Canon RF 85mm f/2 STM IS Macro Review

We know Canon is creating some eye watering (in terms of image quality and price) Canon RF L lenses, but what about the rest of us mere mortals that need a better bang for the buck for lenses? The Canon RF 85mm f/2 STM IS Macro is one such lens.  Combining the 85mm focal length for portraiture and also a half lifesize macro lens into one compact lens.

OpticalLimits recently reviewed the Canon RF 85mm f/2 STM IS Macro.   They concluded;

Just like basically all fast, medium-tele prime lenses, the Canon RF 85mm f/2 STM IS macro is capable of delivering an outstanding image quality. It's already very sharp at f/2 - even on a high megapixel body - and it's about as sharp as it gets at f/4. Lateral CAs are negligible. There's a slight degree of pincushion distortion but image auto-correction can eliminate the traces without significant side effects. A vignetting of 2 f-stops at f/2 is in line with other lenses in this class so an activated auto-correction is a good idea here. The quality of the bokeh is a bit of a mixed back. Out-of-focus highlights are nicely rendered in the image center but suffer from the usual cat-eye effect in the corners. While the foreground rendering is very smooth, the more critical background blur can be a bit busy. There's also a visible amount of LoCAs (bokeh fringing) at large-aperture settings which just can't be easily corrected.

They also rank it overall as being a highly recommended lens with these overall scores;

• Optical Quality:   4 1/4 stars
• Mechanical Quality: 3 1/4 stars
• Price/Performance: 4 stars

Read the entire review here

• OpticalLimits