Canon RF 135mm F 1 8L IS USM Review | 54 Data compared

The Canon RF 135mm f/1.8L IS USM lens is described as a top-tier prime setting a benchmark for optical performance with exceptional wide-open sharpness and effective 5.5-stop image stabilization. Designed for portraiture and indoor sports, it features robust weather sealing, fast Nano USM autofocus, and a customizable control ring. Conversely, the review identifies the lens as a significant financial investment with a high price tag. It is relatively heavy at 935g, possesses a long 135mm focal length requiring ample working distance, and exhibits minor raw vignetting along with focus breathing.

The Canon RF 135mm f/1.8 L IS USM is a highly capable semi-telephoto prime lens that delivers superb image quality with exceptional edge-to-edge sharpness, accurate skin tones, and virtually no chromatic aberration. Its standout features include blazing-fast Nano USM motors that provide rapid and incredibly precise autofocus tracking for humans and animals, making it uniquely suited for fast-action sports and wildlife photography even when shot wide open. Additionally, it boasts an impressive 5.5 stops of built-in optical image stabilization—which jumps up to 8 stops when paired with the Canon R6 Mark II—giving it a significant low-light advantage over competitors like Sony’s 135mm G Master. Photographers will also benefit from its highly useful, programmable barrel-based control ring for quick on-the-fly settings adjustments. However, the lens does have a few distinct drawbacks, primarily revolving around its hefty and intimidating physical design. Weighing roughly 935 grams, it is a large and bulky piece of glass that can cause physical fatigue during long shoots and may inadvertently make human subjects nervous. The reviewer strongly criticized the included lens hood—repurposed from a 600mm lens—as being...

The Canon RF 135mm F1.8 L IS USM is an outstanding, versatile mid-telephoto prime lens that serves as a highly capable tool for portraiture, candids, and indoor sports like basketball. Priced at $2,099, it offers a budget-friendly alternative to Canon's premium RF 85mm F1.2 L series options. Physically, the lens measures 5.1 by 3.5 inches and weighs 2.1 pounds, sharing a similar footprint with its competitors from Sony and Nikon. It features a sturdy, weather-sealed polycarbonate barrel, an anti-smudge fluorine coating on the front element, customizable physical controls, and a quick linear focus motor. In laboratory environments, the optics proved to be phenomenally sharp from edge to edge, resisting chromatic aberrations and keeping distortion and vignetting to minimal levels. The lens boasts several distinct advantages, including exceptionally crisp optics, highly effective built-in optical image stabilization, and a 1:3.8 macro magnification capacity at a 27.6-inch close-focusing distance. Its bright f/1.8 aperture readily melts backgrounds to produce buttery, pleasingly round central bokeh highlights. However, it does come with a few notable drawbacks. Video creators will notice significant focus breathing, which causes the...

On the downside, the lens is exceptionally expensive, making it hard to justify for casual or occasional users who might find the old EF version with an adapter to be a more practical alternative. It also lacks compatibility with Canon’s extenders, a major drawback compared to the older EF 135mm lens, which could be converted into a 270mm f/4 optic using a 2x extender. Additionally, using the included lens hood adds considerable bulk to the setup. Minor optical flaws include visible vignetting at f/1.8, though this is easily mitigated by enabling in-camera lens corrections or stopping down to f/2.8. Ultimately, while it is better in every way optically than its predecessor, its high price tag means it is best suited for dedicated professionals and enthusiasts who frequently shoot at this specific focal length.

The Canon RF 135mm f/1.8 L IS USM is a professional-grade portrait lens that offers outstanding optical performance, ranking as one of the sharpest lenses ever tested by OpticalLimits across all aperture settings and the entire image field. Built with sturdy, weather-sealed engineered plastics, it features a smooth focus ring, a customizable control ring, and an incredibly fast and silent Nano USM autofocus system. A major standout feature is its built-in optical image stabilizer—a unique addition for a 135mm f/1.8 lens—which claims 5 to 8 f-stops of efficiency when paired with a camera's in-body image stabilization (IBIS). Furthermore, the lens demonstrates excellent control over chromatic aberrations, showing negligible lateral color fringing and only slight traces of bokeh fringing at its widest aperture. Despite its superb mechanics and extreme sharpness, the lens has a few notable drawbacks. Optically, it exhibits high RAW vignetting of over 2 EV at f/1.8 and minor pincushion distortion, though both are easily resolved via automatic digital profile corrections. More notably, the background blur in the focus transition zone can display a nervous, "technical bokeh" with hard...

The Canon RF 135mm F1.8L IS USM is a high-speed, fixed focal length lens designed for full-frame EOS R cameras, achieving an exceptionally high DXOMARK score of 53 points when tested on a 45 MP Canon EOS R5. A major highlight of the lens is its outstanding and highly uniform sharpness across the frame at all apertures, even when shot wide open at F1.8. Additionally, it offers excellent light transmission, measuring an efficient T1.9, which is a massive improvement over its EF predecessor. The physical build introduces highly capable optical stabilization providing up to 5.5 stops of compensation (up to 8 stops with IBIS), alongside a quiet Nano USM autofocus motor, a close 0.7-meter minimum focusing distance, and customizable external controls. Despite its stellar performance, the lens has a few notable optical and physical drawbacks. It exhibits higher levels of lateral chromatic aberration than both the older EF version and the Zeiss APO Sonnar 2/135, measuring 6 µm on average across the field. It also demonstrates slightly greater pincushion geometric distortion (0.2%) and shows moderate corner vignetting at its maximum...