CANON RF 15-30mm F4.5-6.3 IS STM

This super wide lens for mirrorless goes large on viewing angles while keeping the size and cost relatively small

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The Canon RF 15-30mm F4.5-6.3 IS STM is an ultra-wide-angle zoom for ‘the rest of us’. There’s already a brace of RF 14-35mm F4L IS USM and RF 15-35mm F2.8L USM, as featured in this month’s Super Test (see page 88), but as L-series lenses aimed at both enthusiast and professional photographers with deep pockets, they’re much more expensive.

Not just for expansive landscapes, this lens is also well suited to cityscapes, architectural interiors, vlogging and selfies, although the relatively slow aperture takes astrophotography off the hit list. Another bonus of ultra-wide lenses is that you can get in close to a subject and exaggerate perspective, making the middle-distance and background appear to dramatically shrink away. This lens gets you closer than most if you switch to manual focus mode, giving a generous macro magnification of 0.52x. The 5.5-stop optical image stabilizer is a big bonus when shooting indoors or at twilight, especially given the modest aperture rating. Effectiveness is boosted to 7-stops with EOS R system cameras that feature IBIS.