The Canon EOS R1 has been a long time coming, but finally there’s a true RF mount successor to the much loved EOS-1D X Mark III DSLR. The R1 combines industrial build quality with state of the art AI autofocus and blistering burst speeds, and is designed for professional sports, press or wildlife photographers who need to be right at the top of their game.
Is it one of the best Canon cameras you can buy? Of course! Is it one of the best professional cameras on the market? Without a doubt. But its powerful video capabilities also make it one of the best hybrid cameras for professionals, with features that can even challenge some of the best cinema cameras.
This changes the landscape somewhat for lens choices. Users will still want the fast L-series telephoto zooms and primes Canon is famous for, but with a shift towards hybrid stills/video shooting.
And that’s exactly what Canon is aiming for with its new hybrid lenses, including the Z-series 24-104mm f/2.8 and 70-200mm f/2.8 optics, and its new VCM f/1.4 primes. We’ve included all of these in this guide together with links to our reviews for every lens.
We’ve also included three other standout lenses for sports and action, including the eye-widening RF 10-20mm f/4, the stunning if pricey RF 100-300mm f/2.8 and the RF 400mm f/2.8 as a representative of Canon’s long-range super-telephoto primes. And if you can afford these last two, then good luck to you – business must be good!
Best lenses for the Canon EOS R1
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The 24-70mm f/2.8 has for so long been the standard zoom of choice for professionals that it’s never seriously been questioned. Canon’s RF 24-105mm f/4 is a decent lens, but a whole f-stop slower and not really in the same league. So when Canon launched the RF 24-105mm f/2.8 L IS USM Z, it really broke the mold. It’s a professional-quality lens with a longer-than-standard zoom range, a constant f/2.8 maximum aperture and excellent image quality. Not only that, it’s one of Canon’s new hybrid ‘Z’ lenses designed equally for both stills and video, with fast, smooth, quiet AF and a physical iris control ring. The downsides are pretty obvious – this is a very big, very heavy and very expensive lens. However, it could be a match made in heaven for EOS R1 shooters who need to capture video as well as stills.
Read our full Canon RF 24-105mm f/2.8 L IS USM Z review with lab test
There’s a ‘holy trinity’ of lenses for professional photographers, and that includes a constant-aperture 70-200mm f/2.8 which can double as a versatile short telephoto zoom and a long-range portrait lens. Canon already makes one of these, but the RF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM Z is different – it’s another of Canon’s hybrid/video-optimized ‘Z’ lenses. It comes with an iris control ring and, like the 24-105mm f/2.8 Z lens, mounting points for an optional power zoom adapter. Unlike Canon’s regular RF 70-200mm f/2.8, this ‘Z’ version has a fixed barrel length with internal focus and zoom mechanisms. It’s also available in both black or white versions. This is, not surprisingly, a big and expensive lens for its type, but if you’ve bought an EOS R1 for video work, there’s a strong case for choosing this lens over the regular 70-200mm f/2.8.
Read our full Canon RF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM Z review with lab tests
If you’re talking about professional ‘trinity’ lenses you would normally include a lens like the Canon RF 16-35mm f/2.8, but we think the extraordinary RF 10-20mm f/4 L IS STM might be better still, particularly for sports photographers shooting dramatic close-up action and interiors. How is it extraordinary? Because that 10-20mm focal range gives you an exceptionally wide and fully rectilinear angle of view for dramatic, immersive images. It’s also remarkable for just how small and light it is, and how easy it is to use. That bulbous front element rules out conventional front-mounted filters, but on a 10mm full frame lens, what else would you expect? Admittedly the maximum aperture is f/4 not f/2.8, but you do get 5 stops of image stabilization built in, which goes up to 6 stops on a Canon body with IBIS.
See our full Canon RF 10-20mm f/4 L IS STM review with lab tests
The Canon RF 24mm f/1.4 L VCM is one of three new prime lenses from Canon that are designed specifically for hybrid/video work. Canon has added VCM (voice coil motor) AF to its regular USM system for speed and smoothness and, because this is a hybrid lens, you also get an iris control ring. This is marked in photography style f-stops rather than video-orientated t-stops, but most hybrid shooters will be happy with either. It’s an electronic control rather than a mechanical one, so it doesn’t have quite the same feel as a ‘real’ aperture ring, but it will be a welcome addition for videographers at least. Its close-up capabilities are pretty average, though, so if that’s important you might want to take a look at the RF 24mm f/1.8 Macro instead, which is a good deal cheaper though less refined.
See our full Canon RF 24mm f/1.4 L VCM review with lab tests
A 35mm prime is the classic ‘street’ lens but is also ideal for environmental portraiture, an important sub-genre of sports/action photography. Canon makes 35mm primes already, but this one uses its latest VCM and iris controls to provide a dedicated hybrid/video filming experience. It’s disappointing to discover that this lens (like the 24mm f/1.4 VCM) relies heavily on digital lens corrections but then these will be corrected in in-camera JPEGs and by lens correction profiles in raw processing software, so you’ll probably be none the wiser – and the image quality at the other end is spectacular. As with the 24mm VCM lens, if you need better close-focussing and don’t mind a little less refinement, check out the (much cheaper) RF 35mm f/1.8 IS STM Macro instead.
See our full Canon RF 35mm F1.4 L VCM review with lab tests
This is the third of Canon’s hybrid VCM prime lenses and is perfect for photographers who enjoy this classic ‘standard’ focal length – and don’t really need Canon’s fast but heavy RF 50mm f/1.2. The stepless iris control ring is perfect for video, but less so for stills since although the EOS R1 is compatible (and the EOS R5 Mark II), older cameras may not be without firmware updates. The RF 50mm f/1.4 L VCM delivers excellent optical performance (with some digital lens correction) and is quite light and compact too. Perhaps the key point about all three of these VCM primes, though, is that they are the same size, near enough the same weight and take the same size filters – this makes them a great set of primes for video, and especially for gimbal use.
See our full Canon RF 50mm f/1.4 L VCM review with lab tests
What do you do if a regular 70-200mm f/2.8 isn’t quite long enough for your line of work? The usual answer would be accepting a variable maximum aperture in a longer zoom, or the inflexibility and cost of a super-telephoto prime. But Canon has the answer. The RF 100-300mm F2.8 L IS USM offers 50% more reach than the regular RF 70-200mm f/2.8 offerings, but keeps that constant f/2.8 aperture. A 300mm f/2.8 is impressive enough, but to get that at the end of a 3x zoom range is amazing. There’s a price to pay, of course – very literally. This lens costs nearly as much as Canon’s super-telephoto primes, and weighs nearly as much too. At this level, it means taking some pretty hard-headed business decisions.
See our full Canon RF 100-300mm F2.8 L IS USM review with lab tests
Long-range professional sports photography quickly gets expensive, and while the Canon RF 400mm f/2.8 L IS USM is at the cheaper end of Canon’s super-telephoto range, it still costs as much as a pair of EOS R1 bodies. In fact, this lens is a development of the older EF 400mm f/2.8 – but none the worse for that, as its optical performance is superb and the autofocus is extremely fast and responsive. If 400mm isn’t long enough for you, Canon also makes an RF 600mm f/4, an RF 800mm f/5.6 and a massive RF 1200mm f/8, though it might make more sense to use the RF 400mm and Canon’s RF 1.4x or RF 2x Extenders (teleconverters) instead.
See our full Canon RF 400mm f/2.8 L IS USM review and lab tests
Also see our guide to the best Canon flashguns
