Report: Canon to launch 4 fast L prime lenses in the first half of 2024
- Thread starter Canon Rumors Guy
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Just to add my opinion to the stack with the hopes that Canon Japan reads this. Much like many professionals I have been patiently awaiting wide high quality RF L-Series Primes. My personal take is these lenses must not rely heavily on lens correction. Meaning high quality optics, well corrected, ideally state of the art to fit in with the pedigree and performance of the current high performing L-Series Primes (50mm f/1.2, 85mm f/1.2, and 135mm f/1.8).
24mm and 35mm are bread and butter focal lengths for some and these are the most pressing needs. It's nice, if true, that Canon makes an L-Series 28mm. That would be "new" and possibly sway those who dance in the realm of Leica to look very hard at Canon if that glass sings.
The 14mm, whether it lands at f/1.4 or f/2 would be an accomplishment. Again, a highly corrected optic in the rectilinear sense would be very desired here.
Canon's inexpensive 35mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.8, 85mm f/2 Macro straddle the line of very high value and well designed optics. The 24mm f/1.8 Macro however is borderline a fisheye lens without digital correction. The 16mm f/2.8 is a fisheye lens really with that much distortion. The most recent 28mm f/2.8 pancake I give a pass on this as it a bit of specialty lens and super compact. To that note the L-Series glass to command the price that they will launch at and to differentiate themselves further from the "close in maximum aperture" focal lengths ideally would be well designed glass first.
Though critical in my points here the current L-Series primes are some if not the highest quality glass on the market and I can say that safely owning various other contenders here. Which is why I want them to hit a homerun on these.
14, 24, 28, 35, 50, 85, 135 all make great sense for Canon to flex their optomechanical engineering muscle. Down the line, when possible, I'd love for them to tackle a new 200mm f/1.8 or f/2 with a new design, not just a new mount like the 400mm f/2.8. I suspect one of the reasons they've held off on a new 300mm is they are focusing on a new design from the ground up as well. Perhaps faster and/or smaller.
I also wouldn't mind something in the 18-21 range in the L-Series, but that would be a stretch for now. Zeiss has been MIA and a quality modern 21mm hasn't existed really outside of Sigma's ART 20mm in recent years. And Otus never finished the rest of the focal lengths. And to that point, though highly unlikely, a 40mm would be a pleasant surprise in either an L-Series or more likely a pancake to complement the 28mm. Wouldn't mind something in the 75-90mm range after that if they are looking to make a small trio of pancakes, which I think RF deserves.
To wrap up, I understand less expensive optics sell in higher volume and I'm okay relying even on digital lens correction in some cases. However, you have to play both sides as working professionals who are looking for "the best" still need tools as well without heavily relying extreme image manipulation to simply correct an image's distortion. Small distortion, much like the EF L-Series primes, that's fine. And the vastly improved optics of the RF 50mm f/1.2 versus the EF 50mm f/1.2 really show Canon at their best. I'd like to see them still pressing the gas and leading in that capacity.
24mm and 35mm are bread and butter focal lengths for some and these are the most pressing needs. It's nice, if true, that Canon makes an L-Series 28mm. That would be "new" and possibly sway those who dance in the realm of Leica to look very hard at Canon if that glass sings.
The 14mm, whether it lands at f/1.4 or f/2 would be an accomplishment. Again, a highly corrected optic in the rectilinear sense would be very desired here.
Canon's inexpensive 35mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.8, 85mm f/2 Macro straddle the line of very high value and well designed optics. The 24mm f/1.8 Macro however is borderline a fisheye lens without digital correction. The 16mm f/2.8 is a fisheye lens really with that much distortion. The most recent 28mm f/2.8 pancake I give a pass on this as it a bit of specialty lens and super compact. To that note the L-Series glass to command the price that they will launch at and to differentiate themselves further from the "close in maximum aperture" focal lengths ideally would be well designed glass first.
Though critical in my points here the current L-Series primes are some if not the highest quality glass on the market and I can say that safely owning various other contenders here. Which is why I want them to hit a homerun on these.
14, 24, 28, 35, 50, 85, 135 all make great sense for Canon to flex their optomechanical engineering muscle. Down the line, when possible, I'd love for them to tackle a new 200mm f/1.8 or f/2 with a new design, not just a new mount like the 400mm f/2.8. I suspect one of the reasons they've held off on a new 300mm is they are focusing on a new design from the ground up as well. Perhaps faster and/or smaller.
I also wouldn't mind something in the 18-21 range in the L-Series, but that would be a stretch for now. Zeiss has been MIA and a quality modern 21mm hasn't existed really outside of Sigma's ART 20mm in recent years. And Otus never finished the rest of the focal lengths. And to that point, though highly unlikely, a 40mm would be a pleasant surprise in either an L-Series or more likely a pancake to complement the 28mm. Wouldn't mind something in the 75-90mm range after that if they are looking to make a small trio of pancakes, which I think RF deserves.
