Good all rounder

I have had a bunch of Canon 10X zooms over the years and the RF 24-240mm is the best one so far. I recently did an big update to my camera collection when I got the RF 24-240mm and several other of the RF lens too. I was surprised with how well the 10x zoom does work after reading all the negative reviews. I believe you must compare JPEG images with those of other real world 10X superzooms. To my eye it is very good 10X super-zoom and I have owned them going back to the 1990s film camera lenses.

My first 10X was a Canon EF 35-350mm f3.5-5.6 lens. I loved it's flexibility shooting film at the time. It took many great pictures of my young kids back then. I have a memorable spur of the moment picture of my young son dressed up in cowboy attire using that lens. Of course it was far less sharp than the EF 28-70mm f2.8L that I got later. Then I got the EF 70-200mm f2.8L which made allowed me to then retire the 10X zoom for the those two work horse trinity lenses.

I still wanted a 10X zoom lens for handy snapshots but the EF 35-350mm was not good enough. I got other 10X zooms throughout the years. However this RF 24-240mm is the best 10X zoom I have tried. I still have the EF-S 18-200mm is for cropped sensor cameras but it also works on the EOS -R with an adapter in a crop sensor mode using only the middle of the cameras full frame sensor. The RF 24-240mm is sharper overall throughout the range when comparing JPEG images produced in the camera. Of course, in normal use I shoot with all corrections turned on. Only dinosaur Luddites would turn off the manufacturers corrections and optimization then trash the maker for his product.

Looking at my JPEG images, and even with cropping some of them, the RF 24-240mm the IQ may not up to a Canon RF f2.8 "L" zoom lenses but it works better than any of the several Canon 10X "L" and EF-S zooms that I have owned. When the situation requires it the RF-24-70mm f2.8L will make better pictures within it's limited focal range.

There have been some comments about the raw image using the RF 24-240mm when setting the lens focal length to 24mm. In the RAW image there is a black vignetting in the corners when looking at the un-corrected RAW image in Photoshop. Comparing this RAW image with the image of a 24mm prime lens taken from the same location (using a tripod) you can easily see that the field of view of the RF 24-240nn lens set to 24mm focal length has the field of view of a lens that is a couple of mm wider than 24mm. The camera JPEG automatically corrects this view to proper 24 mm field of view by cropping the image to cut off these black corners. The result is an image with a 24mm field of view with pretty good looking image quality. Apparently this automatic correction horrifies some reviewers but I believe when judging the lens IQ you should look at the quality of the JPEG images you can make and ultimately print with it. This anomalous vignetting is gone  for using focal length settings of a couple of mm greater than 24mm. When using a 10X zoom it is not surprising to see worse performance at the focal length extremes and this lens is no different than the others. However, I love the RF 24-240mm lens overall as does provide better image quality than any of the several other 10X zooms that I have owned over the years.