Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 Review
The Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 was one of four lenses announced alongside the very first EOS R camera all the way back in 2018. Now it has taken way longer than expected for me get hands on with this lens, but I finally did and that is what we are going to be talking about today. What does this lens do well, where does it fall short, and 6 years after its announcement, how has it held up? Let’s get into it.
Right off the bat, I am kicking myself just a little bit for being so late to the party. Much like the RF 24mm, this is a lens that is easy to fall in love with. I shot at night around the city and then in the morning up in the mountains and the images I saw on the back of my camera just kept me wanting more and that is the a sign of a good lens. When paired with a full frame camera like a Canon R5 or R6, you get great separation even at relatively far distances from the camera body. Whether you are shooting landscapes or using it more for portrait work, the sharpness and gentle fall off is something that stood out right away.
While I had the lens I ran some not so scientific sharpness tests’ so you can see for yourself just how well the lens does. Wide open at f/1.8 we see a slight hit to the overall images sharpness, but still some very nice detail for such a small and compact lens. Stopping down to f/2.8 you can see center and corner sharpness both clean up a little. At f/4.0 we see it sharpen up just a little more, but not the same improvement we are seeing from f/1.8 to f/2.8. Overall, I found the sharpness to be more than good enough throughout the f-stop range, most of the time I found myself shooting wide open or stopped down to f/2.8.
Something to note, there is a small amount of haze when shooting wide open at f/1.8, it does clear up around considerably by the time you hit f/2.8, in my time shooting with this lens it didn’t really affect the sharpness of the final image in any meaningful way but is a characteristic of this lens that you will notice after shooting with it for awhile.
Moving on to Chromatic Aberration, I did notice more CA with this lens than I have with newer Canon glass. This might be due to lens design or somewhat older manufacturing technique, it appears to share a very similar optical design to the EF 35mm f/2.0, just flipped. The older EF version had a large front element and a small rear element, whereas the RF 35mm F/1.8 has a small front element and a large rear element. Either way, the CA does get better as you stop down, most notably in the corners, in real world usage, it certainly shows up but is easily correctable and not something I thought about during shooting or editing.
Autofocus is handled by an STM motor, this has become the norm for Canon on these more budget friendly primes with the higher end USM motors being used almost exclusively on L-Series glass. In short, it gets the job done. Focus is snappy, although not always quiet in photo mode. The barrel does protrude from the front of the lens when focusing, this is most evident when shooting close to the lens, in day to day use I never really noticed this. Paired with my R6, the focus acted just like every other RF lens, locking onto eyes, no weird focus hunting or jitters. In video mode, the camera internationally slows down the rate in which a lens focuses and in that case the loudness that you can hear from the motor in photo mode all but went away. If you plan on using this lens for interviews with the talent mic’d up either with a boom or lav, the lights being used to light the interview are most certainly going to be louder than this lens.
Something that I have praised Canon for in the past and it holds true with this lens is their inclusion of image stabilization in just about every single lens they make. If you look at Sony, Panasonic, Nikon, none of these manufactures offer image stabilization in more lenses than Canon does and I truly appreciate them for that. Even being one of the very first RF lenses produced, when paired with a modern camera like the R5 and R6 you are getting 7 stops of image stabilization with this body and lens combination. The results of this can be felt most on the video side, having good image stabilization makes a huge difference when it comes to removing small jittery movements but keeping that handheld feel. When it comes to shooting at night or in low light environments, I was able to hand hold shots at 1/5th of a second and below and still get tack sharp photos.
On the video side, the image I got from the RF 35mm f/1.8 was right up there with my more expensive RF 15-35mm f/2.8. Having good stabilization I was able to hand hold every single shot adding in subtle movements without needing a gimbal or tripod. Having a fast f/1.8 aperture I was able to keep my ISO low when shooting at night, although this does means you are going to need some pretty strong ND filters during the day if you want to shoot at f/1.8 and keep that 180° shutter.
Something that I really enjoy about shooting with these smaller primes is their size and weight. On the Canon R6 this is a very well balanced lens, it is the right size, has all of the right buttons, the control ring and focus ring both work great with the latter being nice and smooth even on this particular lens after having many years of abuse. In total, I shot for close to 6 hours in single digit temperatures and while this lens is not rated for those conditions, it never fogged up, froze up, and the focus and control rings stayed smooth and easy to use the entire time. Truly a professional grade product at an affordable price.
Now with all this that being said, would I recommend this lens? For most people, this might very quickly become their go to lens. Like I said in the beginning, this is an easy lens to fall in love with and it has been a lens many of you have been asking me to review and I can really see why. Will I be buying one, well…. I would and I still might, but I have waited so long to try out this lens that Canon is now rumored to release a RF 35mm f/1.2 in just a few months and so I guess we are going to wait and see. This is a great lens at a great price that produces a great image and if that sounds like something that might interest you, I definitely recommend checking out this little 35mm.
As always, thank you so much for reading, if you would like to pick up the Canon RF 35mm f/1.8 for yourself you can find it linked here. Please note, clicking any of these links above and buying from Amazon helps support my channel as I get a little commission from each order at no extra cost to you. Thank you for your support!