Blog

Sur­pris­ing­ly, Canon has released a firmware update for my “always on” stan­dard zoom Canon RF 24-105 f/4L*. The new ver­sion 2.0.7 final­ly allows man­u­al focus­ing at any time. In addi­tion, it is now pos­si­ble to assign a dif­fer­ent func­tion to the focus ring. For exam­ple, it can be used to adjust the aper­ture con­tin­u­ous­ly and with­out “clicks” in video mode.

I use this lens fre­quent­ly and real­ly enjoy it. I par­tic­u­lar­ly appre­ci­ate its excel­lent com­bi­na­tion of com­pact­ness, build qual­i­ty, use­ful focal length range, and good opti­cal qual­i­ty. The price is also good for an L-series lens. A detailed com­par­i­son test with its EF pre­de­ces­sor and many sam­ple images can be found here.

Here is the offi­cial descrip­tion from Canon:

Firmware Ver­sion 2.0.7 incor­po­rates the fol­low­ing enhancement:

1. Adds full-time man­u­al focus, which allows con­stant man­u­al focus adjust­ment in both One-Shot and Ser­vo AF modes.*
   *This func­tion is enabled when used with com­pat­i­ble cameras.
2. Adds the abil­i­ty to use the focus ring as a con­trol ring.
   Exam­ple: By assign­ing the con­trol ring the abil­i­ty to change the aper­ture, you can adjust the aper­ture with­out click sounds being record­ed by the micro­phone.*
   *This func­tion is enabled when used with com­pat­i­ble cameras.
3. Improves oth­er sys­tem stability.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there is no infor­ma­tion about which cam­eras are “com­pat­i­ble” with this update. I haven’t had a chance to test it with my cam­eras yet. Please let me know in the com­ments below which R cam­eras are com­pat­i­ble with the update.

The Update can beo down­loaded here direct­ly from Canon.