![\"\"](\"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/r5_1435.jpg\")
<\/a>Construction and Handling<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Most ultra-wide zoom lenses that start at 14mm have a few things in common. They are generally very large, they generally have a bulbous front element that cannot take filters and they generally have a shorter zoom range to accommodate the wider starting focal length. The RF 14-35mm f\/4L IS takes those typical trends and rejects all of them. The 14-35mm f\/4L is a surprisingly compact and lightweight lens, being even lighter and smaller than the already fairly compact RF 24-105mm f\/4L. It has a standard front element that takes front-mounting 77mm filters, and it sacrifices nothing on the long end of the zoom range, going all the way from 14mm ultra-wide angle to 35mm. It’s also worth noting that Canon isn’t fudging the 14mm focal length: it’s truly a 14mm lens, and is a degree or two wider than my Sigma 14-24mm f\/2.8. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The RF 14-35mm f\/4L is built similarly to all the first-wave L-series lenses for the RF mount. The lens features a textured polycarbonate exterior with a metal mount and feels excellent in the hand. The 14-35mm is solidly constructed, with a tightly assembled body. The lens extends slightly at the wide and long ends of the zoom range, with the lens being at its smallest size at around 22mm. While the inner lens barrel extends about 1cm, there is no wobble in the extending portion. Like all L-series lenses, the RF 14-35mm is weather sealed against dust and moisture, and has a rubber gasket that surrounds the lens mount. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The zoom ring is the broadest of the three rings on the lens, and turns very smoothly and evenly throughout the range. The focus ring turns smoothly with nice damping, and focuses by wire, as all RF lenses do. The lens features a clicky control ring at the end of the lens to allow for changing a variety of camera settings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The RF 14-35mm f\/4L comes with a slim plastic lens hood that locks in place firmly. The hood provides a little bit of shading and protection for the front element. The hood reverses for storage, and unlike a lot of hoods for Canon’s EF-mount ultra-wide zooms, it is of reasonable diameter and doesn’t make the lens overly large when reversed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As mentioned earlier, one of the greatest things about the RF 14-35mm is that despite the extreme ultra-wide field of view, the lens can take normal 77mm screw on filters, including slim polarizers. This is a big advantage over most other wide zooms that start at 14mm. Often 14mm and wider lenses require expensive and bulky filter systems, much like what I was using with the Sigma 14-24mm f\/2.8 DG DN for Sony. The 77mm thread size matches the other f\/4 zoom options in Canon’s RF mount system, so three lenses can cover 14mm through 200mm, while all utilizing the same filters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The RF 14-35mm f\/4L IS comes with Canon’s most recent Nano-USM focusing motors, and as a result, the lens focuses swiftly and silently. Autofocus accuracy is excellent, though I found that in very low light, a larger focus square can be helpful when shooting at the wide end of the zoom range. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One nice benefit to the lens design is a very close minimum focus distance of 7.9 inches at all focal lengths. This yields a respectable maximum magnification of 0.38x, allowing it to pull double duty as a close-up lens when set to 35mm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The lens has an optical stabilizer that Canon claims as good for 5.5 stops on its own, or up to 7 stops on bodies with in-body stabilization. In my experience, this is always a little optimistic, but the stabilizer works very well. I could get sharp hand-held shots at 14mm between 1 and 2 seconds if my technique was good, and 35mm shots at around a half second. This equates to around 4-5 stops of extra handholdability in my experience on the R5. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When looking at a lens like this with a 14-35mm zoom lens that is this compact and lightweight, your first thought might be that it must have some compromises when it comes to optics. And you would be right. I’ll cover those compromises in detail, but I will say that overall I think Canon struck a nice balance here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A quick note before we get into the discussion about sharpness. As you will see in the section on distortion, the RF 14-35mm f\/4L has a rather extreme level of barrel distortion at the wide end of the zoom range, and correction of that distortion is essentially mandatory at the 14 and15mm focal lengths. Sharpness evaluations are done on images that have been corrected for distortion when talking about the wide focal lengths. