The Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 is a tiny lens – almost a pancake – that can be thrown in your bag or jacket pocket while still covering full-frame! At $300, it’s a very exciting option that seems tailor-made to pair with a midrange zoom. But how does the Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 actually perform? This review will answer all your questions!
For years, I had hoped to see Canon, Nikon, or Sony release a lens like this. It felt like a neglected area of the lens market: an ultra-wide, full-frame lens that prioritized price and size. Sure, I like 16-35mm f/2.8 zooms and 20mm f/1.8 primes as much as the next photographer – but for context, the Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 is less than half the size and less than half the price of any of them.
As someone who does a lot of backcountry hiking and photography, it feels like a dream come true to carry an ultra-wide lens that’s so small and portable that I forget it’s even on my camera. That’s why I had a really enjoyable time shooting with the Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 during my time with it. There’s a lot to be said for keeping a small, cheap lens like this one in your bag any time that you need to leave a bigger ultra-wide lens at home.
Unfortunately, my impressions of the lens weren’t all positive – in fact, mostly the opposite. As you’ll see on the “Optical Performance” page in a minute, the Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 has some serious issues that make it a hard lens to recommend for a number of reasons. It could still be a reasonable choice for long-distance hikes or fast-paced travel photography, but it’s definitely not the diamond in the rough that I had hoped to find.
Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 Specifications
- Full Name: Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 STM
- Mount Type: Canon RF Mount
- Focal Length: 16mm prime
- Angle of View (Full Frame): 108° 10′
- Maximum Aperture: f/2.8
- Minimum Aperture: f/22
- Aperture Blades: 7, rounded
- Filter Size: 43mm
- Lens Elements: 9
- Lens Groups: 7
- Special Elements: 1 aspherical
- Anti-Reflection Coatings: Super Spectra Coating
- Fluorine Coated Front Element: No
- Image Stabilization: No
- Internal Focusing: No
- Control Rings: One (for both focus and custom control)
- Function Button: No
- Switches: Manual focus / custom control ring
- Focus Motor: STM
- Minimum Focus Distance: 13 cm (5.1 inches)
- Maximum Magnification: 0.26× (1:3.8)
- Mount Material: Metal
- Weather/Dust Sealing: No
- Dimensions (Length × Diameter): 40 × 69 mm (1.6 × 2.7 inches)
- Weight: 165 g (0.36 lbs)
- MSRP: $300, with sales of $250 seen (check current price)
These specs aren’t especially high-end, but for a $300 lens, it’s totally acceptable. Also, the metal lens mount is something of a surprise for an inexpensive, lightweight lens like this.
Probably the signature feature of the Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 is the weight of 165 grams / 0.36 pounds – and the correspondingly small size, just 4 cm / 1.6 inches long. This is a truly portable lens that you can take along with you almost anywhere.
Build Quality
Although the Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 is an inexpensive lens, the quality of the plastic itself feels the same as expensive lenses like the Canon 15-35mm f/2.8 L side-by-side. I have no issue with the lens’s use of high-quality plastics for the main barrel. However, the RF 16mm f/2.8 is not weather sealed – which might not be a major problem in itself, but it’s a bad combination with an externally-focus lens.
To me, this makes the Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 a less appealing choice for shooting in difficult weather conditions, especially rain. I was still willing to use my copy of the 16mm f/2.8 in a light drizzle, but I wasn’t confident that it could withstand a serious rainstorm, unlike some of Canon’s RF lenses. Also, the moving part of the lens feels like it was made of a lower-quality type of plastic than the rest of the barrel.
My final issue with the lens’s build quality is the lens hood – or, rather, the lack of lens hood. Canon doesn’t supply one with the RF 16mm f/2.8, so if you want a lens hood, you’ll need to spring for the separate EW-65C at $40. At least the lens hood doesn’t attach to the moving portion of the barrel, but this is still a disappointing exclusion on Canon’s part.
Handling
The Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 handles about as expected for a pancake lens, and I won’t hold that against it. As you can see, there’s not a lot of room on the lens for other controls:
Something interesting about the lens’s handling is that the traditional autofocus/manual focus switch has been changed to a switch that says “control” and “focus.” It’s a pretty clever design, in my opinion. When set to “focus,” you can use the ring on the front of the lens to adjust manual focus. However, when set to “control,” the front dial now does whatever you’ve programmed it to do in Canon’s menu, such as changing aperture or exposure compensation.
One thing to note is that, unless the camera itself is set to manual focus, you have to press the shutter button halfway (not hold it; you can let go after a moment) before you can manually focus the lens. That part is something that I don’t love about the lens’s handling, although it’s something I got used to doing pretty quickly.
The next page of this review covers the optical characteristics of the Canon RF 16mm f/2.8, including focusing performance and sharpness tests in the lab. So, click the menu below to go to “Optical Performance”:
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