Every image you see in this review was made with the Canon EOS R and the 50mm f/1.2 RF lens. This is a completely unbiased review w/ no affiliate links, loaned gear, or sketchy indirect incentive other than equipping you dedicated photographers with information. Read other equipment reviews here.
I’ve been staring at my screen for 10 minutes trying to figure out where to start. How do I even begin to talk about a lens solely responsible for well over 100,000 of my images in just under 2 years?
(I don’t have my 2018 catalog in front of me)
I’ve owned the Canon 50mm f/1.2 RF lens since the EOS R launched back in fall of 2018, and I was very excited to dive head first into my review of it after 10,000 images.
Long time patrons will know… that review never materialized.
Why?
I was buried in tens of thousands of images to edit for client work with NO time to even think of writing a long form review of what instantly became my workhorse lens.
Coming from my previous workhorse lens (the Nikon 58mm f/1.4G) my hopes were sky-high for a 50mm lens that had stellar AF performance, character in its render, and beautiful skin tones/coloring at a wide open aperture. Something comfortable, lightweight, and with a recessed front glass element that I could put stuff in front of with low risk scratching.
THE BUILD
As I write this I’m holding the lens in my hand. The smoothness of the matte finish is wonderful, the and texture/grip of the rubber focus ring is just spot on. The control ring is one piece of plastic with little diamond shape etchings for grip – no rubber.
Both rings are well-thought-out in placement and size/width. The focus ring is larger, which provides more grip for your hand to hold, even though you’ll probably use the control ring more often than the focus ring (unless you do video).
I do, having customized it to adjust my ISO.
At first, I was disappointed that Canon put the control ring on the far edge of the lens body instead of near the mount. I quickly got used to the control ring adjustment location on the EF to RF lens adapter, and really loved the quick access there, but eventually realized that I bumped it far too much by accident. It’s just better to have it on the far end of the lens the way it is on the 50mm RF.
It’s not the lightest lens in the world, but for a lens with max aperture of f/1.2 – the trade off is worth it.
AF PERFORMANCE & SHARPNESS
Only having two bodies (at the time of the writing) makes it sort of difficult to judge the AF performance of any RF lens right now. Obviously half the equation is the AF system of the camera body you’re shooting with, and I fully expect the new Canon R5 and R6 to provide a noticeable boost in speed and accuracy. But, having tried the 50 1.2 RF on both the eos R, and eos RP, I can safely say the lens is SHARP and the AF snappy – enough. Very close to what I became used to with my Nikon bodies, and better than anything I’d ever used on any canon DSLR, ever.
Here’s about the best demo I can point to. A random bird flying by me as I was walking. I did not slow down, and every frame is at f/1.2 (note: some of these are rendered from edited smart previews so which render the blue colors weirdly)
So, that’s incredible AF performance.
Now, sharpness. This image was taken at f/1.2:
1:1 Crop:
And another:
1:1:
I do believe it’s wonderfully sharp, even wide open at f/1.2 at these resolutions. Will the larger megapixels of the R5 out resolve it? I doubt it, but will update here when I have the R5 to test with.
Let’s take a look at the other end of the spectrum with small apertures. This photo is at f/14 (the lens gets as small as f/16):
The sunstar is… standard. Nothing particularly fun about it. Here are a few more samples @ f/16:
Let’s dive into some tricky shooting scenarios, like… backlight!
Now, this is one area where I do feel the lens hunts a bit more than I’d like. When it finally locks on its very reliable, but I do want you to be aware that backlight consistently makes it focus rack. This could also be because I don’t tend to keep my lenses super duper clean, because I like organic/random artifacts in my work. Call me crazy, but I think it adds something unique. Here is an example of the rear element having a bit of a smudgy fingerprint resulting in… a haze that’s right at the edge of being too overbearing (to me):
Of the 36 or so images I have of this bride sequence only 2 missed focus so bad they were unusable
So, not bad and it’s hard to know where the line between this being a lens issue vs this being a camera body/sensor issue is. The canon mirrorless bodies rely on having enough light to AF properly, and this spot was actually rather low light.
COLOR/SKIN TONE
I don’t think enough photographers realize or stress the impact on color coming from lenses. It’s not nearly as much a factor as the sensor, but it’s there. Certain lenses just render color, and in my case being a portrait photographer, skin tones more pleasingly than others.
This is also, a completely subjective topic, so YMMV. But golly do I not just get the easiest tones in the world to work with in these files:
FRONT BOKEH
Diving into my favorite part of lens reviews, the bokeh! Let’s start with the less interesting part of bokeh – foreground bokeh. It actually renders it pretty well when something is extremely close to the lens:
But it does start to get a bit circle-shaped in a weird way the further the object gets from the lens. I only have one example at the ready to include with the review, but I’ve noticed in other photographs I’ve taken:
BACKGROUND BOKEH
But (and this is where this lens really shines) the background bokeh has the potential to turn scenes into damn paintings:
I mean it really really realllllly can:
And here’s a nice balance of both:
LENS FLARE
Back in my Nikon days… one of the things I was always envious of with Canon photographers, was the ability to get glorious lens from the EF mount 50 1.2 lens. A part of me was hoping that Canon would still have an echo of that character in the 50 1.2 RF, but alas… nope.
The lens absolutely almost never flare. Here’s one of the closest I could find:
The sun (above shot) was at a pretty high angle out of frame to create that light bit of a rainbow.
Flare just isn’t really happening with any modern lens. They’re become incredibly rare, and that’s one reason why I continue to use the ring of fire so much:
CONCLUSION
For as long as I shoot Canon equipment, I will never sell this lens. Only if Canon issues an update. It would be the first lens I recommend someone buy using the RF mount with one exception… shooting with the R6 camera body on a budget.
I don’t mean this review to be a comparison shoot out, but at 20MP the R6 the original Canon 50mm f/1.2 EF lens is going to perform beautifully. It’s not very sharp at all when compared to the RF version, but that’s not really a huge issue at 20MP. The EF lens has a beautiful character, is very light weight, and has a beautiful flare.
So, if you are on a tight budget AND shooting with the R6 camera body, I’d recommend sticking with the adapted EF 50mm, or see what Sigma has to offer next year.
Literally everyone else? Buy this lens as soon as you possibly can.
Any questions? Feedback?
Enjoy a few attached RAW files (it’s just what I have on my laptop locally as I”m away from home base this week) to play around with &
Comment below or in the group discussion forum.
If you found this review helpful then tag me @iamthesam and share why 💪
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