Canon patent shows off ultra-fast, ultra wide 14-21mm F1.4 RF lens

I guess I just have post traumatic flippy screen disorder.
Self face palm

Canon doesn’t make A7 cameras.

(Face palm)

Call it whatever you wish, the fact of the matter is that there are hundred of excellent lenses that can be used from the Canon system which work 100% as advertised on EOS R cameras, those fantastic EF lenses will still be popular and perform brilliantly for decades to come.

No interest in either this lens or an FAS.

They invested in glass so much -- cuz lenses are so important in photography...

A 28-70 F2 lens is nice to have, but in no way a replacement for a 24-70 F2.8. Not only because of the missing wide angle, but also because added weight, size and price.

Similarly an extending 70-200 F2.8 has advantages, but also many disadvantages.

So Canon just chose different trade offs. That is something else than offering a truly superior lens line-up

That's what *she* said. Did we mention that most primes are @f1.2 and they are damn sharp @wide open. But, hey, haters gonna hate of course, but in reality it's great glass... (price is something different)

You know that you can use every EF lens on the Eos - R? No? Now you do. F1, f1.2, f1.4, f1.8 alone on 50mm... Choose you weapon.

@panther: you are right: ideally every vendor would have a complete set of primes in 1.2, 1.4 and 1.8.

But the point is that only Canon offers the 1.2 right now, and some mounts cannot even do that. And the 1.2 is really special. And if I have the 1.2, even though it is larger, I probably won't spring for a 1.4 or 1.8.

So if you want that something special, the best system is the one with the f1.2.

Of course with the 28-70 f2 there is nothing else like it, the new short 70-200 f2.8 will be unique, and if this rumored wide angle lens is built then it too will special.

So the point is that Canon is building a really unique system.

@panther fan
Unlike others Canon *has* f1.2 lenses with AF. The 85L was unmatched for years... and the 50mm L 1.0 was at least existing. Is it so difficult to admit that Canon makes good lenses? Just don't buy them if you don't like em. The f1.4 needs a successor, no doubt, but there are people outside who love the old *small* one. Outside of brickwall-tests it performs as it should...

And the next 50mm f1.4 will be as large as the Sigma or Otus, no doubt. ;(

this gets my vote for most pointless thread of the week. vscd is right

True in the film age, but with digital the body matters, too. It is true that without good lenses, a good body doesn't help much, but the opposite is true, too - IQ is the product of the MTFs of all elements in the pipeline.

@Thoughts R US - "That's the company to trust the most."... said by the person not to trust at all... Pathetic...

Can't wait to see some photos of bats-in-flight-at-night.

Well, here is your bat in flight at night photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/rosember/2882413239/in/photolist-5oH7ZP-5oH82Z. Taken with a Pentax K20D and a macro lens @f/10 (and just for fun). Don't wait and invest in Pentax, onlyfreeman! ;-)

You're misquoting. I said "almost distortion free", and a predicted 5% is extremely good for an ultra-wide zoom, and an amazing feat considering that it has a maximum aperturte of F1.4.

I’d be surprised if this ended up costing only 3000€. That’s what the 11–24mm f/4 costs and this is way crazier.

Wow, have you considered stand-up comedy? While at it, why not bring up a bio-toilet? It is as relevant to lens design as the other features you mentioned.

It never ceases to amaze me that people actually think camera makers just makes a product and , fingers crossed, hope it will sell...

Yes yes Canon will be doomed and stuff...

Oh no, it will be very good advertisement for them. Which is why they make these.

kristof - "another pointless design".

Not from a commercial point of view. It's another "we can do it but you can't" product, designed to make people go "WOW" and be rightly persuaded that Canon is one of the world's best lens makers. It's "impossible" lenses like this that make people buy other Canon lenses.

So yes, a 16mm F1.4 would make more sense in many ways, but it wouldn't have any such WOW factor, and that's what sells lenses. Astrophotographers will love it, and it's one of the most drool-worthy products imaginable.

I don’t use Canon gear but I tried the 28-70 f/2 at a trade show and it’s a dream lens. 70mm f/2 is incredible. In theory, if could replace a whole bunch of 1.2 and 1.8 primes and add to those that don’t exist. I bet 70mm f/2 will look sharper and have better bokeh than the 50 1.2. 16-21? Very usable. Years ago I had the Tokina 11-16 and on ultra wide angles every mm counts. There is quite a different ‘look’ between 16 and 21mm. So don’t count out lenses that you hold no value for.

@blackcoffee: so right...too many Judge a product as if their's is the only valid opinion.

