so my early frustration in doing RF mount reviews is that it seemed that a number of the early RF lenses were so good but the cameras were so frustrating. Ironically (at least for me), the tables have turned, as Canon has been producing a number of cameras I really like (I’ve loved owning my EOS R5 for years, and have given very positive reviews to a number of other cameras from the budget R8 to the premium R3.) But I’ve found Canon’s lens design over the past few years very frustrating, as it seems like every lens I review comes with a major caveat. The RF 100mm Macro has weird focus shift issues. The RF 14-35mm F4L IS has epic levels of distortion. The 70-200mm models can’t be used with teleconverters. The RF 100-500L can only use teleconverters at 300mm+. The RF 85mm F2 Macro IS has clunky autofocus. A number of the zooms have very slow apertures. It’s a little weird, and unfortunately that trend continues with the 35L VCM lens, as while it has great autofocus and is very sharp, there are some questionable choices in the implementation of features and optical design. Sigh.

In many ways the 35L VCM seems to be a lens designed with video in mind more than stills. There is one notable new feature that only works for video unless you have a Canon camera made in 2024 or newer. But on the other hand, Canon also knows how to make a optically strong 35mm lens, and the 35L VCM actually comes to market at a $300 discount relative to the 35L II.

That makes this particular lens review a little complicated, but I’ll do my best to highlight both strengths and weaknesses with objectivity.

Build and Handling

One of the key, real world improvements of the RF 35L VCM lens is that they have managed to make it much lighter. The EF 35mm F1.4L II weighed a hefty 760g (1.67lbs), but the 35L VCM tips the scales at a leaner 555g (1.2lb). That’s a 31% difference in weight, which is pretty significant (particularly for wedding photographers who heft their cameras for 10+ hours!) That still doesn’t quite get it to the level of my current favorite 35mm lens, which is the Sony FE 35mm F1.4 GM. The GM lens is a svelte 524g, and is also a bit smaller.

The 35L VCM is 3″ in diameter x 3.9″ in length, or 76.5 x 99.3 mm. That’s about 6mm shorter than the EF lens, but about 3.5mm longer than the GM lens. The front filter threads are now 67mm rather than 72mm, a change I appreciate as lenses with 67mm filter threads are far more common.

Lens Rentals did a teardown of the 35mm F1.4L II and found that it was one of the most impressively engineered lenses they had seen at that point. To my knowledge a similar project has not been undertaken with the new VCM lens, but I suspect it too has an excellent level of build. That starts with an extremely robust level of weather sealing.

I count at least 12 seal points in that design, and there is also fluorine coatings on both the front and rear elements to help to protect those elements and make them easier to clean. The rear gasket is nice and thick, which always feels a bit reassuring to me.

I’ve seen some angst over some “clunking” in the lens if you tip it up and down, but this is nothing to worry about. I’ve reviewed (and owned) a number of lenses with floating elements, and they actually tend to be employed in higher end, more expensive lenses because this design isn’t cheap. Floating elements allow for better performance, particularly up close. You’ll find that the “clunking” or sense of movement in the lens immediately goes away when the lens is attached to the camera and the camera is powered on. Those elements become energized and ready for use. This is nothing new, by the way, as floating elements were first used in the late 1960s and have already been used in the acclaimed RF 50mm F1.2L and 85mm F1.2L lenses amongst other EF and RF lenses. I feel like people may be jumping on this with the 35L VCM largely because there’s somewhat of a negative vibe surrounding the lens.

I’m less sanguine about Canon’s odd implementation of the aperture ring. This is, (I believe), the first Canon RF prime lens to receive an aperture ring (and the second lens after the 24-105mm F2.8L IS to have one). Canon says that this is “…the latest L-Series hybrid lens featuring an iris ring for manual iris control during video capture.” Note that final phrase? “During video capture”. That’s right – for most Canon cameras, the aperture ring will only work during video mode, not stills. But, to further complicate things, a Canon rep has indicated that the aperture ring will work for stills on the EOS R5 Mark II and EOS R1 and, in theory, other future cameras. I actually find this a little frustrating, as it feels like Canon is not being strategic but rather making things up as they go. It feels a lot like their early explanations for why in-body-image-stabilization was unnecessary, and lens based stabilization was so much better. But then they switched that up and started putting IBIS in their second generation cameras. You’ll note that this is not the RF 35mm F1.4L IS!

