Canon RF 14-35mm F4 L IS USM: The Ultrawide Revolution Hands on with a new type of ultra wide zoom lens

Earlier this week Canon announced a very unique lens that almost slipped under the radar because of the huge amount of new products introduced almost at the same time. This is the ultra-wide zoom RF 14-35mm F4 L IS USM and it brings a host of interesting features.

A new type of Ultra-wide zoom lens

Until now you could more or less divide ultra-wide zoom lenses into two main groups – those with 16-35mm focal range (and maybe the unique Tamron 15-30mm as well) and the wider but also shorter group that include anything from 11-24mm to the more common 14-24mm lenses.

A unique groundbreaking ultra wide angle zoom in more ways than one

A unique groundbreaking ultra wide angle zoom

This means that if you wanted an ultra-wide-angle zoom lens you had to give up something – either the wide side or the more tele side of the lens.

This is where the new RF 14-35mm F4 L IS USM from Canon comes into the picture and really changes things. As far as we know this is the first-ever 14-35mm full-frame lens. This makes it not only useful as an ultra-wide lens but also as a normal wide-angle 35mm lens which can easily be used for portraits for example.

Besides having the widest (ultra wide-wide) range of any full fra e lens that we know of the new RF 14-35mm F4 L IS USM has a few other big points going for it:

  1. Despite how wide and long it is actually lighter than the previous Canon 16-35mm f/4 lens (weighing only 540g).
  2. It includes image stabilization which is not that common on ultra-wide-angle lenses but certainly a nice addition for a relatively slow lens like this.
  3. One of the most surprising features of this lens is that unlike most (if not all) 14mm full-frame lenses it does accept screw-in filters and has a 77mm filter thread size which makes it much easier to use with filters compared to basically any other comparable ultra-wide-angle lens.

Specs

Here are the main specs for the Canon RF 14-35mm F4 L IS USM lens:

  • 14-35mm f/4 full-frame RF mount lens.
  • 16 elements in 12 groups including 3 UD elements, 3 aspherical elements, and a single UD aspherical element.
  • Several advanced coatings including Fluorine, ASC, SSC, and SWC.
  • AF/MF switch and image stabilization switch.
  • Dust and water-resistant body.
  • 5.5 stops of stabilization (up to 7 stops with the R5/R6 in body stabilizer).
  • Nano USM AF motor.
  • Includes a user-programmable control ring.
  • Min focus distance – 20cm (for the entire zoom range) with 1:2.63 macro magnification at 35mm.

Stabilized ultra-wide zoom

Stabilized ultra-wide zoom

Pricing and availability

The lens is expected to arrive on the market during August 2021 and will sell for $1700.

Videos from around the web

A number of videos on the new lens have been released so far and we bring them to you below (the video hands-on look above comes from Pictureline).

Bedford Camera & Video store hands-on with the RF 14-35mm F4 L IS USM lens

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Landscape photographer Todd Dominey with a few interesting thoughts about the new lens

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Canon’s official video for the RF 14-35mm F4 L IS USM lens

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Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

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