Canon RF 300-600mm f/5.6L VCM Rumored: Crowded Super Tele Zoom Market?

A new rumor has been circulating that a Canon RF 300-600mm lens may appear in the near future, possibly this year.  Now, I had to go back and look to see if I talked about any RF 300-600mm in patent documents, and it did come up in the past, but faster than what is being alluded to in the current rumor mills.  We'll talk about that one later.  The current rumor suggests that the auto focus is now VCM.  I've noticed a new rumor trend that it seems "trendy" to suggest that VCM will be used everywhere. Maybe it works well for search engine optimization.

I'm not sure I see the point of a 300-600 f/5.6L to be honest, if anything, the only thing missing from Canon's arsenal of super telephoto zooms seems to be a replacement of the 200-400mm with built in teleconvertor.  That would, for all intents and purposes, put it close to a 300-600 f/5.6L, while also allowing it to go down to 200mm, which, from my understanding, was quite useful in the EF version.

The choice of focus motor technology also seems to be contrary to what Canon has typically suggested for motor choice. USM is excellent on super telephotos.  So I'm not convinced that Canon will dump USM for VCM on its super telephotos, especially with the larger groups free-floating with power off, and given that those tend to get abused more than pristine primes.   

Canon has a lot of super telephoto zooms; it really doesn't seem like they are lacking that much.  Canon has to date.

I added the release dates to make a point; none of them are really that old to be considered overlapped or replaced, so Canon is basically adding another lens to the same mix, in almost the same focal ranges it already has.

One advantage of a 300-600mm lens, though, would be that it's easier for Canon to create such a lens with a high optical performance than it is, say, a 3x or a 5x zoom.  So this may be the angle at which Canon is looking at doing.  That leads me to the one lens that I notice missing, the 200-400mm.

Now we have seen a Canon RF 300-600 patent application (2024-101302), though it's not the same maximum aperture. It is, however, quite impressive.

Shown here is the Canon RF 300-600mm f/2.8-4.5L

This is an internal zoom and internal focusing lens, and would accept any Canon teleextender.  Certainly an impressive design.

My Thoughts

It seems the last 1 to 2 years, rumors have been few in the way of substantiation - and I keep thinking about the broken clock being right two times a day.  This is a lens that was rumored to be already done and in testing in the wild and released before the end of 2025.  Now it's rumored again, with a different, now fixed maximum aperture (the original rumor had a 4-5.6L), which is no small trivial detail, and a new drive system as well.

Of course, it's indeed possible for Canon to release a 300-600, but it's a fairly crowded field, and it still misses the mark on a lens they do not have, the Canon RF 200-400mm f4L IS USM EXTENDER 1.4x .  I can't see a 300-600 f/5.6L being a replacement for a 200-400 f/4. The Canon EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM EXTENDER 1.4x had a price of around $12,000 - so it still fits in the ballpark of what an RF super telephoto zoom would cost of this caliber.

We've also seen no patent applications to suggest such a lens either.  Now, that in itself isn't that unusual since patent applications don't usually appear until after Canon releases the lens - but if Canon has delayed this lens by over 6 months, as the rumors suggest, then the patents should have been seen.  This has happened in the past, where Canon delays, but the patent is still on the regular schedule.

As with any rumors, they are simply rumors and should not be taken as factual information. Interestingly, this lens keeps popping up in the rumors, though.

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