Perhaps the aperture ring behavior can be fixed via future firmware updates, but as things stand on my Canon EOS R5, the aperture ring does nothing when capturing stills. You can turn it all day and it does nothing. In video mode it works as a declicked aperture for doing aperture racking, and, to its credit, input lag is very low, allowing you to achieve near real-time changes from what you do on the aperture ring to what happens to the aperture iris itself.

There is an iris lock that can be employed to either keep you in the manual aperture ring or in the Automatic mode beyond. Even this implementation is a bit odd, as the spring loaded lock design requires you to hold it in place while you rotate the ring either into or out of the manual aperture section. It’s actually not a very easy one handed operation.

The aperture iris itself has 11 rounded blades (like the Sony GM lens) and maintains a nicely circular shape.

Further confusing the issue is my typical setup for the Canon control ring (located at the front of the lens on the 35L VCM), as I typically assign manual aperture control to the control ring. So, when shooting stills, the control ring is my aperture ring. But when I switch to video, the camera defaults to the aperture ring on the 35L VCM, and suddenly the control ring no longer controls the aperture. That just creates muscle memory confusion, as you are very likely to reach for the wrong ring. The only way to avoid having to switch back and forth is to lock the aperture ring in A (automatic) mode, and then the control ring will continue to function to control aperture in video mode. But then, of course, you are basically pretending like the manual aperture ring isn’t there at all! Put simply, I’ve never seen such a confused implementation of an aperture ring in all of my years of lens review, and I’m left scratching my head as to why all of this was necessary.

The control ring itself remains a strong Canon RF feature, and this multipurpose ring can be programmed to a variety of different functions from the within the camera body. It has the typical diamond pattern grip on it that gives it a different tactile feel from other rings.

The manual focus ring is the largest of the three rings, and occupies a good portion of the central housing. An AF | MF switch is to the right of the ring and allows you direct control between the two options. The manual focus ring itself moves smoothly, though I do feel like there is a bit of input lag as it feels focus is just a split-second behind my movements on the focus ring. Focus input is non-linear, which means that it will be speed dependent. Turn the ring fast, and focus will move further; move it slowly, and focus will take a larger rotation to travel the same distance.

The 35L VCM does have a custom/programmable button that can be assigned a value from within the camera. There’s a broad range of functions you can choose from.

While my loaner copy did not include it (non retail packaging), the lens does ship with a attachable rear filter holder. This is for very thin gel filters only, and probably won’t get much use for most people.

The petal-shaped lens hood itself is fairly deep and robust. It has inner ribs and a locking button to ensure it doesn’t get inadvertently knocked. You can see from the photo below that it is probably 40% longer than the hood that comes with the Sony GM lens.

A typical L-series leatherette pouch is included. I prefer the nylon padded cases included with some other brands lenses, as I don’t feel like the L-series pouches have much protection value for transport.

The build quality feels pretty much like a standard L-series lens. There’s an engineered plastic housing over metal internal parts. It has a matt finish with fine flocking with a few platinum colored accent rings that marry nicely to the similar color on the lens mount of the camera, (and, of course that all important red ring near the front!). My experience is that this finish is resistant to scratches and marks. It feels tough and durable, and I’ve personally had Canon L-series lenses that I’ve used for a decade without issues.

As noted earlier, there is no lens-based stabilization (an area of differentiation from the earlier RF 35mm F1.8 IS), and you’ll have to rely on camera based stabilization if your camera is so equipped.

The minimum focus distance is 28cm (11″), and the maximum magnification figure is 0.18x. This is, unfortunately, a regression from the EF 35mm F1.4L II, which could achieve a 0.21x magnification, and is even further behind the Sony 35mm F1.4 GM, which can achieve a 0.26x magnification. Here’s what the magnification looks like:

The figure isn’t impressive, but fortunately the up close performance is good. You can produce some useful and interesting close shots.

Other than a few odd design decisions, the Canon RF 35mm F1.4L VCM is about what I would expect, namely, a well built, highly functional lens. I appreciate the weight savings and the additional features, though I do wish that Canon could do a better job of implementing some of their new design elements.

Autofocus

Canon has debuted a new focus system here interestingly at the same time as Viltrox. Both have released a new VCM (Voice Coil Motor) focus system, which is similar to what Tamron calls VXD. In the case of Canon, this new VCM is also paired with a Nano USM motor at the front of the focus group to allow for very quick, very quiet autofocus.

