Birds I met on the way to Boulder Bay

I bought another new lens the other day.  It’s a Canon RF 800 f/11.  The whole idea of being able to walk around with a lightweight (1.25kg), cheap (relative) 800 mm lens would have been ridiculous a few years back, but here we are, in 2022 with this offering from Canon.  Now, don’t get me wrong, it certainly is a bright day sort of lens as its f/11 fixed aperture makes its usefulness on dull days very limited unless you are happy using very high ISO settings. However, on those days you can use it, it seems pretty good as you can see from the attached photos.  It’s certainly acceptably sharp. It has excellent Image Stabilisation, focuses extremely well on a Canon R5 and is light, oh so light!  No tripod needed!

To put this into perspective.  This lens retails in New Zealand for $2000.  The top of the line, Canon RF 800 5.6 will set you back $35,000NZ and weighs a solid 3.1kg.  Now, there is no doubt that the 5.6 will be sharper, will give better separation of subject from the background and probably focuses way faster and has a much closer minimum focusing distance of 2.6m versus the f/11’s 6m, however is it 18 x’s better? Probably not, and you would have to be making serious money to be able to afford / justify it.

I hope you enjoy the photos.