Canon RF 200-800mm f/6.3-9 IS USM lens review: Enormous reach for wildlife photography

It’s no secret that the best lenses for wildlife photography are among the most expensive lenses you can buy. Finding a versatile, good-quality lens with the reach and prowess needed for photographing distant animals is a tough feat if you don’t have a huge budget, but the Canon RF 200-800mm f/6.3-9 IS USM lens could be just what you’re looking for. With one of the widest focal ranges out there, it’s a wildlife photographer's dream — and, provided you’re shooting in favorable conditions, no animal will be out of reach.

We’ve taken it to a nature reserve, photographed birds from our window and zoomed in on the moon to assess its performance in all-light conditions for static and moving subjects, emulating real-world shooting conditions to test its mettle.

Canon RF 200-800mm f/6.3-9 IS USM review

Canon RF 200-800mm f/6.3-9 IS USM: Design

• Big and heavy
• Annoying amount of lens creep
• Solid and well-built
• Custom buttons difficult to access

There’s no beating around the bush here — this lens is big, and it’s heavy. Weighing about 4.5 lbs (just over 2 kilograms), this thing makes itself known both in your camera bag and out in the field. Needless to say, it got quite heavy after a while, even when resting in a hide, but it feels solid and well-built and is dust- and weather-resistant, although we never got caught out in the rain to fully test this.

We found it frustrating that it didn’t have a zoom lock, as it had an annoying amount of lens creep when we held the lens vertically, which meant we couldn’t carry the camera around our neck (as if its weight didn’t already see to that). We found the zoom ring a little on the stiff side, and, to be picky, the lens actually looked quite ugly when it was zoomed all the way in on a subject.

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In addition, it has a control ring, AF/MF switch, image stabilizer switch and two custom buttons, although we found these buttons hard to press as they aren’t within easy reach when holding the camera’s hefty weight. When we took our hand away to try to press either of the buttons, it threw the entire weight distribution off.

It has a nice big lens hood, although we’d have liked this to have a door in order to utilize a polarizer, particularly when we were photographing waterfowl.

Canon RF 200-800mm f/6.3-9 IS USM: Performance

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• Struggles in the dark with f/6.3 aperture
• Good autofocus performance
• Excellent image quality

For wildlife photography in generally favorable conditions, this lens performed very well overall. Its obvious downfall is the limited maximum aperture — f/6.3 performs just fine during the daytime, but as the light levels fell at dusk, or even when we went into a heavily wooded area, we had to push the ISO up higher than we’d have wanted.

Luckily, we were shooting with the Canon EOS R6 II, which has excellent noise handling, so we were able to save a lot of our images. But if you often shoot at dawn or dusk, we’d recommend investing in a wider telephoto lens so you won’t need to rely on denoise software.

The autofocus was also good, but at higher focal lengths, it’s at the mercy of how steady your hand is. It generally performed very well, but it suffered when we were shooting in harsh conditions, or if there were distractions or foliage in front of our subject.

Overall, though, its performance is very good for the price. Images are sharp and it captures color very nicely — certainly more than well enough for wildlife or moon photography.

Canon RF 200-800mm f/6.3-9 IS USM: Functionality

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• 5.5 stops of image stabilization is crucial
• Versatile focal length
• 2.6 ft (0.8 meter) close focusing distance at 200mm is great for insects

As much as it suffers from a fairly wide maximum aperture, the 200-800mm focal length offers versatility that many other lenses don’t. There’s a Sony super-telephoto with a 400-800mm range, but you’d be stuck if a subject came too close to you — with the Canon, you’d be able to zoom out easily. We never found ourselves wishing we had multiple lenses, as the 200-800mm can cover a lot of subjects, near or far.

Plus, although it doesn’t have the close focusing capabilities of a true macro lens, it can focus as close as 2.6 feet (0.8 meters) at 200mm, which is great for photographing butterflies and insects at a fairly close range.

The 5.5 stops of image stabilization were a lifesaver, and pretty crucial for such a long focal length. Even just for compositional purposes, we still struggled to follow subjects on occasion at the full 800mm, and if there had been no image stabilization, we’d have had no chance.

Should you buy the Canon RF 200-800mm f/6.3-9 IS USM?

Overall, this lens provides excellent value for money. You get a lot of lens for the price, and although it’s not a low-light champion, it still produces beautifully sharp, contrast-y images, while the versatility of the focal length is hard to beat.

Considering the very best wildlife lenses are telephoto primes costing upwards of $10,000, it’s one of the best you can buy for most wildlife photographers — that is, for anyone who’s not a serious pro.

If the Canon RF 200-800mm f/6.3-9 IS USM isn't for you