The Canon RF 200-800mm f/6.3-9 IS USM lens offers wildlife enthusiasts a versatile tool with an impressive zoom range at a reasonable price. Here's a look at how it performs.
Coming to you from Tony and Chelsea Northrup, this insightful video examines the Canon RF 200-800mm f/6.3-9 IS USM’s capabilities alongside some well-known competitors. The lens is surprisingly lightweight for its size, weighing only 4.5 pounds. It features an adjustable zoom tension control, allowing you to switch between smooth and tight modes depending on your shooting needs. While the lens lacks the speed of prime alternatives like the 600mm f/4, it makes up for it with its much lower cost and portability. In fast-moving scenarios, you might notice slower operation due to the maximum aperture of f/9 at the longest focal length. However, the ability to zoom back when animals come closer provides practical advantages over fixed focal length primes.
Key Specs
- Focal Length: 200-800mm
- Maximum Aperture: f/6.3-9
- Minimum Aperture: f/54
- Image Stabilization: Yes
- Minimum Focus Distance: 2.6’ / 80 cm
- Maximum Magnification: 0.25-0.2x
- Dimensions: 4 x 12.4” / 102.3 x 314.1 mm
- Weight: 4.5 lbs / 2 kg
In sharpness comparisons, the RF 200-800mm performed well, especially when cropping to 800mm compared to other zoom options. Test charts showed better detail retention than the 100-500mm paired with a 1.4x teleconverter. However, against the Canon 600mm f/4 with a teleconverter, the RF lens lagged in image quality. The 600mm gathered more light, producing cleaner images at higher ISOs, a crucial factor in wildlife photography where lighting can vary greatly.
The lens also exhibits focal length reduction, a phenomenon noticeable at the minimum focus distance where 800mm effectively becomes closer to 600mm. While this is a technical limitation, understanding how it impacts real-world results helps you manage expectations. For its price of $1,900, the 200-800mm offers value for Canon users unwilling to invest in more expensive primes or heavy alternatives. Check out the video above for the full rundown.
Tony & Chelsea provide the most thorough and accurate lens and body reviews of all, and it isn't even close. Their tutorials are also the very best in the entire photographic community.
I have not yet "gone mirrorless", so, unfortunately, this 200-800mm is not a lens that I am able to use with my current gear ..... but I still look forward to hearing everything they have to say about it.
I have a 15 year old nephew just getting into wildlife photography, and he has an entry-level Canon mirrorless and is wanting a long lens for it. Maybe I'll recommend this one to him, depending on what Tony and Chelsea have to say about it.
I wish that Canon would have made low-mid priced telezooms like this 10-12 years ago. The fact that they refused to make lenses like this for so long forced a lot of people like me to go to 3rd party lenses like the Sigma and Tamron offerings, and many of us have not yet returned to Canon.
I guess "better late than never" applies here, although I have started to migrate away from Canon for any new gear purchases because they took so long to give customers the gear that they sorely needed.
There have been terrific EF lenses for Canon cameras for decades. Canon didn't need to make those 10 to 12 years ago. Sigma and Tamron made several along with other lesser known brands. I own several non-Canon lenses for my two 6D Mark IIs, but I assure you the R series stands up against anything on the market today. Look at the R5 Mark II, for what it costs there's not another camera on the market that's even close. Migrating away from Canon because you don't know what else is out there for your existing camera or by the incorrect assumption that they waited "so long to give customers the gear they sorely needed" shows a lack of understanding of the market. Canon can't keep R series bodies on the shelves they sell so fast and compared with competition, I'd rather Canon do it right than bow to pressures of those who expect the unnecessary.
Brian,
There are a few people like me who prefer to shoot with unusual, non-traditional focal length. / perture combinations, and with niche lenses.
I am no stranger to Canon and the lenses they had available throughout the first 20 years of this century. I have had many of those Canon L series lenses. But they never offered the degree of flexibility, or the unusualness, that I wanted to shoot with.
I loved Canon's optical quality and build quality, but not the restrictive nature of their lens design and specifications. I never wanted to buy 3rd party lenses, but I was forced to because Canon refused to make the lenses I needed to shoot the way I wanted to shoot.
I think I understand the lens market quite well, and I think that Canon also understands it quite well. However, their goals have been to maximize profits, even when that means not giving people what they really want. They are actually more concerned about their bottom line more than they are concerned about making people happy. Their shareholders' opinions have always come before their customers' opinions. Instead of profits being a nice side-benefit to running a corporation, the profits are the whole point of their corporation (see Ivor Rackham's latest article here in Fstoppers for more context on this statement).
Canon makes the most money by making lenses for the masses, that will sell in high volume. And by insisting on making only those lenses that they think will sell really well, they abandon photographers like me who want small niche lenses. Hence, I am forced - yes, literally forced - to buy third party lenses if I want a 60-600mm zoom, a 15mm shift lens with true 1:1 macro capabilities, a Macro Probe lens, etc.
Canon simply refuses to make many of the lenses that I need to shoot the way I want to shoot. They are finally loosening up a little bit, but not much. They're still not making extreme designs like a Macro Probe. But at least they aren't sticking strictly to the terribly boring focal length / aperture combinations that have been mainstays for the past 50 years.
I would love to see Canon at the very front of the oddball and niche lens market, instead of always lagging behind what the 3rd party manufacturers are coming up with. But I know that more often than not, such oddball products lose money, and Canon is not at all willing to lose any money just to keep a few people happy. At least some other manufacturers are, so I limp along with these 3rd party lenses and the bit lower quality they offer.
Man, if Canon would make a 50-300mm f6.3 with 1:2 reproduction ratio, that would be so great! It would be so useful for photographing mid-sized snakes, large lizards, and large amphibians! Then I would finally be free of those damned extension tubes!