EF vs RF lenses - a few things to consider

Thank you for your view on selected topics. Let me add my 2 cents:

Basil Fawlty wrote:

I have a few EF Lenses that I will probably keep because, for their intended uses, they work fine on my R5 and I have no compelling reason to get rid of them. However, in deciding whether to replace an EF lens with an RF equivalent, one should be aware of some of the features that are available with the RF lenses that are not available with an EF lenses.

Whether these "features" are important enough to warrant changing from EF to RF is of course a personal choice and would depend on how important these things are to your use cases.

1. Distance scale shows up on screen and in EVF while in manual focus (RF:yes, EF:no)

Reading this I realized that with the R6 I use manual focusing much less than I did on my previous DSLRs. The AF is so good. Even after almost 2 years with R6 I was not aware of this function.

(Many EF lenses do have a distance scale on the lens whereas none of the RF lenses do)

2 . High Speed Display (Makes screen/EVF display look smoother when shooting in HS Continuous mode in SERVO). Only available when using RF lenses.

Works flawlessly on my R6.

3. ON-lens control ring on RF lenses only. Can be programmed to adjust 12 different operations on the camera (Aperture, ISO, Shutter speed, exposure comp., etc). Personally this is something I can take or leave and find I don't use it all that much anyway, but some people love it. NOTE: You can get this feature with EF lenses if you purchase the more expense adaptor that has the control ring.

I was looking forward the on lens control ring before I bought the camera and RF lens. But very soon I found it redundant with R6's three dials and all customization possibilities. And also using it is somehow awkward to me especially with the zoom lenses. So I have it disabled.

4. Manual focus ring sensitivity can be set to vary with rotation speed OR the degree of rotation. This option is only available when using RF lenses.

Here I am absolutely ok with the traditional way and do not see any benefit with the variable sensitivity.

Lastly of course is the issue of image quality and AF speeds.

They do vary a lot for each specific lens. Unfortunately RF did not bring any broadly common asset in terms of performance or IQ. But with some lenses it brought so far unseen levels of distortion and vignetting, sadly.

In most cases, with the EF lenses I plan to keep, the Image Quality with these lenses on my R5 is slightly better than it was on my 5D4.

Fully confirm. And I would add the AF accuracy also increased on R6 with EF lenses.

The AF on my RF 24-105 L is faster than AF speed is with my adapted EF 24-105, but not so much so that I'd feel it would have any noticeable impact on my shooting. Your milage may vary.

I am fully in with you here.

I do see some more RF lenses in my future, but because some of my EF lenses work sufficiently good, I will probably still maintain a few of my EF lenses for the foreseeable future. I may eventually end up with only RF lenses, but I'm in no big hurry to make the complete transition.

RF lineup still lacks a lot of important lenses. So we can easily live either with Canon EF or 3rd party EF lenses. Especially Sigma Art lineup has some real treasures for "bargain" prices compared to RF price levels.