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The 14-35mm f\/4L IS USM is a lens that is predominantly sharp throughout the focal range. Beginning at the wide end, the lens displays outstanding sharpness over the central 75-80% of the frame right from wide open, with softer edges and corners. Stopping down to around f\/8 to f\/11 raises border sharpness to good levels, with the corners still retaining a bit of softness, mostly due to astigmatism. Compared to the very best 14mm zoom lenses, such as both the DSLR and mirrorless versions of the Sigma 14-24mm f\/2.8, the RF 14-35mm compares very favorably in the central 3\/4 of the image frame, but lags a bit at the edges. Below is a tripod mounted shot that shows what you can expect stopped down on a stable platform. Click here for a 100% crop<\/a> of the upper right corner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The lens improves once you get to around 20-30mm, producing good sharpness over most of the frame wide open, with excellent central sharpness and very good edges and corners when stopped down. Towards 35mm, the lens is a little softer wide open than at the middle focal lengths, but I find it sharpens up nicely across the frame when stopping down. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When shooting at 35mm near the minimum focus distance, taking advantage of the pseudo-macro capabilities, it is advisable to stop down a stop or two. At f\/4, the images when focused close are rather soft, but they sharpen up nicely when stopping down to f\/6.3 or f\/8. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Overall, the lens is reasonably sharp wide open, and very sharp when stopped down, save for a bit of edge and corner softness at the widest focal lengths. Edit: 4\/26\/22 – after using a second copy that I have picked up for myself, I have noticed that the lens performs best at the wide end at f\/5.6 and f\/8, and softens a little at f\/11 and a lot at f\/16. When shooting at the more moderate apertures, edge and corner sharpness is pretty good. There is still the slight smearing from distortion correction, but overall, I’m quite pleased with the performance. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Being an f\/4 wide angle lens, the RF 14-35mm may not seem like a lens that would be able to blur the backround much, but due to the excellent close-focus abilities of the lens, it’s fairly easy to get significant subject separation. Wide open, the blur is actually very pleasing from the RF 14-35mm. Specular highlights are smooth and even and the overall bokeh is rather creamy. When stopping down to increase sharpness a little, you can get small points of light on the edges of specular highlights, as can be seen in the shot below, but I find the overall look to be still rather nice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Like all L-series lenses, the RF 14-35mm f\/4L produces images with very good contrast and rich color throughout the focal range and aperture range. Only at very close focus distances is there a small loss in contrast due to spherical aberration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One minor flaw with the lens is in the area of lateral chromatic aberration. Uncorrected, the lens produces a fair amount of lateral chromatic aberration at the widest focal lengths, which eases as you zoom in until it’s fairly negligible around 35mm. Like most lateral CA, this is easily corrected in RAW conversion. I did not see any field relevant longitudinal CA in my testing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now we come to the section where the largest compromises were made in creating a compact ultra-wide with this large of a zoom range. Beginning with distortion, the RF 14-35mm shows an absolutely massive amount of complex barrel distortion at 14mm. Much like budget lenses such as the RF 24-105mm f\/4.5-7.1, the RF 14-35mm at 14mm is so distorted that the uncorrected image does not cover the image sensor, and as such will show fully black corners when uncorrected. As I mentioned, the distortion is also complex in nature, so standard barrel distortion corrections won’t properly correct the image. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As of the writing of this review, neither Adobe Lightroom\/Camera RAW nor Capture One have the lens profile for the 14-35mm, which meant that for architectural subjects where straight lines are important, I utilized Canon’s own Digital Photo Professional 4 for RAW conversion. If you must use Lightroom, I did find that the profile for the RF 24-105mm f\/4.5-7.1 does a fairly decent job at correcting the distortion, especially when set to 85% strength, though this does leave a small amount of residual barrel distortion in the center of the frame. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Above is an image taken at 14mm, first showing the native distortion and vignetting, from RAW in Adobe Lightroom. Following is the image with full profile applied in Digital Photo Professional. The uncorrected image is also a fair bit wider than 14mm, with the field of view reduced a little when correcting the distortion, however, natively it’s not quite as dramatic as shown in the second image, as this also was perspective corrected for keystoning, further reducing the angle of view. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Thankfully, the distortion is really only truly severe at the 14mm setting. By 15mm, there is still a lot of barrel distortion, and the image circle is just barely not large enough, but by 16mm, the distortion is only mild to moderate and there are no truly dark corners. The mild barrel distortion persists through about 20mm, but by 24mm, the lens is essentially distortion free, before exhibiting a slight pincushion distortion at 35mm. Despite the absolutely severe distortion shown at 14mm, for most of the range, distortion control is pretty good. