CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

You're going to pay a price premium for a few reasons:

1) New RF lens
2) Unique lens design, on the 14mm wide end
3) Canon L-series
4) This is the world's best ultrawide zoom, unless you really, really need the f/2.8 aperture of the larger RF 15-35mm f/2.8L IS USM. ~ Ken Rockwell, Oct 2021 review

Bridges Loc: Memphis, Charleston SC, now Nazareth PA

Perfect if all you do are landscapes, milky way shots, street photography, and weird portrait shots. Too short for normal to any shots where you need any reach at all.

DeanS Loc: Capital City area of North Carolina

Keep in mind that this lens on a ff body does not give you much reach.

hrblaine

Me too. I'd go longer and not so wide. Harry

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

It really depends upon what you like to shoot. That's an ultrawide to moderately wide zoom. It would be great for landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes, architecture (interior and exterior),and similar.

At the 35mm end it's marginally useful for portraiture. Certain types of portraiture. I call it "environmental portraiture", where you not only show the subject, but also some of their surroundings. A moderately wide 35mm is also popular for street photography. But with a wide angle lens you don't want to get too close to people, or to position them too close to an edge, or there will be a lot of exaggeration and distortion. Traditionally portraiture is done with relatively short telephotos. In the 75mm to 135mm range with a full frame camera like yours. Short telephotos don't distort people's faces and proportions, the way wide angle lenses do. In fact, short teles often have slight pincushion distortion that some people find flattering because it makes them look slimmer.

With a member name like "bobbyvideo", you might find 35mm useful or even zoom slightly wider for some video work.

While the 14-35mm is able to focus quite close and render a very respectable 0.38X magnification (a little better than 1/3 life size), there will be very little distance between the front of the lens and the subject. With living critters, that can be a problem. Being so close you also might throw a shadow over any subject. Usually short focal lengths are used for close-up/macro work primarily indoors, in-studio and under controlled lighting. As with portraiture, much macro and close up photography is done with short telephotos.

At $1700, the RF 14-35mm f/4L ain't cheap! But it's $600 less than the RF 15-35mm f/2.8L. The f/4 lens also is considerably smaller and about a half lb. lighter than the f/2.8 lens.

If you wanted smaller, lighter, less expensive alternatives you might consider the RF 16mm f/2.8 STM ($299), RF 35mm f/1.8 Macro STM IS ($499), RF 50mm f/1.8 STM ($199) and RF 85mm f/2 IS STM Macro ($599). You could literally buy all four of these for $200 less than the cost of the RF 14-35mm. Among those four primes, I'd probably not buy the 50mm, only getting the 35mm because those two are pretty similar and I prefer the slightly wider lens. Purchasing just those three primes... 16mm, 35mm and 85mm... ends up saving $400 less than the cost of the zoom. All four of these lenses have larger max apertures than the zoom... more than two stops in a couple cases. Also notice that the 35mm and 85mm are both Macro lenses. However, note that they are 1:2... not full 1:1. Still, that's higher magnification than is possible with the RF 14-35mm. The 35mm and 85mm both also have IS, like the 14-35mm zoom. Of course, the combined three or four prime lenses would end up bulkier and heavier than the zoom lens alone... but individually the primes are significantly smaller and mostly lighter. The 85mm is only slightly lighter and smaller than the 14-35mm. The other lenses are considerably smaller and lighter.

Note that all of these primes use STM focus drive (stepper motor), which isn't quite as quick as the Nano USM (ultrasonic motor) on the zoom. They all should be pretty quiet. I've heard the 35mm lens is a little noisier than typical STM, though usually not noticeable in videos unless shooting in extremely quiet ambient conditions.

If planning to do focus pulls, you should look into possible concerns with any of these lenses, such as focus breathing. There are reviews of all these lenses on YouTube showing their actual performance. Do a search there for Gordon Liang, Christopher Frost, Dustin Abbot and others. For overall information I highly recommend www.the-digital-picture.com where Bryan Carnathan extensively reviews all Canon gear, complete with image quality and other comparisons.

Since none of those four primes are L-series lenses, Canon doesn't include a lens hood with them. Those are sold separately, though I always recommend getting them because they are the best physical protection for your lens while using it and can improve images a lot in some tricky lighting situations. Canon's hoods are mostly very good, but also are rather pricey. In some cases there are considerably less expensive "clones" from third party manufacturers that are very close copies of the OEM hood. I see some of those clones for the RF 50mm f/1.8 and 35mm f/1.8, but not yet for the newer 85mm f/2 and 16mm f/2.8. The RF 35mm f/1.8 lens uses a particularly odd hood. It's extremely shallow, both the OEM and clone (and the OEM is expensive). With that particular lens I'd try some third party, screw-in alternatives that are deeper and more effective. (I did exactly this with an EF-M 22mm lens, which uses a similarly weird OEM hood. I was able to find an excellent metal hood for $6 on eBay, which even includes it's own cap and is much more effective than the silly little hood Canon sells. That "cheap" hood and its cap now live on my EF-M lens permanently.)