Canon RF 16mm 2.8 STM

Highly Recommended – Great value, versatile and delivers very good results.

The Canon RF 16mm f/2.8 STM is a lens with many facets. It comes down to where you come from and what you want. For instance, if you own an EOS R3 or R6, it's a decent ultra-wide prime lens - because, at 20 megapixels, even a Coke bottle is sharp enough. Well, almost. While on an EOS R5 and 45 megapixels, you don't really want to look at the image corners. It is, of course, also worth noting that this is the cheapest, fast ultra-wide prime ever released from a genuine manufacturer. Even when ignoring all quality concerns, it's dirt cheap for what it is. If you can't afford the real thing, having a 16mm ultra-wide lens is better than having none at all. From a technical standpoint, the RF 16mm f/2.8 STM offers poor quality on a high megapixel camera. The broader center is perfectly sharp but the quality is falling apart in the corners. And that's with auto-correction. The lens is basically unusable in pure RAW mode with excessive barrel distortion, extreme vignetting and high lateral CAs. It's about as underdesigned as it gets and relies heavily on digital correction to lift it back from the imaging abyss. With auto-correction applied, there's only a mild amount of barrel distortions, the vignetting is low even at f/2.8 and the CAs have been killed off. The build quality is good for a consumer-grade lens, especially in this price class. It feels quite solid with a combination of plastic and metal parts and a smooth control/focus ring. It's also tiny and, as such, ideal for casual or street photography. On the downside, there is no weather sealing and it relies on a dated linear extension mechanism rather than internal focusing. This means that the STM has to move the entire lens system for focusing. However, there isn't much to move around anyway so the AF speed is entirely satisfactory. Overall, you may argue that you get what you pay for but this isn't really true. A 16mmm f/2.8 for this kind of money is an insane bargain even with the mentioned limitations. Just don't expect Mercedes quality for a Lada price tag.

The Canon RF 16mm f2.8 is that rarest of things: an exotic lens at an accessible price. The ultra-wide coverage delivers photos and videos packed with drama, but from a compact, light and affordable lens that won’t break the bank or your back. You don’t get anything for free in the World of optics though and the RF 16 not only suffers from visible focus breathing, but relies on substantial digital corrections. If you shoot video or JPEGs though, these are applied automatically in-camera, so you may not even notice, while RAW shooters can apply lens profiles during processing to perform the same task. The absence of optical stabilisation may also seem like a downfall for a lens partly aimed at vloggers, but in my tests, the footage could be effectively stabilised by cameras with IBIS or even just digital compensation. If you want optical stabilisation, less breathing and lower distortion, not to mention weather sealing, Canon’s 14-35 f4L and 15-35 f2.8L will give you it all, along with the flexibility of zooming to 35mm and, in the case of the 15-35, sharper corners too. But both are larger, heavier and considerably more expensive. Ultimately you’re not going to get optical perfection from a $299 lens, but the results from the RF 16 remain sufficiently compelling that almost all EOS R owners will want it even if they already have one of the L-zooms.