Philnick's reviews

  • Canon RF-S 18-150mm f/3.5-6.3 IS STM

    10 out of 10 points and recommended
    Better than it has any right to be, and nice and light and compact. My new walk-around lens.
    Yeah, it's a repackaged EF-M lens, but it takes good pictures. Imaging Resource hasn't yet tested this lens and put up its interactive sharpness graph (which I use to choose f/stops).

    I didn't want to buy this lens, but Canon was not shipping many boxes of the R7 body by itself, leaving me on a many month's-long waiting list (I had ordered the day after the R7 was announced). When I realized that this was the situation from seeing the body back-ordered while the box with the kit lens was in stock, I changed my order to include the lens and it was shipped to me the same day.

    I idly snapped a few pictures with this kit lens, includng a shot at ISO 400 of an 8 1/5"x11" music book open on my piano about 30 feet away, with the lens set to 150mm, wide open at f/6.3 and hand-held at 1/40th of a second. I opened it up on the camera's screen and looked at the music book, which took up the bottom left corner of the screen, a quarter of its height and a sixth of its width. Magnified it on the screen (and in the viewfinder) and was amazed at how clear the image was. And this wasn't even the center of the lens!

    I'll keep my EF-S 18-135mm nano USM lens to use with the power zoom attachment for videos (I bought that attachment on eBay becayse it's long discontinued) but this RF-S kit lens will be my new walk-around lens.

    reviewed August 10th, 2022 (purchased for $400)

  • Canon RF 100-400mm f/5.6-8 IS USM

    10 out of 10 points and recommended
    Sharp, fast auto-focus, well-stabilized, good build-quality.
    Not as fast and bright as more expensive lenses, so a higher shutter speed and ISO are needed. It's not weather-sealed - but neither is my R7.

    Just got this lens last night to use with my my R7. Was distressed that it couldn't acquire focus-lock when I tried it out last night - but I had to set the camera to several seconds exposure to even see anything, so it shouldn't have been surprising at AF wouldn't work in that little light.

    Came the morning, it was a different story. Setting my R7 to ISO 3200 and a shutter speed of 1600 and I had no problem with the autofocus and got very sharp and colorful shots wide open at 400mm (f/8) at distances of 20 and 500 feet.

    I may even stand a chance of getting shots of birds in flight!

    reviewed August 17th, 2022 (purchased for $599)

  • Canon EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM

    10 out of 10 points and recommended
    Great image quality and good zoom range.

    I've had this lens since I got it kitted on my EOS 80D and it's lived on the camera almost all the time since, even though I have several more specialized lenses: EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM (which I've loved to death since I went digital with a Rebel XT), EF-S 10-18 IS (which DxO ViewPoint turns into a great cinerama lens), Tamron's 45mm /1.8 VC and Sigma's 105mm f/2,8 OS HSM DG Macro (VC and OS being those brands' synonyms for IS).

    I ordered the new EOS R7 body-only, since this lens, with the EF to RF adapter, would have made the RF-S 18-150 kit lens unnecessary. When I realized, two months later, that Canon was only shipping the kit, not just the body, I changed my order to the kit and got it immediately. Amazingly, that tiny lens is as good as this one. (See my review of it here.) I'll avoid buying RF mount lenses until they come down in price - most are "L" glass.

    PS I recently bought the now-discontinued power zoom attachment for this lens on eBay before it could disappear completely - you never know when you might need it! It adjusts the zoom by turning a worm gear that engages the ribs in the rubber ring you otherwise turn with your hand. Pretty clever. It has Fast and Slow settings, runs on four AAA batteries, and can be remote-controlled by Canon's smartphone app for EOS cameras - hence the contacts that mate with contacts on the bottom of this lens.

    reviewed July 31st, 2022 (purchased for $300)

  • Canon EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM

    10 out of 10 points and recommended
    A bargain compared to the 10-22mm, and a great performer.

    I stalled on buying the 10-22mm for years due to its high price tag, so I jumped at this when it came out.

    Discovered that its images were pretty distorted, with straight lines being curved - as I should have expected if I'd had any experience with lenses this wide - and I almost abandoned it, but when I got DxO's ViewPoint and used it on the images this lens produced I discovered that it cleared up the curvature of straight lines and made it into a great Cinerama lens with lines being straight where they should be.