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As you can also see in the sample above, vignetting is obviously a major problem at the wide end of the zoom range, with fully black corners at 14mm, and still fairly high vignetting at the other wide focal lengths. Between 14-20mm, the vignetting doesn’t even improve that much upon stopping down, so some digital correction will be required if you want evenly shaded corners. from 24-35mm, vignetting is still moderate at wide apertures, but does improve upon stopping down, becoming mild at f\/8 and smaller. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The lens has an average performance against bright light. In most circumstances, bright lights like the sun will not cause any major loss of contrast, which is excellent. There are a fair few small, yet faint ghosts that can appear when the sun is prominent in the frame. The lens also seems to bring out sensor reflections easily, as can be seen in the shot above. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Overall, the optical performance of the RF 14-35mm f\/4L is strong, but with some notable caveats. The lens is predominantly sharp across most of the frame at most settings, yet lags a little behind the very best lenses when comparing edge and corner performance. Color and contrast are great, but the lens relies fairly heavily on digital correction of distortion at the wide end, and on correction of vignetting at most focal lengths, as a means to keep the lens compact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Canon RF 14-35mm f\/4L IS USM is a lens that is really hard to pin down when thinking about conclusions and recommendations. On paper, the lens hits almost every high point for an ultra-wide zoom: it has an outstanding range from a truly ultra-wide 14mm all the way to 35mm, takes standard front filters, is very compact and lightweight, is image stabilized and has great close focus capabilities. However, with all those great things comes some caveats. The biggest may be the price. The lens is $1,699, which is quite high for an f\/4 ultra wide zoom, being $400 more expensive than Nikon’s Z 14-30mm f\/4, $600 more expensive than Canon’s own EF 16-35mm f\/4L, and $300 more expensive than Sigma’s outstanding EF mount 14-24mm f\/2.8. However it is the same price as Sony’s 12-24mm f\/4, and while it isn’t as wide, it also is much longer and can take front filters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Also on the down side, the lens displays some edge softness, high distortion at the wide end and fairly high vignetting throughout, which is a little hard to swallow at that $1,700 price. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With all of that said, I really enjoyed shooting with this lens. While it doesn’t get quite as sharp at the edges as something like my Sigma 14-24mm, it also is just massively lighter and easier to carry on a hike. It takes 77mm filters that you may already own, and having a lens that starts at 14mm and goes all the way to 35mm is extremely versatile. And, to be honest, it’s rare that the slightly softer edges and corners will make a noticeable difference to the quality of the final image in all but the largest prints. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the end, despite the high price and few optical issues, the lens is still very compelling. Edit, 4\/26\/22: After some time, I eventually decided to pick up this lens for myself. The compact size and light weight make it simply a joy to use in the field, and the excellent IS unit allows for sharp shots indoors where other wide angles may struggle a little, even with in-body stabilization. <\/em>It’s an exciting, if imperfect lens, and I think it it will hit the right balance of performance and convenience for a lot of photographers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Click on an image to enlarge:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n As Canon fleshes out their mirrorless RF mount, the usual suspects are starting to fall into place. After initially targeting the highest end users with the pro-grade f\/2.8 zoom lenses and the exceptional 50mm f\/1.2 and 85mm f\/1.2 lenses, Canon has branched out to fill out the next tier of lenses targeted at enthusiasts and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10865,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[429,30,8,308,160],"class_list":["post-10856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-14-35mm","tag-canon","tag-review","tag-wide-angle","tag-zoom"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/1435_front.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p28RGq-2P6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10856"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11275,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10856\/revisions\/11275"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/a>Autofocus and Stabilization<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Continue: Image Quality<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Image Quality<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Sharpness<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Bokeh<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Color, Contrast and Chromatic Aberration<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Distortion, Flare and Vignetting<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a>Continue: Conclusion and Image Samples<\/a> <\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Pros<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Cons<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Image Samples<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>If you enjoyed this review, check out my other reviews in the Review Index<\/a>.<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"