Canon RF 24-105mm F4 L IS USM Lens Sample Pictures

An evening sail was part of the Canon Hawaii 2018 announcement event and I saw a great sunset in the making as the boat was coming ashore, returning to the beach in Lahaina. I hurried down the ladder and ran across the beach to find a clear composition. With a Canon EOS R and Canon RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Lens in hand, the rest was easy.

Photographing the ocean (usually) is a type of action photography as the scene is constantly changing. Water reflects and smooth water provides the best definition of whatever is being reflected. Although they nicely reflect sky color in general, most oceans I've visited are far from smooth. However, the thin layer of water remaining on the sand immediately after a wave recedes is often quite smooth and can provide some definition of the colorful clouds, the subject most often desired to be reflected. Consider timing the capture of some of your beach images for this wave position.

Another beach photography consideration is what the leading edge of the waterline looks like. I like the frothy white roll clearly delineating the sand and water as seen in this image, but other options can also work well.

I always find a great sunset to be photographically irresistible. Islands often have very long distance views of the setting (or rising) sun, making them ideal locations for watching this time of the day through a viewfinder.

I signed up for an east Maui rainforest waterfall hike and knew that the path could be wet and muddy. What I didn't know was that, thanks to a just-previous hurricane, "wet" meant I would be fording swift rain-swollen streams up to waist-deep with the MindShift Gear Trailscape 18L camera backpack being held overhead. That certainly upped the hike's entertainment value (and provided a new understanding of how well Gore-Tex trail-running shoes hold water).

Having both stories and images always makes an adventure better.

The Canon EOS R and Canon RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Lens were used to capture this idyllic Hawaiian rainforest waterfall. Aiding was a Breakthrough Photography circular polarizer filter, cutting reflections and increasing saturation. These filters are nearly a requirement for waterfall photography. An f/8 aperture would have provided adequate depth of field for this 29mm image, but the narrower f/11 opening permitted a longer exposure, creating a more strongly motion-blurred waterfall.

I was in Aspen, Colorado for two nights and the primary goal was to capture another set of classic Maroon Bells lake reflection images that included the amazing fall aspen color. After arriving at the hotel late in the evening on the first night, I set the alarm for 2:40 AM and went to bed. Probably no one thinks getting up at 2:40 AM is fun and ... that I was dragging my wife and youngest daughter with me ... raised questions about my sanity. Still, this is one of the most beautiful locations in the country and I calculated that it was going to be worth the sleep deprivation (and potential grief from the family) to get the perfect position along Maroon Lake.

Upon stepping outside, the heavy cloud cover was obvious and occasional light rain followed us. Landscape photographers live for the openings in breaking storm clouds and I stayed with the plan. I was one of the first photographers to arrive at the side of the lake, but I immediately encountered disruption of the plan. The first issue was that a rope now lines the path around the lake, preventing close access to the water. The second issue was that the lake level was extremely low. The restricted access and now-distant, very shallow lake combined to provide a dirt/stone former lake bottom as the image foreground and the lake was now small enough that the reflections were rather unexciting at the proximity available. In addition, the aspen leaves had changed (and many dropped) about a week early this year, courtesy of the drought that also accounted for the drained lake.

I continued to stay with the plan, remaining standing in my spot, alongside a large number of other photographers, from about 3:30 AM until close to 9:00 AM, waiting for a break in the clouds. That never happened and I finally decided that a decent photo was not likely to happen. The hike I promised the girls was looking like a great option and that became the plan.

After all of the early AM effort, the best scene of the day showed up in front of us while hiking near the far side of the lake. An opening in the clouds allowed sunlight to penetrate, brightly lighting a grove of aspens that were still holding their brilliantly-colored leaves. The key to getting my favorite Maroon Bells image on this trip was just being out in a great location, watching for something good to happen.

The Canon EOS R and RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Lens were perfect hiking companions.

Upon locating these intriguingly-curved aspen trees in the San Juan Mountains near Ophir, CO (south of Telluride), I had hours of entertainment before me. Aspen tree trunks are beautiful and their fall leaf color is amazing. With the numerous curving trunk shapes (likely caused by an avalanche when the trees were younger), there were seemingly endless angles and perspectives to use for images here. Helping was that the lighting/weather was constantly changing, ranging from snowing to sun shining bright enough to create shadows with subsequent images appearing different without even moving the camera. It was perfect.

I have many hundreds of images to choose from (I'll likely share more). Many of them were captured with a wide angle zoom lens, but this particular perspective seemed ideal for 50mm and I happened to have the Canon RF 50mm f/1.2L USM Lens in the MindShift Gear FirstLight 30L backpack I was carrying. I originally thought this image was captured with that lens, but ... this happened to be the last image taken with the Canon RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Lens prior to mounting the RF 50.

Using a "standard" or "normal" focal length makes keeping both very close and very distant subjects in sharp focus a challenge, even at f/16. For this image, I focused on the foreground trees for one frame and on the background trees for a second frame. For a simple focus stacking technique, I loaded the two images as layers in Photoshop and used a layer mask to determine which image the foreground trees were showing from.

It was an early morning in Crested Butte, Colorado and the sky was dark, heavily overcast and quite uninspiring. Then the clouds rolled away and suddenly there was bright light bringing life to the fall-colored aspens.

I was primarily shooting with the Canon EOS R and RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Lens this morning. As there was adequate light, shooting this combination handheld permitted rapid and significant location and composition changes as dictated by the rapidly changing light.

