A full-frame zoom lens in a surprisingly compact package
www.canon.co.uk £379/$299
The Canon RF 24-50mm f/4.5-6.3 IS STM is designed to take a load off. One of the big attractions of many mirrorless cameras is that they’re small; but for travel and walkabout photography, that advantage is largely lost if you hang a hefty lens on the front of it. This not-so-standard zoom is fairly short on actual zoom range and has a modest aperture rating, but it packs wide-angle to standard focal range coverage, effective optical stabilisation and ultra-quiet autofocus into an amazingly compact package that weighs in at just one-fifth of a kilogram.
Although this configuration is new to the Canon lineup, it’s not unique: Nikon launched its Z 24-50mm f/4-6.3, which is even shorter and lighter, in 2020; and, just as that lens became a kit option for the Nikon Z 5, the RF 24-50mm has become a kit lens for the EOS R8. There’s also something to be said for using it on Canon’s APS-C format R-system bodies, such as the R10, on which it gives an effective zoom range of about 38-80mm; and if you don’t mind a drop in megapixel count, you can switch to APS-C crop mode in full-frame cameras and get the same extended zoom range.
Key features This lens’s standout feature is its compactness. It has a retractable design that shrinks the stowage length to just 58mm, which isn’t much longer than the RF-S 18-45mm
1 The optical path features a modest eight elements in eight groups.
2 The Control option lets you choose your own setting to adjust via the focus ring.
3 To keep the weight of the lens down, the mounting plate is plastic. f/4.5-6.3 IS STM for APS-C format Canon R-system cameras, which measures 44mm when retracted. And while the RF 24-50mm is more than 50 percent heavier, it’s still amazingly light for a full-frame compatible zoom at 210g; to put that into perspective, the Canon RF 24-105mm f/4-7.1 IS STM is 89mm long when retracted, and weighs
395g – getting on for twice as heavy. One of the main drawbacks of this downsizing is the lens’s lack of telephoto reach. There’s nothing wrong with its wide-angle coverage, which stretches to an 84-degree viewing angle, but the lens runs out of stretch at the long end, topping out at a standard 50mm. For many, though, that’s not a problem: if you major in street, landscape or cityscape photography, you’re likely to find the zoom range adequate, and it also works well for vlogging.
Another plus point for both stills and video capture is that the stepping motor-based autofocus system is quick and snappy, while also enabling smooth, virtua