Canon’s earlier L series primes like the 50mm F1.2L and 85mm F1.2L actually employed older Ring USM type focus systems. This was a DSLR era technology that works fine for stills but doesn’t work as well for video, and Canon is clearly all in on this being a “hybrid” lens that focuses equally if not more on the video side of things. No complaints from me, however, as this hybrid focus system works equally well for stills and video. It’s much closer to what Sony is achieving with its GM lenses than what the early Canon RF lenses were like.

That puts some action photography on the table. The lens is quick enough to keep up with action, though this sequence was challenging at times due to the fact that Nala blends so well with the autumn foliage.

I had good success in lower light with eye tracking as well.

At this stage it shouldn’t be a surprise to get well focused results from a Canon L series lens during portrait settings, and, of course, that’s exactly what I found. Even using the Canon Connect app to remotely trigger portrait shots, I could see that tracking was always on the eye, and I was able to get consistently well focused results at F1.4:

I get asked sometimes why I use myself as a subject in some of reviews for portraits. I can say with confidence that it isn’t vanity, but rather something more practical. I use myself for a portrait subject at times because A) I’m available and B) I’m free. I’m not actually a wedding or portrait photographer these days (I will do both of those things on rare occasions, but more as a favor for friends and family), so I actually usually only do portrait sessions in the process of reviewing photography gear. I’m most interested in how the gear performs for these specific applications. In this case, I was very positive about the results I got whether my subject (myself) was facing the camera or in profile.

I also had good results in a church setting as well, with good accuracy on the speaker.

I also had no problems with focusing in a strongly backlit scene. I wanted to catch the light coming though these dried wildflowers.

In short, I had zero issues with autofocus during stills capture.

Video AF

This of course is designed to be a hybrid lens, so the autofocus performance during video is equally important. One of the great advantages of a focus system like this as compared to STM (stepping motors) is that STM motors will often show those visible steps during focus pulls. USM lens have a tendency to be jumpy and not smooth during video AF. The VCM motor is perfect, allowing for very smooth, well damped pulls that move steadily from point A to point B in a linear, consistent fashion.

There is also no sound during this transitions, just smooth performance. The only negative I can point to is that there is some focus breathing. Not as bad as the Sony 35GM, however. You may have electronic focus breathing compensation available in your Canon camera if it is a newer one, though unfortunately that technology is not in my EOS R5.

Here’s a look at a frame from one of my video clips.

My hand test (where I alternately block the lens’ view of my face with my hand and then remove it) also went well so long as I gave the lens time to make its transitions. It is not tuned to jump from one subject to another, but rather to smoothly transition from one subject to another.

When gliding along during video capture from one subject to another, I got mostly smooth results with logical transitions. All in all, focus is solid here. That’s a definite strength for the lens.

Image Quality Breakdown

The RF 35L VCM is a somewhat surprising lens optically in a few ways. The EF 35mm F1.4L II had some buzz in that Canon debuted a completely new type of glass element in it. I said this in my review, “The Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L II USM’s biggest marketing buzz centered around a completely new kind of element in the optical formula which Canon calls “Blue Spectrum Refractive Optics” or BR Optics for short. This special organic material gives a greater control over reducing axial chromatic aberrations than any substance before, and is at least partially responsible for the amazing image quality.” At the time we all thought that this would almost certainly would be a part of many future optical designs, but, surprisingly, the only one that I’m aware of personally since then was the RF 85mm F1.2L. One would think that this new 35mm F1.4 would receive something similar, but the answer is surprisingly “no”.

The optical design is similar on paper (14 elements in 11 groups), but no BR Element. We do have 2 UD (Ultra-Low Dispersion) glass elements along with 2 Aspherical elements in the design. The MTF chart looks very good, but not quite as good at that for the Sony GM lens (shown second here).

Sharpness is not a problem for the 35L VCM. It is an extremely sharp lens and able to render the fine details in a way that only the best lenses do.

There is going to be plenty of sharpness for anyone, but unfortunately there is some serious controversy in other areas.

Starting with vignette and distortion. If you look at a corrected JPEG or RAW file, things don’t look too bad.

But you know something is going on behind the scenes when, in the camera, you don’t even have the option of turning lens corrections for distortion off! The image above is what I could see in the viewfinder as I lined up the test chart.

