RF 10-20mm f/4L IS STM

YuengLinger

YuengLinger

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Dec 20, 2012
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#1
Received the lens two days ago. Hectic weekend with two kids, and my wife working until nearly dark. And this new lens has learning curves for capture and for processing.

You'll see three versions of the same shot of the tub, a tub which is not round but oval. (This one's distortion really surprised me.) The file names are descriptive, but, just for clarity, "LRC no correction" shows how the image looked when opened in Lightroom Classic. "LRC w correction" shows a modified RF 14-35mm f/4 lens-correction applied to the 10-22mm. The modification was to move the distortion slider on the Profile tab to 112, plus some vignetting mitigation. Finally, "DPP default" is how the image looks when opened in DPP.

To better show the vignetting when opened in LRC without corrections, I've included two versions of the clump of bamboo.

All were shot at 10mm, various camera settings.

It should only get better from here, right?
 

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#2
YuengLinger said:
Received the lens two days ago. Hectic weekend with two kids, and my wife working until nearly dark. And this new lens has learning curves for capture and for processing.

You'll see three versions of the same shot of the tub, a tub which is not round but oval. (This one's distortion really surprised me.) The file names are descriptive, but, just for clarity, "LRC no correction" shows how the image looked when opened in Lightroom Classic. "LRC w correction" shows a modified RF 14-35mm f/4 lens-correction applied to the 10-22mm. The modification was to move the distortion slider on the Profile tab to 112, plus some vignetting mitigation. Finally, "DPP default" is how the image looks when opened in DPP.

To better show the vignetting when opened in LRC without corrections, I've included two versions of the clump of bamboo.

All were shot at 10mm, various camera settings.

It should only get better from here, right?
Click to expand...
Looks good! The tennis (?) and wooden fence with the sun are nice! Uncorrected looks usable to me.
 
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#3
Here are a few more test shots, some a bit better for showing actual landscape photographers what this lens looks like at 10mm. I like it.

Hand corrected for distortion and vignetting in LRC. Also a little sharpening and contrast adjustment. Otherwise no enhancements.
 

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#4
YuengLinger said:
Here are a few more test shots, some a bit better for showing actual landscape photographers what this lens looks like at 10mm. I like it.

Hand corrected for distortion and vignetting in LRC. Also a little sharpening and contrast adjustment. Otherwise no enhancements.
Click to expand...
Looks really good! Number 5 is great! Is it actually a 90 degree corner?
 
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#5
EricN said:
Looks really good! Number 5 is great! Is it actually a 90 degree corner?
Click to expand...
Yes. There will be more surprises for me. I'm going to share photos of buildings soon. I think some real-estate photographers will find good uses for the lens, but it's tricky for me.

I wish more CR members would post in the lens galleries, but of course the forum also has galleries categorized by subject matter.
 
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#6
We often don't provide details about which lens was used for a given photo.. So, it would be helpful to see more in the lens galleries. I also wish everyone preformed controlled tests to help us understand variation in quality of each particular lens (although I have only preformed tests on a couple of my lenses and posted none).
 
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#8
Image quality results of the lens are now available at TDP. Here is the link of the comparison to the EF 11-24mm:

www.the-digital-picture.com

Canon RF 10-20mm F4 L IS STM Lens Image Quality

View the image quality delivered by the Canon RF 10-20mm F4 L IS STM Lens using ISO 12233 Resolution Chart lab test results. Compare the image quality of this lens with other lenses.
www.the-digital-picture.com www.the-digital-picture.com

It looks like the new lens has better sharpness and less CA throughout the focal length range. Impressive stuff, Canon!
 
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#9
kypr.eos said:
Image quality results of the lens are now available at TDP. Here is the link of the comparison to the EF 11-24mm:

www.the-digital-picture.com

Canon RF 10-20mm F4 L IS STM Lens Image Quality

View the image quality delivered by the Canon RF 10-20mm F4 L IS STM Lens using ISO 12233 Resolution Chart lab test results. Compare the image quality of this lens with other lenses.
www.the-digital-picture.com www.the-digital-picture.com

It looks like the new lens has better sharpness and less CA throughout the focal length range. Impressive stuff, Canon!
Click to expand...
I'm not surprised. Even the 16mm F/2.8 is comparable to the 14mm F/2.8L ii. Unless someone is a prima-donna about aperture, Canon hasn't offered anything to complain about with RF.
 
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#10
kypr.eos said:
Image quality results of the lens are now available at TDP. Here is the link of the comparison to the EF 11-24mm:

www.the-digital-picture.com

Canon RF 10-20mm F4 L IS STM Lens Image Quality

View the image quality delivered by the Canon RF 10-20mm F4 L IS STM Lens using ISO 12233 Resolution Chart lab test results. Compare the image quality of this lens with other lenses.
www.the-digital-picture.com www.the-digital-picture.com

It looks like the new lens has better sharpness and less CA throughout the focal length range. Impressive stuff, Canon!
Click to expand...
Thank you for posting this link. I am still waiting on my copy. My local shop only received one copy of the lens and I was second in line. Must be patient.
 