@viggo: great point; some people make criticisms as if the camera companies have no valid or logical reasons for releasing a product, as if as you say, on a whim.. This is related to the first point by blackcoffee: a failure to accept that others may think differently.

We would all be better off if we understood that there may be multiple valid points of view. I personally love the idea of this lens, but I can understand why it may not be for everyone.

Charrick1:

Just to clarify, the difference in focal length between 100mm and 107mm is next to undetectable, the difference between 14 and 21 is huge...

Who says the have to pay Sony, there are other sensor manufacturers?

@ Swerky: This is an unresolved mystery! How can it be that many find what they are used with to be more user friendly than cameras they hardly have touched. :-)

You can start with the 28-70 f2! :)

Were this a Sony patent the song would probably be "What's the point of mirrorless Sony if the lenses are heavy beasts?" or "Where's the 35/2 Sony?"

The Sony GM 24 1,4 isn't a direct competitor to a patent but it is what I would call a wise evolution rather than (another) halo product.

In the end it seems brand recognition and club behaviour are the primary market forces, wellaway..

Just wait and see what happens in the MILC FF market. In the meantime enjoy what you have. Even if Canon is going to be number 1 in the MILC FF market it doesn't have to be the end of Sony FF MILC. The market is big enough to support more than 1 or 2 camera makers.

Like f1.8/135 GM is not unique enough with its AF speed at 20FPS and hitting the intended point all the time.

Sony has a boat load of lenses in the catalogue already, and for unique specs, having really compact, very well performing and approachable 1.8-2.8 lenses at 28/35/50/55/85mm range with outstanding capabilities for their size is unique enough already.

Yes, Nikon f1.8/50 S is fantastic. As Canon's new RF lenses, however they are all top tier glass, and we are yet to see affordable and well-behaving glass from them. If that puny E mount can have a compact 85mm which can run on par with its GM sibling, or can mount some of the sharpest lenses (Sony 90 G, Sony 55 ZA), I'm more than happy with what I have.

Competition is good, but seeing them in the field and talking over facts is even better.

@lili23

See bayindirh's post above. If you don't think Sony has been aggressive you haven't been paying attention.

As for releasing lenses with unique specs, this is a patent, not a lens and Sony just released a lens with unique specs - the 135/1.8. Neither Nikon nor Canon has one. The closest equivalents from both manufacturers are f2 film -era lenses and the Nikon is a screw drive lens that won't AF on Z mount.

@lili23
These f/1.2 lenses are magnificent, their performance is unmistakable. However, they are not exactly "approachable" lenses.

50mm f/1.2: $2,100
28-70 f/2: $3,000

Sony has a "practical" and "professional" line ups in place.
50mm f/1.8: $223.
55mm f/1.8 ZA: $950.
50mm f/1.4 ZA: $1,398

85mm f/1.8: $573
85mm f/1.4: $1,800
Both of these lenses are on the first page of DxOMark lens benchmarks.

With the ISO performance of Sony, you don't need f/1.2 lenses except for DoF reasons. Also they are exceptionally expensive as we can see.

Sony is being reasonable and building approachable lenses. I'd rather have a top notch, affordable f/1.8 rather than a halo f/1.2 which I can not justify unless I'm a working pro.

I would be more worried about the bodies than the lenses. Canon hasn't cracked the Dynamic range problem in years, even with DSLRs that don't have banding issues (which by the way, all FF MILCs have to a degree). Both NIkon and Canon have DSLR glass with adapters to handle the lack of native lenses for now, so they don't need to RUSH glass. However, Canon really needs to introduce a body that can compete with the Nikon and Sony bodies, especially in Video where they are really lacking. It will be really interesting to see where everyone sits in a years time.

Hm, the 30 MP sensor (R, 5D IV) is absolutely great. I can't complain and haven't had any situations where I needed something better.

@toomix
I do when comparing to the Sony ones.

If you look at the IQ comparisons Canon is lagging behind in many aspects.

@Dominik84
More power to you then but we are talking about absolute numbers here and there Canon lags behind.

toomix/ Canon sensor is well known for having poor performance compared to Sony sensor.

But at some point it has to be good enough, right? 10 years ago when D3 had 12EV dynamic range no one complained about it. Who cares what Sony does as long as you are not limited by your camera, and 99% of the users are not.

Yeah, as if having a camera with the most advanced sensor will make you a better photographer.

I am currently on the 6th day of a photo trip to northern Spain, with my new EOS R.

Today, I woke at 5am to take advantage of great sunrise in an incredible beach.

