Canon RF800/11 is STM(N)

NO complaints, BUT, understand that you need to be a ways from the subject to get a good shot. I use it for birds and wildlife so I find it to be perfect. But, once in a blue moon I am too close to a subject and have to back up to get a good shot. I sold my first one to a friend and bought another one because I missed it so much.

I was really excited to see that Canon was coming out with new Telephoto lenses specifically designed for the R Series Cameras. I have a couple of 3rd party lenses that work pretty well on the R, but by that I mean pretty well. There's nothing that quite beats something designed specifically to work well with a specific product and this is it. The firmware on the EOS R I have was updated to specifically recognize this lens properly and it knows exactly how to work with it. It is tuned to work great with it, and it does.The lens is lightweight and VERY sharp. I'm not going to say $12K sharp, but you get the idea. It is very good. Now there are those that will complain about the fact that it is strictly an F/11 non-adjustable lens, however the R series cameras are very good at high ISO's and to be truthful, unless you are shooting Birds in Flight, you can shoot at relatively slow shutter speeds and use lower ISO's due to the very good 4 stop Image Stabilization. I can routinely shoot at 1/30 second (if careful) and get good crisp results, but quite frankly anything even under overcast skies will shoot at around 1/1000 sec at ISO's at or under 1000.One thing I will say is you will want to adjust your ISO's manually, as the camera will try to crank up the ISO's a bit to keep the shutter speeds a bit on the high side. I believe this is a combination of being on the safe side to keep handheld images crispy, and because Canon Markets the lens at being great for handheld work. It is true, it is very good at this.If there is one limitation it is that it is a Prime lens meaning it is not a zoom lens so the focal length is not adjustable. You also have a 20ft minimum focusing distance, so you have to get used to that and also you can't tweak your composition the way you can with a zoom lens. You need to use the sneaker zoom mode for that. On the plus side, prime lenses are very good at handling distortion and chromatic aberrations and this lens is no exception. It is very sharp at the edges and pretty much purple and green fringe free.I'm very happy with this purchase and would encourage it's purchase knowing it's positive attributes as well as it's limitations.EDIT: After using this lens for a few months now, I like it even more. I found that when shooting in RAW and using DXO Photolab 4 and the new Deep Prime noise filter, I can shoot at very high ISO's (up to 25K) and get very usable results. It sounds to good to be true, but it's not. You can push your ISO's to unthought speeds. This now allows me to get way more flexibility with the lens, and it's a real blast to use, even in relatively dim conditions. Before the new Photolab 4 update, I could only shoot to about ISO 6400 before the image started to suffer, but the new version of software makes this lens just about perfect.

