Canon Cinema EOS Cine Lenses In Development

Shortly after the launch of the Canon C300 I interviewed one of Canon’s technical staff about the camera.  At the time he mentioned to me that on top of the announced 3 EOS Cine prime lenses there were also two more in development.  One wider and one longer.  I now have a photo of these two prototype lenses, see below.  It’s rare that unannounced lenses are shown so I thought it well worth a mention.  No focal length is known at the moment, if I had to guess I would say 100mm or 135mm and 18mm? On top of these …

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Canon Launches New Range Of EOS Cine Lenses With EF Mount

Alongside the launch of the new EOS C 300 video camera, Canon have also addressed peoples concerns with using regular EF lenses on these cameras for shooting video professionally.  EF lenses were not designed with manual focus in mind and they can prove tricky to use when critical focus is necessary.

Those problems have now been addressed though with this new lineup which features a true cine style of long focus throw and detailed lens markings with distances as well as a manual aperture. All resolve to 4K:

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Comparing Canon’s MKII and MKIII Extenders

In the Fall of 2010 Canon announced the introduction of new MKIII extenders to replace the previous MKII versions.  Super Spectra coatings were introduced to help reduce ghosting and flare as well as fluorine coating to make water spots and finer prints easier to remove.  I’ve always fond the MKII extenders to be extremely useful when used in the right circumstances so I was eager to try out the MKIII versions to see if there was an improvement. Physical differences Since the introduction of the 800mm f5.6, Canon changed their off-white color of their telephoto lenses.  All the new MKII

Canon’s new 300mm and 400mm F2.8 L IS II lenses now shipping to dealers.

Canon have announced today that the brand new Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II  and Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II are now shipping to dealers !  I expect these to be very popular, the 400mm in particular so if you’ve been waiting for one I’d urge yo to place an order pretty quickly!  Initial reports of the 400mm performance have been glowing, particularly with regards to the performance with the new MKIII extenders (incidentally I will be posting my review of these this coming Monday).  As I noted a few weeks back, the new cases for the 400mm lens

Canon 8-15 F4 L USM Fisheye Review

The Canon EF 8-15 F4 L fisheye lens is one highly anticipated piece of glass !  First announced back in Autumn 2010 this is not a replacement of any existing lens, but an all new design with unique potential.  Canon originally started with the 15mm f2.8 fisheye which was designed before the digital days.  This lens provided a full 180 degree field of view on a full frame camera but users of 1.6 or 1.3 crop cameras were left with slightly less fishy look to their images.  On the Nikon side of things, Nikkor released a beautiful 10.5mm fisheye for

Canon’s New 8-15mm F4 L Fisheye Hitting Stores Now

The long awaited Fisheye zoom lens from Canon is finally finding it’s way onto store shelves this week in several places.  I have written about this lens before and provided some of the first samples of it last month.  I hope to have one in my hands within the next few days myself and I will be doing a thorough review at that time.  This is a lens that will be fantastic for my line of work so it’s exciting to know it’s finally coming.  Some stores do have long waiting lists for this one so if you fancy picking

NIkon launches wallet friendly 40mm Macro Lens

Nikon just launched a new lens in the DX lineup, the AF-S DX Micro Nikkor 40mm f/2.8G.  Destined for a price tag of only $279.99 and coming to the US in August. Full release MELVILLE, N.Y. (July 12, 2011) – Nikon Inc. today introduced the new lightweight and versatile AF-S DX Micro NIKKOR 40mm f/2.8G lens to provide Nikon DX-format shooters macro capabilities at an affordable price point. Ideal for intimate details or general portraiture, the new AF-S DX Micro NIKKOR 40mm f/2.8G lens has a minimum focusing distance of just 0.53 feet (6.4 inches) to allow users to capture

Leica Unveils new 21mm f3.4 Super-Elmar

NEW: THE LEICA SUPER-ELMAR-M 21MM F/3.4 ASPH.

Compact M lens with improved imaging performance sets new standards in wide-angle photography

Solms, Germany (June 21, 2011) – Leica Camera AG adds a new, high-performance wide-angle lens to its portfolio of short focal length lenses for Leica M cameras. The Leica Super-Elmar-M 21 mm f/3.4 ASPH. sets new standards in imaging performance. It is characterized by its particularly compact size and suitability for a wide range of photographic situations. Whether used for photojournalism, architecture or landscape photography, the Leica Super-Elmar-M 21 mm f/3.4 ASPH. provides photographers with an extremely small, light and versatile wide-angle lens, particularly suitable for travelling.

