One of the perennial
questions I see on user forums is “what gear should I take on my upcoming holiday/tour/expedition
to (insert the planned destination).”
Most people these days just use their smartphone for holiday
records and they mostly make selfies.
But some of us like to use a real camera to make photos
which selfie snappers might think a bit silly or pretentious, like pictures of
trees and rocks and other such boring stuff.
Each unto their own……….
Anyway, back to deciding what gear to take.
Each individual has their own priorities and there are so
many options available that I am unable to offer advice which would suit
everybody.
But I can share my own thoughts and experience which might be useful.
My first priority is to eliminate the need to change lenses.
My second priority is K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid)
The best expression of these two priorities is one camera
body with one lens attached.
This can be a compact or bridge-cam type with integrated
lens or an interchangeable lens (ILC) type with just one lens mounted for the
duration.
The most versatile type of lens to mount on an ILC is the
superzoom. Lenses of this type generally trade off absolute optical quality for
the convenience and versatility of a range of focal lengths from wide to
telephoto.
For my recent trip to Tasmania I elected to use the Canon
EOS R5 body with the Canon RF 24-240mm f4-6.3 IS USM superzoom lens mounted. In
the event this combination proved satisfactory, with a few caveats detailed
below.
Overall the R5+RF 24-240mm makes for a very capable kit suitable for any type of subject short of birds or distant wildlife. If I had included these subjects on my agenda I would have added a second camera body with either the RF 100-500mm L or the RF 100-400mm mounted for the duration.
The RF 24-240mm IS USM is a well specified 10x superzoom for
Canon RF mount full frame cameras. It is decently compact, being only slightly
longer and heavier than the RF 24-105mm f4L. It appears to be well made with
smooth zoom action and no apparent free play in the double extension barrel.
There are two rings on the barrel, for zoom and
focus/control. There are switches for zoom lock, focus/control and
stabiliser.
I find the stabiliser works very well and that autofocus is
very fast, quiet and accurate.
Filter thread is 72mm. I have a B+W XS-Pro protect filter
mounted permanently. Some users decry this practice but on the Tasmania trip I
was several times working by the sea in a force 8 gale with salt spray flying
onto the lens, such that I needed to
clean the protect filter every ten minutes or thereabouts.
The RF 24-240mm is not rated as weather sealed although I
used it in light rain several times with no problems.
I used the Canon EW-78F lens hood at all times to help keep
direct light and water off the protect filter.
Mass of the camera body with lens, battery, memory card,
filter, lens hood and wrist strap is 1534 grams. People coming from a crop
sensor kit might feel this is a bit heavy but the kit is comfortable, well
balanced and is easily carried all day if desired.
I never use the neck strap which comes in the box with
cameras. These things just seem like a nuisance to me. I find an el-cheapo
thin, light wrist strap is more useful. The camera goes in its bag or in my
hand. I cannot think of a situation in which I might want it slung around my
neck.
 |
| Picture courtesy of photosize.com The new superzoom on the right can be smaller because distortion, shading and aberrations can be corrected in camera and/or post processing . This was not possible in the film era when the larger lens was designed. |
What about optical capability ? This is where we start to see some of the compromises which the lens designers have to make in order to produce a 10x zoom which is sufficiently compact, light and affordable to be attractive to a wide range of enthusiast RF mount users.
At the wide end of the zoom range there is massive barrel
distortion, color fringing and peripheral shading in uncorrected Raw files. Applying the lens profile in Adobe Camera Raw
corrects most of the distortion, a fair amount of the color fringing and some
of the shading. But this still leaves us having to manage loss of detail with
smearing in the corners and considerable residual purple/green color fringing
especially in areas of high local contrast such as foliage against a hot sky.
The peripheral shading is easily resolved but smearing and
color fringing are more problematic. Even with full use of the Optics sliders
in Camera Raw, I find that with this lens I still have to deal with residual
areas of color fringing by using various local manipulations in Camera Raw and
Photoshop.
There is nothing much which can be done about the peripheral
loss of detail which persists even when the aperture is closed down to
f11-16. Fortunately many photos do not
require great peripheral detail.
In the 35-150mm focal length range the lens is almost as good as anything else out there with no problems of note.
Towards the long end however problems start to re-emerge.
There is an overall reduction of sharpness and contrast at the long end,
particularly towards the edges and corners of the frame, with blue/purple/green
color fringing at high contrast edges. This is not as troublesome as at the
wide end and is generally easy to correct in Adobe Camera Raw.
The lens is perfectly usable at any focal length with very
good results achievable if we understand the optical limitations and are prepared
to work on these in post processing.
Alternatives (Canon RF)
The RF 24-105mm f4-7.1 IS STM kit zoom is much smaller,
lighter and less expensive. It has fewer problems at the wide end and is very
good at 105mm. If we don’t need to focal length range 105-240mm the smaller
lens is the better option.
The RF 24-105mm f4L is better optically than the non-L
options with less distortion and notably fewer aberrations. But it is much more
expensive than either the 24-105 STM or the 24-240mm. It is not optically
perfect either with some samples being decentered and others having poor
resolution at the long end.
A more compact option is the Rf 24-50mm STM which obviously
has only a 2.1x zoom range. It is very good optically however and if compact
size and light weight are priorities the R8 with RF 24-50mm makes a very
capable yet still light and small kit.
Another alternative is to use one of the crop sensor RF
mount bodies such as the R7 or R10 with the very good RF-S 18-150mm lens which
has an 8.3x zoom range.
At the time of writing there are no autofocus lenses from
Tamron, Sigma and others for the Canon RF mount. However if/when Canon and the
independent lens makers resolve their issues we will likely see Tamron and
Sigma superzooms for the RF mount.