I gave this great Lens a 4 instead of a 5 due to the fixed F/11 aperture. However, I did not do so due to the limitations in low light that everyone is talking about. The Canon R5 manages high ISOs quite well. Instead, the issue I have with the fixed F/11 aperture is the lack of flexibility in Depth of Field (DOF) which may well be many magnitudes more of an issue with the usefulness of this Lens than is the light issue. Read on.In this review I will not go into all the technical details of the new Canon RF 800mm F/11 Prime Lens. You can get that in many places. This Lens really is a game changer. What I will discuss are some limitations of this lens that should not be a surprise to anyone, but which I overlooked when I first started to shoot with it. While the RF 800mm F/11 is a great Lens you need to understand the differences and limitations between the new 800mm and the 400mm that most of you may have used in the past as your go-to long Lens. But first some background.I have had a passion for photography since age 8 when I got my first camera. This was a large rectangular box camera handed down within the family, that was 62 years ago. Along the way I have used a large collection of film and digital cameras and their lenses, including Minolta, Sony, Nikon, and Canon. For the last 16 years I have been solidly a Canon user and have owned every EOS 5D camera made. Along the way I had harbored a deep desire to own a Canon prime super-telephoto lens to get greater reach and presumed superior image quality as I do a lot of nature and bird photography. A few years back I did buy the EF-500mm f4L IS II prime lens. Even though I had read all the specs and reviews many times, when I first opened the box I was shocked by how big and heavy it was. I tested the 500mm lens image quality against my EF 100-400mm F/4.5-5.6 L IS II using both lenses on two different cameras (5D Mk III and a 5DsR) mounted on a heavy tripod with a delayed shutter release. After shooting nearly a thousand photos at all apertures and viewing the 500mm images at 100% and the 400mm lens images at 125% side by side I found the 500mm Prime lens really had no advantage over the 100-400mm Zoom in image quality. I sent the 500mm Prime back.Fast forward to 2020 and the release of the Canon EOS R5. Along with the EOS R5 I bought the RF 800mm F/11 IS. Being absolutely giddy to finally have an 800mm lens I skipped the at-home research and testing and headed straight for my favorite duck pond. I shot a few hundred photos of individual ducks, and groups of ducks, at distances between 50 ft and 150 ft as I always did at this pond. I shot hand-held, and on a sturdy monopod. I shot in Flexible Mode at 1/200 sec (mistake 1) with auto ISO. I had always shot at 1/200 Sec. for non-flight shots and they had come out great. Of course, the aperture is always F/11 and I assumed that this aperture would provide plenty of Depth-of-Field (Mistake 2). All photos looked fine on the camera-back display so I headed home to view them on a large computer screen. Nearly all of the photos were unacceptably blurry where I did not want any blur. The photos fell into groups. Individual ducks at rest were quite sharp except that some ducts around 50 ft distant had portions of the duck blurry. Individual ducks that were swimming were all generally blurry. In groups of ducks, the duck at the focus point was mostly sharp, if at rest, but ducks only a foot or two feet away were quite blurry. None of the photos appeared to be blurry due to camera shake, even the hand-held ones. This is when the light bulb came on that I had skipped the step of understanding the substantial limitations of this lens at relatively short range compared to the 400mm Lens I had normally used for this purpose. You need to understand these limitations in order to successfully use this lens at ranges of 25 to 200 ft. This is what I found.Fist lets look at why the shutter speed of 1/200 did not stop the motion of a swimming duck. The 400mm lens had an Angle of View of 5.15 degrees providing a Horizontal Field of View of 9 ft. at 100 ft distance. The 800mm Lens has an Angle of View of 2.58 degrees providing a Horizontal Field of View at 100 ft of only 4.5 ft. This means the swimming duck will move across the camera’s focal plane in half the time. If 1/200 sec always worked well with the 400mm Lens, then I would need to use 1/400 sec to get consistently crisp photos of swimming ducks using the 800mm Lens. As for the F/11 fixed aperture much has been written concerning limitations in low light, but little has been said about the lack of flexibility in Dept of Field (actually, no flexibility). Since this lens has a fixed aperture the Depth of Field is strictly a function of distance to your subject. At 100 ft the Depth of Field at F/11 using the 400mm Lens is 12 feet. At 100 ft using the 800mm Lens the Depth of Field is reduced to only 3 ft. This is 1.5 ft in front of your subject and 1.5 ft beyond the subject. At 75 ft range the Dept of Field for the 800mm Lens is reduced to 20 inches, or 10 inches in front of, and 10 inches beyond your focus point. At the minimal focus range of the 800mm Lens (about 25 ft) the Dept of Field is 1 inch. I suggest you download or build your own Depth of Field table for an 800mm Lens at F/11 aperture and keep it handy until you have pretty much committed it to memory. Armed with this new knowledge I went back to the pond and selectively picked my shots factoring in the DOF limitations of the 800mm Lens and was rewarded with a much greater % of great keepers. However, it was clear that I would always need to also take my EF100-400 zoom along, probably mounted on a second camera, so as not have to pass up some great shots not attainable with the 800mm.This new 800mm really is a great Lens. There are hundreds of reviews out there that will tell you that. It is lighter than my EF100-400 zoom by 7 ounces, can easily be used hand-held, and is very near as sharp as my 100-400mm zoom, which is an exceptional Lens. However, making the best use of this Lens will involve a much greater awareness of the Lens DOF limitations under 200 ft, or even further, depending on the subject. I will go out on a limb and predict that at least 90% of all photos taken with this 800mm Lens will be at ranges of 300 ft and less for nature photography. This is due to its’ light weight and ease of use compared to the big Super Telephoto Primes. I would consider this new Lens to be a walk-around Lens at least from an ease of use standpoint. By the way, at 300 ft the Depth of Field for this lens is decent 27 ft. Hyperfocal distance is 6580 ft which would be great for bringing the mountains up close over the water. If you have invested in the EOS R5, get yourself a Canon RF 800mm F/11 Prime Lens to go with it. If used properly, you will not be disappointed.

This lens is an insane value for what it brings to the table. It’s dark (as expected, it’s stuck at an f11) but under ideal conditions gives incredible quality at distance. This paired with my R6m2 and DXO has allowed me to do things that used to be impossible at under five figures. The size when extended is still smaller than I expected, and it is incredibly well built even being primarily made of plastic. I’d love it even more if it had some weather sealing, but at the price point I can’t complain. Overall I am highly satisfied with this lens and would gladly buy it again.