Lens Test: RF 100mm F2.8L
Is Canon’s new RF macro worth the wait (and price)? We put it through its paces
There are already two ‘macro’ lenses in Canon’s RF line-up, in the diminutive shapes of
the RF 35mm F1.8 Macro IS STM and the RF 85mm F2 Macro IS STM. They’re both excellent and refreshingly affordable lenses but, crucially for extreme close-ups, they only deliver 0.5x magnification at their closest focus distances.
Most true macro primes give you a full 1.0x magnification, but the brand new RF 100mm goes above and beyond, with a whopping 1.4x magnification at its closest focus distance of 0.16m.
Not just a one-trick pony for extreme close-ups, this lens is a true all-rounder, taking macro, portrait and video shooting in its stride.
It’s actually the world’s first 1.4x macro lens that features autofocus, and it’s a particularly fast AF system as well, based on a Dual Nano USM system. As such, it’s not only super-speedy for stills, but enables smooth and virtually silent autofocus transitions when shooting video. Another plus point for video is that focus breathing is negligible, and it’s also a major advantage when focus-stacking macro shots.
As with some of Canon’s other EF and RF macro lenses, the RF 100mm boasts hybrid optical image stabilization, this time with 5-stop performance. The combination of correction for x-y shift, as well as the more usual angular vibration, makes it much better suited to close-up photography, although the effectiveness drops off as you near the shortest focus distance.
The flipside is that stabilization in general shooting is boosted to