Not Done By an Influencer

Generally speaking, there are very few Canon RF lenses that I don’t really like. Some of them, like the Canon RF 24-105mm f2.8 L, just don’t make a lot of sense to me. But this is a small prime lens and offers good image quality without being the equvalent of reverse osmosis water the way that Sony is. If that went over your head, then just know that it doesn’t feel like it was made in a lab. Instead, it was made with something a bit more special.

The Big Picture: Canon RF 24mm f1.4 L Review Conclusions

To anyone who has never shot with high-end Canon lenses before, I strongly recommend that you don’t try this lens out. Why? Because you’ll want it really badly. A buddy of mine who is a long-time photographer for events tried it out on my Canon EOS R5. He commented on how awful Fujifilm is in comparison when it comes to autofocus speed and even the look. And really, the look is what captivates me. When I took my first photos with the Canon RF 24mm f1.4 L lens, I was in awe at how beautiful their rendering of anything is when combined with film recipes from Thomas Franson. On top of that, it’s weather-resistant and fairly affordable at around $1,499. Genuinely, I’m not used to Canon L glass being priced so low. But that’s a pretty solid deal.

At the same time, I have to be quite frank: this lens is kind of boring. By that, I mean to say that using this lens is like going to a pizzeria and trying a standard slice that’s been reheated. In truth, you probably won’t be able to tell the difference between two local pizzerias, and you’re probably going to add garlic powder and red pepper flakes on top. The Canon RF 24mm f1.4 L is kind of like that. I wish it offered more like the aberration control that the 100mm f2.8 has. I truly wished for something unique and really expected something like that from Canon. But we didn’t get it.

Regardless, the lens offers really stunning image quality. And for that, we’re giving it 4 out of 5 stars. Want one? Check it out on Amazon

Pros

• Weather resistant
• Not overly sharp, but still sharp enough
• Fast autofocus performance
• There’s an aperture ring
• 67mm, the same size as so many lenses, and so I can use the filters I love

Cons

• I wish the aperture ring clicked

Gear Used

We used

• Canon RF 24mm f1.4 L: On loan to us from Lensrentals
• Canon R5: Long-term loan provided by Canon

Innovations

All in all, there is nothing really innovative about this lens except that it was specifically designed to be a hybrid. But by all means, Sony’s 24mm f1.4 is much smaller and lighter than this.

Hardware

If you’ve felt a Canon L lens, then you’ve most likely felt this. But the biggest thing that’s a variation from the original L-series primes is the addition of a dedicated aperture ring. Near the front of the lens is the clicked ring that many of us used as an aperture ring so many years ago. The lens’s construction uses a lot of plastic, yet at the same time, it feels well built. Of any of the higher-end lenses that have a plastic body, I’ve always liked Canon’s build quality the most. It tends to just feel so right.

Ease of Use

I’ve been shooting with Canon cameras and lenses for nearly two decades. But I’ve also used lots of camera systems – and so I’ve learned that I have a ton of neuroplasticity that lets me adapt to a camera system easily and whenever I need to. With that in mind, I can say with confidence that the ease of use doesn’t really feel like a Canon lens. Instead, it feels like Canon is trying to be someone else, namely Sony. Sony started adding aperture rings to their lenses back when they first collaborated with. Zeiss on the E-mount glass for full-frame cameras. While the Canon RF 24mm f1.4 L feels much better than those Zeiss/Sony Frankenlenses, I wish Canon stuck to consistency.

That’s been a long-time annoyance of mine. I truly wish that Canon put the playback button in the same place as various other controls for their cameras. And for the most part, they do. But when it comes to the lenses, I haven’t always felt that to be the case.

For a solid portion of this review, I left the camera in program-auto mode and just shot with it. I didn’t have a single complaint about the lens, but I surely had issues with how the focusing on the Canon R5 works. While the Canon R5 II fixed that to a point, I take issue with the fact that it won’t be able to find people with my skin condition in low light—at least, that’s what our President may want to call it.

So, really, it depends on what you’re shooting and what camera you happen to be using.

Focusing

With the Canon R5, the Canon 24mm f1.4 RF L lens is a fantastic performer when focusing in low light, bright light, etc. I’d love to be able to use it for street photography with the lens zone focused out, but I was not able to figure out how to lock the focusing ring.

Image Quality

Well, here’s the part of the review where I’m pretty much head over heels. The image quality from this lens is pretty superb. There’s nice bokeh, the image quality is sharp, and with the right picture style applied to the lens in-camera, you probably won’t even need to do any post-production at all. If you’re one of those photographers who believe in spending more time behind the computer than in the field shooting, then know that this lens can also give you what you want. But you’ll probably end up messing with the exposure and colors more than anything. However, I didn’t. With the power of presets, I had to do pretty much nothing to these images except for slight edits and perspective corrections.

Extra Image Samples

The Phoblographer has been huge on transparency with our audience since day one. Nothing from this review is sponsored. Further, many folks will post reviews and show lots of editing in the photos. The problem then becomes that anyone and everyone can do the same thing. They’re not showing what the lens can do. So, we have a section in our Extra Image Samples area to show edited and unedited photos. From this, you can decide for yourself.

Unedited

Edited

Tech Specs

These specs are taken from the Lensrentals listing

Declaration of Journalistic Intent

The Phoblographer is one of the last standing dedicated photography publications that speaks to both art and tech in our articles. We put declarations up front in our reviews to adhere to journalistic standards that several publications abide by. These help you understand a lot more about what we do:

• At the time of publishing this review, Canon is not an advertiser with the Phoblographer. In fact, since we brought all advertising efforts in-house in 2020, they haven’t advertised with us.
• Our reviews are constantly updated when new firmware comes out. So please expect updates from us in the future if Canon ever gets us a loaner unit. As it is, most of our product request emails to Canon were met with silence.
• None of the reviews on the Phoblographer are sponsored. That’s against FTC laws and we adhere to them just the same way that newspapers, magazines, and corporate publications do. Others don’t always make declarations.
• Canon did not loan the lens to us. Instead, it was loaned to us free of charge by the editorial program over at Lensrentals. There was no money exchange between Lensrentals and the Phoblographer for this to happen. Manufacturers trust the Phoblographer’s reviews, as they are incredibly blunt.
• Canon knows that they cannot influence the site’s reviews. If we don’t like something or if we have issues with it, we’ll let folks know. We were the first publication to inform about several issues that we’ve seen from Canon before.
• Lensrentals sent the product to Phoblographer in NYC to loan the camera to us. Our home office is based in New York. We’ve long since returned it.
• The Phoblographer’s standards for reviewing products have become much stricter. After having the world’s largest database of real-world lens reviews, we choose not to review anything we don’t find innovative or unique, and in many cases, products that lack weather resistance. We’ve also steered away from Micro Four Thirds and APS-C as they’re dying formats. This is a conclusion that even the other members of TIPA agree on. Unless something is very unique, we probably won’t touch it.
• In recent years, brands have withheld NDA information from us or stopped working with us because they feel they cannot control our coverage. These days, many brands will not give products to the press unless they get favorable coverage. In other situations, we’ve stopped working with several brands for ethical issues. Either way, we report as honestly and rawly as humanity allows.
• At the time of publishing, the Phoblographer is the only photography publication that is a member of Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative. We champion human-made art and are frank with our audience. We are also the only photography publication that labels when an image is edited or not.

More can be found on our Disclaimers page.