    Excellent detail and colors, as well.

    reviewed July 31st, 2022 (purchased for $300)

  • Canon RF 50mm f/1.8 USM

    10 out of 10 points and recommended
    Pocketable and fun.
    Nothing significant - I stayed away from nifty-fifties on my EOS DSLRs because of the lack of image stabilization, but the R7's in-body stabilization solves that.

    My first RF lens purchase after getting an R7 with the kit lens. This lens is, simply, fun for candids - like at a party, where it's not intimidating at all.

    It fits - just barely - into the pouch that came with my EF to RF adapter, and lives in a pocket of my vest, always with me if needed.

    And it makes nice images, too.

    reviewed December 5th, 2022 (purchased for $159)

  • Canon RF 85mm f/2 Macro IS STM

    10 out of 10 points and recommended
    Sharp and much smaller and lighter than the EF 105mm Macro lens it replaced.
    None.

    My second RF lens purchase after the R7 I bought this summer. It's bigger and heavier than the 18-150mm kit lens, but much sharper and brighter.

    And it's smaller, lighter, and brighter than the EF 105mm f/2.8 macro lens I *hadn't* been using.

    reviewed December 5th, 2022 (purchased for $499)

  • Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM

    10 out of 10 points and recommended
    Sharp and fast Sharp even with the EF 1.4x extender
    No IS - hence the bargain price - but on R-series bodies with IBIS (like the R5 and my R7) that 's a non-issue.

    I've been riding a roller-coaster when it comes to long lenses. As a film shooter with a Canon FT-QL SLR from 1968 to 2006, at which point I switched to Canon DSLRs, and then to an R7 in August 2022, I had the EF 75-300 but seldom used it. Bird in flight photos were not on my radar. Only after going mirrorless did I begin to get interested in that. So about a year ago I picked up the budget RF 100-400 and got a few "artistic" (translation - not super close or sharp) shots of flying seagulls, and traded it in on a discounted RF 70-200 f/4L. That let me get a few better shots of gulls landing on a pond, but I had begun to be struck by how much sharper my budget RF primes were than my L zoom, so I went looking for a prime telephoto lens I could afford. Came across this forgotten gem. No weather sealing? I don't need it. No optical image stabilization? My R7's IBIS makes that a non-issue. I can hand-hold it at 1/100 of a second! I sold the 70-200 back to the camera store for what the this lens plus the EF 1.4x extender cost me.

    I'm impressed that with this lens on my R7 I can get very sharp shots hand-held - even with the EF 1.4 extender. At a concert, I'll leave off the extender and have a fast 200mm f/2.8L prime sharper and faster than the 70-200 f/4L. For birds in flight, the 1.4x extender gives me a 280mm f/4 prime with more reach than the RF 70-200 and sharper and faster than the RF 100-400mm f/5.6-8.

    reviewed November 8th, 2023 (purchased for $542)

  • Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM

    10 out of 10 points and recommended
    Sharp, fast and colorful. Less expensive than the RF version of this lens.
    No IS, but that's mitigated on the newer R series bodies that have IBIS (including the R7 and R5), making this lens a bargain.

    Got this lens after shooting an event with only primes - RF 24 macro 1.8, RF 35 macro 1.8, RF 50 1.8, RF 85 macro 2.0 and my newest acquisition, the EF 200mmm f/2.8 L II, which was rescued from obsolescence by my R7's IBIS, which let me hand hold it down to 1/100 of a second.

    Got great shots, but changing lenses all the time was not ideal, so I sprang for this older lens figuring the R7's IBIS would make it a great buy. It is.

    Each one now has an EF to R adapter with a Control Ring permanently mounted, which - as a film SLR guy from 1968 to 2005 - I keep set up as an f/stop ring on all my lenses. I set shutter speed with the main dial on the top deck and ISO with the ring on the back of the camera. With an EVF that's a live-view screen, and a live histogram in the viewfinder, I can run in full-time manual exposure and I'm home.

    reviewed November 24th, 2023 (purchased for $1,700)