I've probably purchased a Canon 24-105 F4 L IS Lens a dozen times. This series of lenses, including the Canon RF 24-105mm F4 L IS USM Lens, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS II USM Lens, and Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Lens, are professional-grade, high-performing, relatively compact and lightweight, and affordable. That combination, along with the versatile 24-105mm focal length range, make these lenses ideal for many uses, including family, travel, and hiking.

So, why do I keep rebuying them, aside from the new models becoming available? Well, I try to keep the kit trimmed to the gear that is most important to me. I sometimes shoot moving subjects in low light, such as at indoor events, and in these scenarios, an aperture wider than f/4 is desired. Thus, there is always a 24-70mm F2.8 L lens in the kit.

With a significant general-purpose focal length range covered, it seems that 24-70mm lens should be adequate for all needs. When there is some time space since the last 24-105 F4 need, the 24-105 gets sold to finance seemingly more important needs.

Then, a need arises that reminds me that I really do need that lens, usually for its size, weight, and focal length range, and I re-buy it. And, the story repeats – more often than it should.

The second Canon RF 24-105mm F4 L IS USM Lens arrived in my kit earlier this year. With some long hikes on the schedule, the need for this lens again became apparent. I bought it to keep this time (unless I forget the reasons again), and it performed impressively.

One location that the RF 24-105 was perfect for was Badlands National Park.

Few elements make a prairie more photogenic than a good storm with a rainbow, and the first thing I grab when a rainbow shows up is a Breakthrough Photography circular polarizer filter.

While it is always great to photograph a beautiful sunset, better is to find a way to create sunset images that are different from the hordes of others in my archives. A silhouette often makes a good sunset image differentiator, adding a little something to the image, and in this case, a tiki torch hints at the location the image was captured at.

Note that sunsets do not always have to be in focus. To mix things up a bit, I decided that I wanted the tiki torch and its flame to be sharp with the background going out of focus. Thus, a wide aperture was selected. The wide aperture had the secondary purpose of enabling a flame-freezing shutter speed.

The composition decisions for this image were made primarily for overall balance in the frame. The tiki torch is dark and heavy, so placing it near the center was helpful for balance. I wanted the torch flame in the frame along with the other flame, the sun, along and the color surrounding it was another subject of primary interest. With the latter seeming stronger than the prior, moving the tiki torch slightly to the right seemed to make sense. Keeping the perimeter of the frame clear of lines often helps keep the viewer's eye in the frame.

As the flame was changing rapidly, I captured a burst of images and later selected the flame shapes I liked best.

The Canon EOS R and RF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Lens are a perfect walkaround combination. The camera and lens used to capture this image were on loan, but I eventually added this pair to my personal kit.

The Yellow Mounds make all the Badlands National Park top photography locations lists. They are beautiful, intriguing, and worthy of their position on those lists.

However, creating great images that include these mounds is not easy. Of course, lighting changes everything, and dramatically reducing the image quality challenge on this day was natural spotlighting that, incredibly, illuminated the feature highlights of this scene.

As is often the case, the Canon EOS R5 and RF 24-105mm F4 L IS USM Lens combination was outstanding for this landscape photograph. The RF 24-105 is relatively compact, has an excellent general-purpose focal length range, consistently produces impressively sharp images, and was my primary lens for over two weeks in this park last year.

Any lake earning the name Picture must be worth stopping by, and this lake, in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, just west of North Cascades National Park, deserves that name.

A great scene is made better when duplicated by a reflection, and this still evening enabled full advantage of this lake's reflecting surface.

The Canon RF 24-105mm F4 L IS USM Lens was this day's walkabout lens choice. In addition to covering the ideal angles of view, this relatively compact and lightweight lens consistently delivered sharp images, as always.

Orchids are one of the most beautiful flowers, but they are not easy to compose into a photograph. This view seemed to work well.

While the Canon RF 24-105mm F4 L IS USM Lens does not blur the background like the Canon RF 135mm F1.8 L IS USM Lens, the f/8 aperture used for this image was intended to keep all in focus, but the 24-105 has outstanding general purpose utility.

The location was the Magnolia Plantation near Charleston, SC., where the Spanish moss and its reflection provide a beautiful, non-distracting foreground and background that emphasize the bridge and model.

Shiprock, named for its resemblance to an old clipper ship, is surrounded by a vast desert, with clear views from nearly all directions. While the enormous rock formation provides a dramatic subject over the flat desert, I found the tall, narrow, naturally formed dike leading to it especially entertaining and a great foreground subject to include in the frame.

On a clear day, the first sunrise light casts a golden color on this landscape, and this light angle's contrast emphasizes the texture of Shiprock.

I planned, flew, drove, lodged, got up early, drove farther, and then hiked. That effort and expense meant no settling for second best on the camera and lens. Why were the Canon EOS R5 and RF 24-105mm F4 L IS USM Lens selected?

The R5 is currently my preferred Canon camera. It continuously delivers beautiful, accurately focused, high-resolution images.

The light shown in this image only lasts for a few minutes, and the RF 24-105 had the optimal focal length range to rapidly capture a variety of compositions, including some with Shiprock more isolated in the frame. Since a narrow aperture was needed for increased depth of field, a larger, heavier, and wider aperture lens was not necessary or desired, and this L lens feeds the R5 the impressive optical quality required for stand-out images.