How Good Is Canon's $12,000 RF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM Lens?

Canon's top-level supertelephoto prime lenses are some of the most impressive in the entire camera world, offering extreme focal lengths and apertures paired with uncompromising image quality and performance. The RF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM brings a sports and wildlife staple to the company's mirrorless line, and this excellent video review takes a look at the sort of image quality and performance you can expect from it in practice.

Coming to you from Christopher Frost, this great video review takes a look at the Canon RF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM lens. The 400mm f/2.8 design is one of the foundational lenses for a lot of sports and wildlife shooters and is often where manufacturers show off a lot of their best technology and lens design. Canon's version has been through several iterations at this point, and while the various versions have offered impressive image quality for quite some time now, what really impresses me is how light they have become. My EF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM (Mark I) from 1999 is 11.6 lbs and is rather unwieldy to use, though it does offer great results. On the other hand, the new RF version is nearly half that: 6.4 lbs, and of course, as good as my copy is, it offers image quality improvements as well. Check out the video above for Frost's full thoughts. 

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Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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4 Comments

Since it's basically the EF version with an adaptor permanently attached, I assume you can just read those reviews.

Does the EF version have that ring that is set for focus presets?

Yes

Pretty hard to improve on the best 400mm lens out there. ;-)