I don’t know what is going on over at Canon, but it seems like their engineers have just given up on trying to correction distortion optically. I have been shocked by how much distortion has been left in their lenses to be cleaned up by software…and that has included a number of L series lenses. If I take an uncorrected RAW into Lightroom, there is a pretty shocking amount of distortion and vignette.

That’s just weird in a 35mm lens. Sony’s 35mm F1.4 GM has almost zero distortion. The Canon EF 35mm F1.4L II had next to no distortion. This lens requires a +26 to manually correct the distortion. It also required me to nearly max out the vignette slider (+96) to get a clean end result.

That will produce radically different results in real world shots if you have corrections off. On the distortion side of things, you will definitely see a pretty wild result if corrections are turned off.

That makes this a dubious pick for interiors and architectural work.

Likewise the sheer amount of vignette is going to be noticeable as well, radically changing the “look” of images at large apertures if not corrected.

Now, to be fair, the EF 35L II also had extremely heavy vignette, though one could hope that Canon could actually get better at this over the past nine years.

But what’s the big deal? As long as things look fine after correction, no harm done, right?

The problem is that all electronic corrections come with a penalty. Correcting distortion has a negative impact on sharpness (and sometimes geometry, if the distortion is complex). Correcting vignette is like recovering shadows in that it often comes at the cost of additional noise and even some color banding. You can get away with more at lower ISO values, but take at look at this shot of a guitar in lower light (ISO 6400). In the crops below I’ve sampled the evenly colored wall behind the guitar from the center and then the lower left area above where the natural shadow begins. Look at how much rougher the noise pattern is in the area that has had to receive vignette correction.

That noise is nearly four stops worse due to the vignette correction.

But it could be worse, because if we sample the area in the upper left, where there is some shadow, we can actually see color blotchiness taking place there due to the corrections.

Put simply, that wouldn’t be the case if the lens was optically corrected rather than relying on so much electronic correction. I’ve seen this far too often from Canon in the RF era. There is so much distortion that Canon is having to designed their lenses much wider than the stated focal length so that the electronic correction can try to bring it back to a semblance of normal. Look back at how much wider the uncorrected result is on my chart as compared to the profile corrected result. In camera I had the sides of the chart aligned, but that was only because the camera would only show me the corrected result. The actual image is considerably wider so that it can be the proper focal length after correction. Canon has repeatedly touted their new RF mount and how it offers up so many new design advantages and opportunities, and yet so many of their RF wide angle lenses are worse in some of these areas than anything I ever saw on EF.

Disappointing.

Things are a little better in the fringing department. Longitudinal chromatic aberrations (LoCA) occur before and after the plane of focus, and while I see some fringing, it isn’t severe.

You can see mild amounts of fringing after the plane of focus on high contrast surfaces.

There is, however, more fringing than what was present on the EF 35L II, which is again a bit disappointing.

There is only the tiniest amount of lateral chromatic aberrations (LaCA) near the edge of the frame, certainly not enough to be noticed in real world situations.

Obviously the performance in these areas is a bit underwhelming, as this is a worse lens than the EF lenses it replaces in most all of these metrics.

But all is not lost. Things are about to get better. The Canon RF 35mm F1.4L VCM is a very sharp lens. Here’s a look at my test chart that the crops will come from.

Here are the roughly 200% F1.4 crops from across the frame. This is on the 45MP Canon EOS R5:

That’s pretty great. Even the extreme corners look fairly good. Even landscape shots at F1.4 look crisp and high detail, and in this crop from the plane of focus you can see that the resolution is consistently good right off to the edge of the frame.

Here’s a closer distance shot that shows great detail and very nice delineation of the little frost crystals on the edge of this autumn leaf.

Obviously there is no lack of contrast and detail for portrait work even at F1.4, which is clearly going to be one of the major strengths of this lens.

35mm F1.4 lenses are fantastic for doing environmental portraits or wedding work, and I think this lens will shine for that.

Stopping down to F2 produces a bit more contrast and detail.

There’s a bit more at F2.8, and more to see at F4, which looks extremely sharp even in the corner (upper left shown here).

At landscape apertures (F4-F8), the lens is sharp from corners to corners.

Things stay that sharp through F8, with a little drop-off at F11, and more obvious softening due to diffraction at F16, which is minimum aperture.

So sharpness is great.

The EF 35mm F1.4L II was exceptional not only because it was sharp, however, but because it had great bokeh and rendering (something I also feel about the Sony FE 35mm F1.4 GM, which was the lens that allowed me to let go of the 35LII).

