KIPON RF Colibri 24mm T2.5 Full-Frame Cine Review

A niche cine lens for Canon RF rig builders only. For everyone else, the mediocre optics and high price make it an easy skip.

The KIPON Colibri 24mm T2.5 is a weird one. It's a dedicated cine lens for Canon RF shooters that's laser-focused on one thing: being a solid, compact workhorse for video rigs. The one thing to know is that this isn't a lens for photographers or solo shooters who need autofocus. It's a manual focus cine prime that trades a bright aperture and optical perfection for a consistent, standardized build that plays nice with other cine lenses and follow focus systems. If you're building out a set of matched primes for your RF cinema camera, this is worth a look. If you're not, it's a hard sell.

Honestly, the performance scores in our database are just okay. Its optical quality lands in the 35th percentile, which is a polite way of saying it's not winning any sharpness contests. The T2.5 aperture is fine, but it's not exactly fast, sitting in the 29th percentile. Where it does surprise is in its build quality and macro capability, scoring in the 70th and 66th percentiles respectively. This tells you exactly what KIPON prioritized: a robust, well-damped manual focus mechanism and a decently close minimum focus distance of 240mm, not cutting-edge optics.

The value proposition is narrow. At $1280, this lens is not worth it for 99% of shooters. You're paying a massive premium for the cine-standard build features. For that price, you could get a fantastic autofocus stills/video hybrid lens. This only makes financial sense if you specifically need those cine features on your Canon RF camera and are building a matched set of Colibri lenses.

This lens exists in a strange niche. Compared to a lens like the Meike 55mm F1.8 Pro, which also has cine gears but adds autofocus and a brighter aperture for half the price, the KIPON looks overpriced. Against a proper cinema lens from someone like Sirui or DZOFilm, the KIPON's optical scores might not hold up. Its real competition is other RF-mount cine primes. If you don't need the standardized 80mm front and 0.8 MOD gears, you can get better optical performance for less money. If you do need those features, this is one of your few native RF options.

If you're a hybrid shooter or a photographer looking for a sharp 24mm prime, this isn't it. Go get the Canon RF 24mm F1.8 IS STM instead. It has autofocus, stabilization, a brighter aperture, and costs less. This lens is for a different planet.

We can only recommend the KIPON Colibri 24mm T2.5 to a very specific user: a Canon RF shooter who is actively building a cinema rig with follow focus and matte box, values consistent gear positions and front diameters across lenses, and doesn't mind trading some optical sharpness for that integration. For everyone else—stills shooters, hybrid creators, run-and-gun videographers—this lens is a hard pass. There are better, more versatile tools for the job.