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Canon RF45 F.2 STM | F1.2 | 1/320 sec | ISO 100 Photo: Richard Butler |
The Canon RF45mm F1.2 STM is the company’s unexpectedly bright addition to its budget STM range of lenses. It offers a super-bright aperture with a near ‘normal’ focal length, in a package costing under $/£/€500
It’s the same basic idea as Nikon’s 35 and 50mm F1.4 lenses: a more compact, more affordable fast prime for full frame. Not necessarily offering the same levels of sharpness as the more expensive options, instead allowing some imperfection in the name of affordability and ‘character.’
But whereas the Nikon releases were met with some confusion, as the F1.4 lenses unexpectedly sit below a series of sharper but slower F1.8 lenses, Canon’s eye-catching use of a slightly brighter aperture seems to have grabbed more attention.
But how does it perform? We took it a pre-production copy and shot it on the highest-resolution RF-mount body currently available, to see how it looks.
The first thing you’ll notice is significant vignetting, which can be corrected to some degree by the camera’s JPEG engine. As you might also expect from such a bright lens with such a small front element, there’s also a fair degree of mechanical vignetting in the bokeh, giving a cats’ eye effect.
The lens can be pretty sharp, without the dreaminess that was common on DSLR-era F1.2 lenses at wider apertures, but the slightly slow, autofocus that you can feel shuffling back and forth when in continuous AF may be contributing to not all the portraits being as sharp as they could be.
See for yourself whether this fast, compact normal is worth the trade-offs.
Canon RF45 F1.2 STM sample Gallery
With thanks to Lensrentals for the loan of the Canon EOS R5 II used for this gallery.
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