I’m not convinced the rendering is quite as magical here, but I do like the look of images overall. You will get the typical cat eye type deformation in the shape of specular highlights near the edge of the frame.

Stop down to F2, and the geometry looks considerably better.

Get close and the amount of background defocus is fairly strong.

Move back a little, however, and I find a little more hard edges than what I would prefer.

Some of the resulting bokeh in busier settings can look a bit “nervous” or jittery”, as shown here.

I did shoot a number of different direct comparisons with the GM lens, and I did consistently prefer the bokeh from the Sony. The bokeh is softer and creamier and with less hard edges.

I have to say I’m a little disappointed in this aspect of performance, particularly since I really did love the rendering from the EF lens.

One area where I was critical of the EF lens was when it came to flare resistance. I was surprised by the amount of ghosting I saw from such an expensive lens that was optically strong in other areas. I’m also a little surprised here, as there is definitely more ghosting and veiling present that I would have expected. The lens has Canon’s Air Sphere (ASC) Coatings, but unfortunately those don’t stop some issues at both large and small apertures.

One final area of strength is a common one for a Canon lens – great color. I liked the colors produced by the 35L VCM in the various scenarios I shot it in.

Colors are nicely saturated but without being garish. It’s nice optical glass.

All in all, this lens surprised me a bit. I went in expecting it to be great thanks to the exceptional heritage it has…and I don’t feel like this is a great lens. It is a very sharp, yes, but it actually has a surprisingly long list of optical weaknesses, particularly for a 35mm prime lens that costs $1500 USD. I do like this lens in many ways, but I’m not sure it would make my top 5 list for 35mm lenses. I feel bad because I genuinely wanted to love this lens, particularly since I feel like I’ve given a lot of Canon lenses fairly critical reviews over the past few years, and for many of the early years as a photographer and reviewer I was solely a Canon man. But my job is let the proverbial chips fall where they may. This is a unquestionably a very good lens, but it doesn’t quite feel like the lens we should have gotten. You can see more images in the gallery here.

Conclusion

The Canon RF 35mm F1.4L VCM is a rather complicated lens, and it has already become clear that it will be somewhat polarizing. Whereas the typical rating for first party lenses like this on most retail sites will be 4.5 out of 5 stars or higher, already the reviews for the 35L VCM are much more mixed. Even on Canon USA’s storefront, the rating for the lens is under 4 stars, which is extremely rare. As I’ve read the feedback from early adopters, I find that there are those who ardently defend it and feel like those critical of the lens are being unfair, while others are severely disappointed because they wanted to love the lens but feel like its flaws are unacceptable. The EF 35L II that I personally loved currently sits at 5 out of 5 stars on B&H Photo; the new RF 35L has 3.8 stars, with 15 5-star ratings, 9 4-star ratings, 2 3-star ratings, 3 2-star ratings, and 5 1-star ratings. As I said, polarizing.

But don’t let that discourage you, necessarily, as there are a number of people who are delighted with the lens. Yes, the argument that a lens this expensive shouldn’t need to rely on software corrections is valid, though, at the end of the day, if you’re happy with the end results, does that really matter? I personally was a little frustrated that the aperture ring doesn’t work during stills on my R5, but I’ve long had the control ring on RF lenses work as an aperture ring anyway, so I really wasn’t any further behind than I was with any other Canon lens.

Autofocus in particularly stands out to me as being exceptional in this lens. This is definitely the fastest focusing of the big L series primes that I’ve reviewed on RF thus far. Autofocus is near instantaneous in all situations, and the ability to keep up with fast action gives this lens further value for sports, reportage, and even in critical wedding situations. I don’t really understand Canon’s logic in this mirrorless phase, but I’m glad that the Canon RF 35mm F1.4L VCM exists nonetheless, as it fills a definite need on the platform. Let’s just hope that by the time we get to a MK II version down the road all of this ambiguity will be gone.

Pros:

• Over 30% lighter than the EF lens
• Great build with additional features
• Advanced weather sealing
• Very fast and confident autofocus
• Exceptional video AF performance
• Extremely sharp
• Good contrast
• Good color
• Cheaper than the EF lens by a good margin

Cons:

• A shocking amount of distortion for a 35mm lens
• Very heavy vignette
• Very confusion implementation of an aperture ring
• Some flare issues
• Bokeh and rendering isn’t at the level of the EF 35L II

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