Last week, I explained why the Canon RF 24–70mm f2.8 is my pick for the “if I could only have one lens” scenario. It’s the central pillar of Canon’s famed holy trinity of lenses.

But I don’t live in a one-lens world. I own several lenses—and before branching out into specialty glass, I made a point to complete the Canon trinity. That journey naturally led me to the Canon RF 15–35mm f2.8, a lens that plays a very different—but equally important—role.

A Great Travel Companion

If you’re looking for a true “one-and-done” travel lens, the RF 15–35mm f2.8 makes a compelling case.

Canon RF 15-35 f2.8, 29mm @f2.8

At the wide end, 15mm is wide—very wide. This is the lens you reach for when traveling and you want to capture sweeping landscapes, dramatic city scapes, or iconic points of interest in a single frame, without resorting to stitched panoramas.

At the long end, 35mm happens to be my favorite focal length, and one where I can comfortably capture the majority of my images. That flexibility means this lens can stay mounted all day, adapting easily as scenes and locations change.

Like the RF 24–70mm f2.8, it’s a bit larger and heavier than what would be considered ideal for travel—nearly identical in size and weight, in fact.  Still, if you had to carry just one lens on a trip, this one could absolutely do the job.

Because this focal range doesn’t introduce much compression, the background isn’t heavily blurred even when shooting wide open. That characteristic actually works in its favor.  It makes the RF 15–35mm f2.8 an excellent choice for photojournalism and environmental storytelling, where context matters just as much as the subject.

Wide-Angle Distortion?

Wide-angle lenses are notorious for warping images, and when Canon introduced the RF 15–35mm f2.8 , it pushed into territory that—at the time—felt about as wide as you could go without stepping into fisheye or tilt-shift territory.

That said, the lens isn’t entirely free of distortion.

This photo taken at 15mm distorted some of the people on the edges.

At the ultra-wide end, the RF 15–35mm f2.8 relies on strong optical correction, with digital profile correction used to finish the job. The result is a distortion pattern that doesn’t behave uniformly across the frame. Instead of straight lines simply bowing outward (barrel) or inward (pincushion), you can see a more complex effect—often referred to as mustache distortion (sometimes called wave distortion).  The distortion seems more noticeable in people images vs. architecture or landscape:

This photo taken at 15mm look fantastic.

In designing this lens, Canon clearly prioritized compact size, a fast f2.8 aperture, and excellent center sharpness over absolute geometric perfection. That’s a reasonable trade—but it’s still a trade.

What makes this both good and bad is that the distortion isn’t always obvious. How noticeable it is can depend on subject placement, how close foreground elements are to the lens, and how much profile correction is applied in post. In some cases, enabling Lightroom’s lens correction improves the image; in others, it can actually make things look worse.

Another fantastic example taken at 15mm.

The good news is that when the distortion does show up, it’s usually confined to the corners. In practice, that often means a modest crop is all that’s needed to remove the affected areas entirely.

THE YOUTUBE TALKING HEAD CHOICE

Quite honestly, I don’t use the RF 15–35mm f2.8 all that often for photography—mainly because I only travel a few times a year. Where this lens really earns its keep for me is video.  Want to see an example?  You can look at any recent example on the ThruMyLens YouTube Channel, and the video supplement to this article  can be found below.

I use it almost weekly to record content for my YouTube channel, and it’s probably one of the most common lenses you’ll see among Canon shooters doing talking-head style videos. There’s something about how this lens renders people on camera that’s hard to quantify, but immediately noticeable.

Compared to the RF 24–70mm f2.8, this lens simply works better for talking-head video in tight spaces. The wider field of view lets me frame myself comfortably without pushing the camera halfway across the room, and at typical shooting distances the perspective looks more natural than you might expect. Faces don’t feel compressed or boxed in, and the background stays readable without becoming distracting.

That’s where the “magic” comes from. The lens gives you context without exaggeration. You look present in the scene instead of cut out from it, which is especially important for YouTube, where connection matters more than isolation. For creators working in home studios or offices, the RF 15–35mm f2.8 solves a very real problem: it makes small spaces feel intentional on camera, not cramped.  Flexibility in working distance between the subject and the camera becomes increasingly important once you start adding other essential video tools like lighting and microphones. The RF 15–35mm f2.8 gives you that flexibility, while still delivering rendering that looks natural and flattering on people.

Like most Canon L-series glass, it isn’t cheap.  But because I’m able to use it effectively for both photography and video, it’s become an indispensable part of my kit—and one that sees far more use than I originally expected.

The RF 15–35mm f2.8 excels at travel and landscape photography and is an indispensable tool for photojournalism.  It also handles talking-head YouTube video with ease.  What it isn’t, however, is a lens for exaggerated subject isolation or overtly “artistic” rendering.  This lens tells a story by capturing a scene—it doesn’t embellish it.  If it could speak, it would simply say, “Just the facts, ma’am.”  And it turns out, that’s exactly what makes it so good.  It does what it’s designed to do—and it does it exceptionally well. That’s why it’s earned a place in Canon’s holy trinity, and a permanent spot in my lens bag.

Here’s my video review: