smitty605 Loc: Kansas

Canon shooters: I just bought a Canon R6 with an adapter for using my EF lenses. Will I see a difference in my photos if I buy RF lenses to use with the R6 ? Or should I keep using my EF lenses with the adapter and save the money ?

OutBack Loc: North Central Florida

Hey, try it!

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Yes.

The difference will be more obvious for lenses that are wide apertures in the one to one compares. Take the RF f/1.2 lenses that are as sharp wide open at f/1.2 as the EF versions stepped down. Lenses like the 70-200 zooms also are new designs, even with the IS, they much smaller than the EF versions. Canon's version II / III EF lenses are their newest and the comparison will be less pronounced vs the RF versions, a consideration as you look at your inventory for which to replace.

Bugs

no

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

The difference is in the eye of the beholder.

Zooman 1

I started with the R and the adaptor with the 100-400mm, worked well. I decided I would convert to all mirrorless. Now have the RF100-500mm on the R6 as my favorite nature combination. Have not seen any real difference between the 2 lenses. I have even used the EF 100-400 on the M50 with adaptor, as a back up.

Ednsb Loc: Santa Barbara

both - some of the new RF lens are superior to the EF versions but there are gaps. Also they are very expensive except for the kit lens like the 24-105, 35, 50, and 85. The 50 is like most of the nifty 50s but tests don’t show any big difference between the ef versions and the rf version. The 85 and 35 seem to test out a bit better than their ef version wide open but by f8 you wont be able to tell the difference. The same is true of the 24-105 which surprisingly does great images if not wide open. So it is up to you if you have a need to buy multi thousand dollar replaces for your ef lenses? For me it was simple - I am buying a wide angle (14) prime or zoom, using my ef 24 and 50 and 100 macro and selling a bunch of ef and even efs lenses.

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

You might well find that your EF lenses work BETTER adapted for the R6, than they did on your DSLR.

One reason is that lenses on mirrorless cameras don't require calibration, because the autofocus sensors are embedded directly in the image sensor, so they are on exactly the same plane as the image is being captured. (A DSLR use a mirror to redirect light to it's AF sensors that are usually located in the bottom of the camera's mirror box, separate from the image sensor... and there's opportunity for misalignment so that what the camera thinks is in focus actually isn't perfectly focused on the image plane.)

Other than that... autofocus speed is supposed to be at least as good... But the R6 also is able to focus in much lower light conditions than ANY of the Canon DSLRs. The very most capable of those DSLRs can focus to about -3EV light levels (approx. "moonlight"). The R6 and R5 are both good around -6EV (approx. "starlight"). Partly this is thanks to the light directly impinging upon the mirrorless camera's AF sensors, not having to pass through a semi-transparent mirror and be reflected by a second mirror the way it's done in DSLRs and where those mirrors reduce the amount of light that eventually reaches the sensors.

Add to this, the R6 has more than 1000 "AF points" that cover almost the entire image area, while the most any DSLR has is 150 points, but most have far less than that.... and they're relatively concentrated in the center third or quarter of the image area.

Plus, the R6 and R5 have in-body image stabilization, which combines with IS in lenses that have it, to offer incredible levels of assistance making shots in extremes that weren't possible before.

It's not a perfect world. Adding an adapter will make the lens larger and additional electronic contacts aren't likely to help performance, but all the above factors are likely to more than offset any minor loss.

And, RF lenses are the "latest and greatest" designs from Canon. Sure, many EF and EF-S lenses are excellent too... and a lot of them are well-proven. But Canon's R&D efforts are now focused on the mirrorless system. Eventually you may want to take advantage of the new lenses.... But no one is making you do so immediately.

Finally, there's choice of EF to RF adapters for use on Canon R-series: a plain one that's reasonably inexpensive, another that adds a user programmable control ring (much like is found on many RF lenses), and a third type that allows drop-in filters to be placed behind the lens (which might prove very useful with some lenses that are otherwise difficult to filter). In some cases (such as ultrawide Tilt-Shift), given a choice I might even opt for an adapted EF mount lens instead of an RF lens, to be able to take advantage of drop-in filters.

smitty605 Loc: Kansas

Wow! Great information, thank you !