The performance of the Leica Super-Elmar-M 21 mm f/3.4 ASPH. is reminiscent of one of the all-time favorite classic M lenses, the Leica Super-Angulon-M 21 mm f/3.4. This highly praised lens was an integral part of the Leica M lens portfolio from 1963 to 1980 and made its name and reputation as an ideal tool for available light photography and photojournalism. Even today, the Super-Angulon-M 21 mm f/3.4 remains extremely popular and one of the most sought-after M lenses amongst connoisseurs of fine optics.

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Canon EF 500mm f4 L IS Review

You might be wandering why I’m going to talk about this lens when Canon has already announced it’s replacement, due to hit store shelves in December 2011.  Whilst it’s true that the new EF 500mm f4 L IS II is 17% lighter than this version, the optical improvements will be fairly minor.  It’s tough to improve on the quality of any of Canon’s super telephotos.  The list price of the upcoming MKII 500mm is $10,000 but the current version is selling for “only” $6900.  When version 2 hits the second hand market there is sure to be an explosion of

Canon 8-15 f4 L Fisheye Image Samples

If you aren’t familiar with this upcoming lens from Canon then check out my previous post with all the details.  We still don’t know when this lens is going to become available and Canon is currently tight lipped about how badly production schedules are being affected by the situation in Japan.  Last week though, the Canadian camera store Henry’s hosted a show in Toronto and the 8-15 f4 L was on show for all to see.  What made it a little different this time is that people were allowed to use them and shoot photos of them to their own memory card.  Friend of the site Chris Tanouye contacted me and showed me some sample images that he shot at the show.  Obviously lighting conditions on tradeshow floors are terribly low so it’s a difficult test but he posted some full resolution images up on his Flickr account.  You can view the whole set HERE yourself.  The images were shot on both a 50d and a 5dMKII at varying focal lengths.  They were all shot wide open (f4) and some of them at pretty slow shutter speeds so bear this in mind.

Now we have no real way of knowing what stage the sample lens was in.  i.e. how close to the production model it will be. Things may change and probably will so this is just a bit of fun to look at these really as we haven’t heard or seen anything new about this lens since September and I for one am getting impatient 🙂

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Canon announces a new 70-300 4-5.6 L IS

On top of the 60d announcement and the other lens updates Canon has today introduced a second brand new L lens to their lineup alongside the 8-15 f4 L.  There exists a non-L 70-300 and also a 70-300 DO lens but this is the first L version of the lens.  The non-L lens was a good seller but the DO version was not due to a high price for the diffractive technology and also poor sharpness.  The new lens features Canon’s latest 4-stop image stabilization as well as

The lens has also been designed to come in at a price point that allows many more people to take advantage of it.  A focal range of 70-300 is quite large and makes this a very versatile lens.  Ideal for people who want to perhaps travel with only a couple of lenses.  If the image quality is good enough then I can see travel photographers using this alongside a 24-70mm lens.  On a full frame camera that really would be all that you would need.  This will also make a great lens for the DSLR video shooting crowd.  Particularly those who already have some nice wide aperture primes less than 70mm, and need a long reach zoom for the odd occasion.  Using the engineering plastic that was seen on the 100mm f2.8 L IS Macro lens Canon have kept the weight of the lens down too ( just a touch over 1kg).  It doesn’t quite compete against the 28-300 range of the new FX Nikon lens announced last week in terms of focal range, but its still an interesting product that I hope to be trying out as soon as they hit the shelves.  To keep things lightweight for my backcountry skiing photos I use the 70-200 f4 L IS but I would definitely like to compare this new 70-300 with that.  The extra 100mm range would be very nice!

The lens retails for $1599.

Buy from B&H photo HERE

Buy from Amazon HERE

Buy from Adorama HERE

More info after the jump!

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Battle of the 300s. 300mm F4 IS Vs. 300mm F2.8 IS

This past winter I decided to purchase a 300mm f2.8 L IS.  My dream lens.  At the time I was using a 300mm f4 L IS to shoot skiing with and whilst I was never disappointed with the quality of the shots from that lens on its own, I wanted to see a little more from it when used with teleconverters. After buying the 2.8 I still had the f4 for a couple of weeks before I sold it on so I took the opportunity to shoot a few tests to compare the two.  Details of my testing were as