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#11
Here are four interior shots. These are just to show how the lens looks at 10mm, with the manual LRC Lens Corrections applied as explained above.

Also included is a shot from a few days before. The tree is about 6 meters tall, and I'm about 4 meters from the trunk. I'm pleased with how the lens (at 11mm here) shows the tree's true shape (or at least very close).

Finally, just a close shot of printed text. I was surprised to see TDP's test shots looking a bit soft, but then I realized that DPR and LRC have sharpening applied automatically. And I had to remember even with LRC "Zeroed," exporting the image as a jpg has sharpening by default too. So this shot has all the sharpening turned off. Close to 100% crop. This is just a little farther than MFD, maybe by 5cm. So my results match TDP's closely.

I like the lens, and I'm looking forward to getting into some beach and urban settings. Still haven't tried trimming the gels!
 

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#12
YuengLinger said:
Here are four interior shots. These are just to show how the lens looks at 10mm, with the manual LRC Lens Corrections applied as explained above.

Also included is a shot from a few days before. The tree is about 6 meters tall, and I'm about 4 meters from the trunk. I'm pleased with how the lens (at 11mm here) shows the tree's true shape (or at least very close).

Finally, just a close shot of printed text. I was surprised to see TDP's test shots looking a bit soft, but then I realized that DPR and LRC have sharpening applied automatically. And I had to remember even with LRC "Zeroed," exporting the image as a jpg has sharpening by default too. So this shot has all the sharpening turned off. Close to 100% crop. This is just a little farther than MFD, maybe by 5cm. So my results match TDP's closely.

I like the lens, and I'm looking forward to getting into some beach and urban settings. Still haven't tried trimming the gels!
Click to expand...
Those shots with the books are wonderful! It's definitely a great lens!
 
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#13
Lots of room in the frame! Easy for things to go askew if not set up just right, but I like the challenge. HDR, btw.
 

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#14
At 10mm, the sky looks low.
Biggest challenges are exposure and focus. Hard to judge sharpness when so much distance is in the frame, but I'd say the lens is quite sharp--not stunningly so, but up to the job. The IS seems very good, but a firmware update might make it even better.

There have been some lower light situations where I would have liked f/2.8, but mostly I'm trying for more DoF, as distances between foreground and background are so large.

Overall, I like it, and I'm glad that I went with the 10-20mm. Being able to zoom in a little adds flexibility. It's fun learning to use it, and I'm getting more ideas as I go. Didn't get the chance this trip to try the ND gel, though it does fit great and tests fine. (Thanks, Neuro!)

This is at 10mm, ISO 1250, f/6.3, 1/125th, handheld.

A Lightroom update with Lens Correction data will make things easier.
 

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#15
YuengLinger said:
At 10mm, the sky looks low.
Biggest challenges are exposure and focus. Hard to judge sharpness when so much distance is in the frame, but I'd say the lens is quite sharp--not stunningly so, but up to the job. The IS seems very good, but a firmware update might make it even better.

There have been some lower light situations where I would have liked f/2.8, but mostly I'm trying for more DoF, as distances between foreground and background are so large.

Overall, I like it, and I'm glad that I went with the 10-20mm. Being able to zoom in a little adds flexibility. It's fun learning to use it, and I'm getting more ideas as I go. Didn't get the chance this trip to try the ND gel, though it does fit great and tests fine. (Thanks, Neuro!)

This is at 10mm, ISO 1250, f/6.3, 1/125th, handheld.

A Lightroom update with Lens Correction data will make things easier.
Click to expand...
About low light situations, ultra wide-angles at long exposures of moving clouds can be interesting. Of course, if you're trying to get an animal it can't help. Just something to try if you didn't already.
 
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#16
I've had more practice correcting the distortion and vignetting. Here I've used LR CC's RF 14-35mm profile to start, and then expanded with the distortion slider until I was just at the limits of where the lenshood petals are visible. If you've seen Fro's video about this lens, you know that without correction it captures slightly more than 10mm.

Vignette, exposure, contrast, and sharpness slightly corrected in LR CC--globally, without selective editing.

ISO 100, f/8, 1/320th

Hand corrected to 10mm.jpg
 
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#18
The LR Classic lens corrections work well. I really like this lens, and it's easy to take along. Hoping to try it with water and the Kodak gel ND filter soon.

Though there are occasional purple flares when the sun or other bright light is in the frame (see the "Unretouched" image), I think the RF 10-20mm f/4 handles bright sun near the edge of the frame without issues.

It would be nice to see what other owners are doing, once they are able to post some shots.

Happy New Year!

Y
 

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#20
danfaz said:
Very neat images!
So no wonky edges with Lightroom. I wonder why the profile for the 24-105 2.8 is messed up?
Click to expand...
I suspect the profile isn’t marking those areas as ‘out of frame, paint it black’, which means it tries to stretch the neighboring pixels to fill it.

I wonder if Adobe is experimenting with having generative AI fill in those black borders and forgot to turn on the settings for the ‘dumb’ border algorithm.
 
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