I am now writing this, winding down from a full day of great photography, shot after extremly pleasing shot.

Reading this after having culled today's output you have no idea how laughably idiotic your comment sounded to me.

...what is extremly sad is that there are actually people who pay attention to such clueless comments...

As I said in the thread above, many people concentrate too much on spotting relatively small differences in camera bodies.

Sony currently have about a one-stop advantage over Canon in sensor technology and performance. Kudos to them. But I'll bet that 99.99% of serious experienced photographers would be totally incapable of telling whether a 20x16" print was produced on a Canon, Nikon, Sony or Pentax (of similar age and megapixel count).

A far more important criteria for choosing brands is the range of lenses available - Do they produce any specialised optics that you might want? Is the lens quality good enough to make you keep the lens 10 years? Each of the major manufacturers has certain (stunning) lenses that are missing from the ranges of other manufacturers.

So decide which lenses you want/need first, and choose your camera brand accordingly.

For "normal" photography Canons sensors are not as bad as we tech geeks tell. They lack on paper, but many people don't need that dynamic range. Hey many people just shoot jpg ;-) (e.g. for quick turnaround)

But they should work on their video performance! Even Nikon produces great video these days and Canon, who kind of invented this VideofromPhotoCamera thing, is quite far behind. That's sad.

And with all that in mind - I would not have peace to go with Canon and KNOW they are always behind the competition. Photographer with more self esteem probably can do better ;-)

IamJF - I think Canon's "problem" is that they are a bit conceited, aiming always to produce camera bodies that they believe photographers *need*, rather than what they *desire*.

Canon knows that it's impossible to look at a set of 20x16" prints and pick out which ones were taken with Canon, Nikon, Sony or Pentax.

So they just concentrate on making nicely styled cameras that feel "just right" in your hands, and only play catch-up when they start to lose a bit of market share (which they then quickly regain).

I think the question some dpr commentators need to ask themselves, is do they really believe that the "bragging rights" of having a slightly better specified camera is really *that* important? Isn't it better to just have a camera that they enjoy using and stop worrying about what the other guy has?

With a Sony sensor you probably could have slept till 6 am.

Actually the success of Canon's mirrorless cameras going forward is WHOLLY reliant on the next sensors they produce.

On a mirrorless camera there aren't secondary systems for viewing and AF. In the case of the A9, the sensor is also the primary shutter allowing 20fps blackout-free shooting and shutter speeds up to 1/32,000s. This fast readout also serves the AF with real-time focus adjustments in tracking that surpasses anything that went before.

Without such a sensor, Canon will not be able to make a mirrorless sports camera and will over time cede that market.

Additionally they appear to have painted themselves into a corner with Dual Pixel AF. The processing overhead of controlling such a large number of AF points has meant that in two of their cameras (albeit lower end models) they have had to turn off the capacity in 4K.

Contd.

It seems likely that they will have to move to a masked-pixel system like Sony and Nikon to be able to get higher frame rates with reactive AF and a manageable processing load.

The only camera that they have in their entire product range that is able to downsample video from a FF sensor (necessary to avoid cropping or binning) is the C700, which costs $33K. It uses three digic processors and has two fans. If they are to incorporate this technology they will have to find a way to do so using less energy and a low power sensor is crucial to that.

So being behind one stop in DR is not really the worry.

Whats up with this whole ''you have no photos here (on DPR)'' thing? As if DPR gallery is the sole ultimate photo gallery and having pictures here means hell of a lot more than on fb, instagram, 500px, flicker, and personal websites and portfolios. This is gear forum, if you're here for pictures, you in the wrong place.

Sacred - Agreed. Having images in a dpr gallery is hardly anything to aspire to. Most are extremely poor. I'm only an average photographer, but if I was good I wouldn't want my work displayed alongside such rubbish.

Meanwhile on planet earth: https://www.canonrumors.com/all-of-the-nominated-documentaries-at-the-oscars-were-shot-on-canon-cameras/

@vscd

What are you suggesting we do - print that web page off and put it in our camera bags instead of a camera?

Strange argument: My camera has poor burst capacity, poor AF tracking, reduced DR, binned, cropped video and appalling rolling shutter in ES mode but it's okay because it was made by the same company that made the cameras that five documentary filmmakers got Oscar nominated for?

Even if that did make it okay, you understand that the documentary Oscar is for content, not the video quality?

All the main camera companies makes great lenses. Which ones makes "the best" lens depends on focal length and the user preferences.

It's the new Sony Alpha logo