Good but not great

axlotl wrote:

wjan wrote:

Having recently acquired tiny Canon RP with an excellent 35/1.8 IS prime I was thinking about augmenting it with this 10x zoom. It would make a nice full-frame travel kit, so I could retire my old APS-C D5500 with its 18-140mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom (equivalent to 28-210mm f/5-8 on full frame). Dreams, dreams...

Quick unscientific test on brick walls and tree branches has shown no meaningful difference in terms of sharpness (both in center and on border of the frame), chromatic aberrations, bokeh quality or stabilization efficiency between Canon 24-240 and Nikon 18-140 on any shared focal length. I had a feeling though, the Canon focuses slightly faster. Considering 18-140 is waaaay cheeper and 260 g lighter, I decided to return 24-240 to the vendor and to keep using 18-140 as my travel zoom.

Some people on internet are moaning about huge unrecoverable vignetting, but it is not an issue at all! The thing is, the angle of view of this lens is de-facto wider than should be for e.g. 24mm focal length and vignetting if therefore just a part of this additional frame space left there intentionally. You just have to turn on the correction in camera or do it by yourself on computer and distortion correction will fix everything back to normal.

It is pity, by the way, there is currently (as of early 2020) no other consumer lens between 24-105 and 24-240 in the RF lineup. Something like 24-160/4-6.3 with a weight under 600g, compact dimensions and lower price would suit my needs much better.

Pros:
- very useful focal range for a travel zoom
- pretty good sharpness in the center
- quick and silent focusing
- effective stabilization (around 4-5 stops depending on focus distance)
- can focus as close as 50 cm

Agree with all these

Cons:
- visible loss of sharpness on the edges of the frame

After profile corrections the loss of sharpness at the wide end is only mild

In the middle of the zoom range, around 35-150mm peripheral sharpness is good to very good

When further zoomed out to 240mm peripheral softness becomes obvious and is not improved by closing the lens aperture. Profile corrections can manage the distortion, peripheral shading and color fringing but nothing can correct the loss of sharpness.

At equivalent 240mm the Sony RX10.4 delivers slghtly better center sharpness and much better peripheral sharpness with few significant aberrations.

- expensive
- on the bulky side when mounted on Canon RP
- control ring w/o clicks is pretty much useless

Agree with those.

Andrew

Even at the wide end the issues after in camera automatic JPEG corrections are minor and nearly all in the very corners.

When viewed in comparison with 10X travel lenses rather the 4X zooms the results are are the best of any prior Canon 10X lenses (I have owned several) and this new RF lens is actual award winning:

https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/buying-guides/best-lenses-for-travel

I love this lens for the great 10X lens achievement that it is and I do also have the RF 24-70mm f2.8L and the RF 24-105mm f4 which I find great lenses but for other purposes. They all cover much more purpose in shooting and require lens changes which at times can cost a shot during moments of rapic situation change that the RF 24-240mm will get while others won't because of it's great versatility in speed to focus and shoot lens in rapid fluctuation chaotic situtaions.  I some time carry this lens on EOS R along with the EF 100-400mm f4-5.6L ii on a EOS 5D MkIV for important challenging shots.