Canon announced a new all-in-one zoom lens for their mirrorless full-frame camera system, currently including the EOS R and EOS RP. The RF 24-240mm f/4-6.3 IS USM lens offers a 10x zoom range, covering a true wide-angle field of view at the near end and a very respectable telephoto at the far, though it does so with relatively small (and variable) maximum apertures.
This type of lens is intended to appeal to travel photographers and others who either want to keep their camera bag light, or who simply don’t want to bother with changing lenses and are willing to trade away a bit of image quality for that convenience.
Recognizing the importance of video in the camera market today, Canon has given the new lens a nearly silent Nano-USM motor and stepless manual aperture control. The image stabilization provides a remarkable 5-stops of shake reduction for low-light shooting, and the body is relatively lightweight at 750g (1.63 lbs.).
In the past, using an all-in-one zoom generally meant accepting pretty lousy image quality at some part of the zoom range along with mediocre quality for the rest of it. But recently, Canon’s lenses have been extraordinarily sharp, and the large size of the RF mount (along with its short distance to the sensor) should give them more flexibility to engineer better quality throughout. Time will tell whether Canon’s engineers have taken the opportunity, or whether they’ve simply thrown something together to make money from the amateur market after aiming so many of their previous RF lenses at professionals.
Price & Availability
If you’re the impatient type, I’ve got some bad news. The Canon RF 24-240 f/4-6.3 IS USM will not be available until September, when it will cost just under $900. However, if you are patient, you can pre-order the lens already from Adorama or B&H photo.
