Canon RF 600mm f/11 IS STM Lens

For the price, it is a great lens for distant subjects. IS works well! Fix f/11 is good, but for low light subjects will suffer.

If you've never owned a super-telephoto, this is the lens. I shopped other lenses, but I was budget constrained. I read the reviews about this lens and went ahead and purchased the lens and the hood. I also liked this lens because it was very compact when not in use-it is also light enough to handhold. Sure, it's not as fast as other lenses, but you will find with the ISO settings that the lens is more than capable. Shooting video with it is very nice too.

I was unsure of the quality, due to the low price, but what a surprise. This lense is incredibly light weight, and quick to shoot even without a tripod. If you're not shooting in extreem weather this lense vastly outperforms the L series, considering its 90% less expensive.

Wow, what a pleasant surprise so far. I purchased this lens for my recently acquired EOS R camera. My other Canon telephoto lens is an excellent EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS, which is awesome but a little too short sometimes. So I got very excited when this 600mm lens was announced at reasonable price (unlike other RF mount lenses) but I was also very skeptical since it was an unusual f11 design. I received it yesterday and decided to try it out right away at the local zoo. My expectations were very low due poor lighting conditions (cloudy with some showers). Knowing that it was fixed f11 I expected that I would have to bump ISO pretty high to get decent shutter speed and that would result in poor image quality. What I got was excellent images with shutter speed that averaged between 1/600 -1/800s and ISO between 1000-12800 (yes hippo picture is at 12800 ISO!). My other Canon DSLR camera is 10 years old and with that camera I was always careful not to go over 3200 ISO but with modern full frame camera (especially in good lighting conditions) you can go much higher, and I have EOS R which has noisier sensor than newer RP, R5 and R6.
What I like:
- compact design (about the size and weight of my 70-300L)
- super sharp (just like a L lens)
- fast and silent autofocus and superb IS
- 600mm (when needed I can enable in camera 1.6x crop to get to 960mm)
- great color and contrast just like a good Canon lens
- very good build quality, everything feels very tight
- black finish with titanium details goes very well with EOS R
What I'd change:
- most people will complain about f11 aperture, but let's be realistic, if this was a faster 600mm it would cost a lot more and be a lot bigger, also with faster super telefoto your depth-of-field shrinks so rapidly that you can only get one eye of the animal in focus, while at f11 you can often get a lot more in focus. The downside in that at f11 it is harder to get nice bokeh. You need to get close to your subject and have a good distance between subject and background, but it can be done.
- lens is very compact for 600mm when it is collapsed, but in order to be used it needs to be unlocked, expanded and locked, this can potentially lead to lost photo opportunities so I'd recommend to keep it extended which does not make it so compact anymore
- I noticed that available focusing area in my EOS R is smaller than with other lenses I own, this is due to f11 aperture and it would become even smaller when extender is added. This might be an issue when you're tracking moving subject that travels outside that focus box. Maybe newer cameras have expanded autofocus capabilities, time will show if this be a problem for me.
I added few pictures from yesterday's zoo visit.
I hope this will help potential future owners of this lens, so far I'm pleased with mine.