A fresh perspective: shooting ultra-wide with the Canon RF 10-20mm F4L IS STM

Travel photographer and Canon Ambassador Joel Santos is no stranger to capturing dramatic landscapes. In Joel's work – which has seen him document communities across the world, from eagle hunters in Mongolia to salt miners in Ethiopia – he often uses wide angles to capture environmental portraits which place his subjects in the centre of their worlds, giving documentary context to their stories.

On a late summer filming trip to the Faroe Islands, a self-governing archipelago of 18 rocky, volcanic islands between Iceland and Norway, Joel took something special with him – a Canon RF 10-20mm F4L IS STM lens, the widest AF zoom lens for full-frame cameras in the world¹. With a focal length that starts at an overwhelming ultra-wide-angle 10mm, the lens meant Joel was able to capture completely new perspectives of this stunning landscape, getting close to his subjects while also fitting their surroundings into the frame.

Less than half the weight of its EF predecessor and with new market-leading Image Stabilisation providing sharper edges on stills and stable borders on video, this lens is built for the remote environments Joel has made his career photographing. Here, Joel explains what this ground-breaking lens adds to the RF range, and why it has earned a place in his kitbag.

After taking some initial test shots at a famous spiral staircase in Sintra, Portugal, close to his home in Lisbon, Joel headed to the Faroe Islands to truly put the Canon RF 10-20mm F4L IS STM lens to work on their boundless horizons. Its portability – weighing just 570g – was an immediate draw. "The Faroe Islands aren't the North Pole but they're windy, not the easiest place to shoot," he says. "Weight is very important to me. Most of the time I had to trek to locations, so it was nice to be able to bring that lens along with my usual setup, knowing I could do something absolutely different with it than I could with the other lenses."

His kitbag included his Canon EOS R5, drones, and a range of lenses, including his formerly widest-angle Canon RF 15-35mm F2.8L IS USM, his favourite Canon RF 28-70mm F2L USM and his Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8L IS USM. "This lens is much wider than the RF 15-35mm F2.8L IS USM, which is my most used wide-angle lens," says Joel. "It doesn't look much on paper when you look at 15mm and 10mm, but 5mm at the wide end is really a lot." So much so that at the lens' ultra-wide-angle 10mm, you achieve a shooting area more than twice that of the 16mm focal length that was Joel's first wide-angle lens.

"Usually people think about ultra-wide-angles as a means to put a lot of things inside the frame," says Joel, who often sees people using them in Portugal to fit churches into their shots while shooting in narrow streets. "I don't use the lens that way." Instead, he primarily experimented with the RF 10-20mm F4L IS STM's short minimal focus distance. "You can be almost on top of something, and still be able to focus it," he adds. "If you do that with a telephoto lens, subjects need to be at least one to three metres away. But with the ultra-wide lens, it's almost like you're using a macro lens."

Taking a small cotton flower as a subject amid the vast expanse of the Faroe Islands landscape, Joel was able to handhold it in the wind, focus, and still capture the mountains behind it. "You can put something very near to you and make it appear huge," he explains. "At the same time, because the angle of view is so wide, you can have a whole landscape in your frame. With this kind of extreme angle, you can close focus and still have context behind it." Ranging from the extreme 10mm upwards also produces a range of perspectives. "You can have the standard 16mm, like you had before on your Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L III USM lens, or you will have the option to go extreme and use it in all its power."

Not only does the Canon RF 10-20mm F4L IS STM lens offer the most extreme wide-angle view, it has up to 5-stops of Image Stabilisation and its optics minimise distortion. "It's a really mind-blowing lens, because it goes far beyond what is usually perceived as an ultra-wide-angle," says Joel. "It's a much lighter, more capable lens in every way you can imagine.

Alongside his photography, Joel also shot video with the RF 10-20mm F4L IS STM lens, finding that the lens' 5-stops of Image Stabilisation compensates for wobble at the edges when shooting video, without impacting focal length. Its new Peripheral Coordinated Control IS compensates for perspective movement at the edge of the frame, while the lens' optical design reduces any sign of chromatic aberration which can arise in ultra-wide lenses.

"You might wonder why you'd put stabilisation in this lens, because it is so wide and the focal length is so low, so camera shake is less likely to be seen on the final file," says Joel. "But for me, it is a godsend, because most of my work is in remote locations and I sometimes have to trek a lot. Being able to take photos where I need to shoot handheld at half a second, one second, or more, without a tripod with this lens is just amazing."

The unique focal length of the Canon RF 10-20mm F4L IS STM lens shouldn't restrict you to shooting in certain environments, with Joel encouraging users to drop any preconceptions they have of wide-angle lenses. "People like to put lenses into categories – 'This lens is for portraits, this lens is for landscapes', and so on," he says. "I don't see it like that, and this lens shouldn't be seen like that. What we are talking about here is how much more you can put inside a frame and how much closer you can get to the subject. You can get closer and wider than you would before. It opens up new possibilities."

"If you want to have a whole mountain range in frame, you can, and the Canon RF 10-20mm F4L IS STM is made for that," says Joel. "But if you like foregrounds in your photos and if you want to create a sense of scale, or exaggerate scale, you can transform a small puddle of water into a huge lake, or a stone into a boulder. You just need to go closer and down with your angles." This presents a range of unique aesthetics. "This kind of lens opens up new opportunities even in ordinary locations. You just have to change perspective with it, and that would be my strongest tip.

"I believe people who love photography love a challenge and the opportunity to do something different. This is that kind of lens – there's a lot of room to create something new. I see myself using it a lot, both professionally and also for fun."