To wrap up, I understand less expensive optics sell in higher volume and I'm okay relying even on digital lens correction in some cases. However, you have to play both sides as working professionals who are looking for "the best" still need tools as well without heavily relying extreme image manipulation to simply correct an image's distortion. Small distortion, much like the EF L-Series primes, that's fine. And the vastly improved optics of the RF 50mm f/1.2 versus the EF 50mm f/1.2 really show Canon at their best. I'd like to see them still pressing the gas and leading in that capacity.
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You may also want to check the chapter "9.0 THE CHALLENGE OF MANAGING LENS ABERRATIONS" where they discuss the benefits of shorter back focus distance that allows for larger back element that allows better control of aberrations. They do care of optical quality of the lenses and don't rely solely on the software corrections.
Certain things like chromatic aberrations are well controlled digitally, but when you're trying to fix geometric distortions, you inevitably stretch parts of the image which causes the loss of resolution. Now, any digital transformations go smoother if you have more samples (greater sampling frequency), that is, the more pixels the sensor has, the better.
Now when they talk about improving resolution after diffraction (in "13.2 Digital Lens Optimizer (DLO) System"), it's about normal sharpening algorithms (perhaps fine-tuned for lens diffraction) but they don't increase the actual optical resolution - the information that's lost to diffraction is not recoverable. That's not the actual resolution, that's perceived sharpness, fake fine detail.
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When you do corrections for geometric distortions, consider a straight line (say a diagonal) that goes from an edge of the frame to the centre. Because you typically have to stretch the image (like with the RF 16mm), some pixels go out of the frame and you lose information. The same line of pixels lose some of the pixels, the rest will need to be stretched, but because they're discrete pixels, you'll have to fill the gaps with interpolated pixels. Loss of information in this case = loss of resolution.
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Yes, I'm sure 12mm f/1.2 would have been heavy and expensive, Wonderful shots!12mm 1.2 would be sweet but probably big and expensive. Not that that has stopped me in the past
I like TS lenses, they are great fun! but I'd wager we're looking at 2+ years before anything materialize...
My other camera system is based on the Hasselblad H system. That one is truly d-worded. Guess what? I can still take photos I love with it
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You suspect. That’s nice. I’ve actually empirically tested it and found there was no difference. That was with the EOS R, which has among the lowest resolutions of current FF cameras (the 24 MP sensors in the R3 and R8 outresolve the 30 MP sensor in the 5DIV and R).
I’m not suggesting that what I found will be true in all cases. But the observation that a digitally-corrected UWA zoom at the wide end delivers corners as sharp as a UWA zoom costing twice as much and used at the ‘sweet spot’ (from a geometric distortion standpoint) shows that optical corrections are not intrinsically superior, as you are claiming.
Have you tested your suspicions? What were your findings, and where can they be viewed?
Side note: for a fun exercise, compare the digitally corrected corners of the $300 RF 16/2.8 to the quality glass of the $2100 EF 14/2.8L II.
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Optical corrections are applied before the image hits the sensor.
The entire sensor captures the corrected image.
In digital correction, the image has to be stretched digitally to correct for distortion which causes a loss in detail.
On the flip side, more of the image is captured if it is digitally corrected.
I think this is why Canon wide-angle lenses are wider than they should be according to their focal lengths.
Although, corrections usually crop out the corners a bit anyway.
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First of all, if you want Canon to read something then write Canon.
I agree that lens correction is less desirable and that I would rather have big and heavy lenses.
Unfortunately, I am not sure that the majority would agree, however.
The more voices Canon receives the better.
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No, that's not what's happening.
Yes, there is 'stretching' going on...but before the stretching, there is a 'squishing'. The aberration being corrected with the stretching is barrel distortion. The purpose of the stretch is to algorithmically correct the squish. If the idea of stretching bothers you, think of it as it really is...unsquishing.
Here's a diagrammatic example of what's happening in the corner of an image from such a lens:
Barrel distortion makes straight lines into curves and circles into ovals, and correction restores them to straight lines and circles. In a lens that's optically well-corrected, lens elements do that job.
I have yet to see anyone post convincing evidence (or any evidence at all, for that matter) that digital correction is worse than optical correction for geometric distortion. But somehow, people are just sure it must be.
I remember when people didn't trust a calculator to perform arithmetic. Pencil and paper were better. Those people just knew it. The way you know about a good melon, or something.
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I can understand that but it gets confusing either way.
The EF 85 f/1.4 IS and RF 85 f/2 IS both have lens stabilization which is doing nothing when coupled with IBIS.
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So I guess Canon should have called it Sometimes Coordinating IBIS Depending on the Lens™.
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I am part of the 28mm f/1.4 religion, ordered the EF Sigma the day it became available. When I think about photography as art - vs. journalism or documenting, when I need to carry 1 or more zooms to ensure I get a particular shot - 28mm on full-frame is the focal length that produces the closest reproduction of what I see with my own eyes. For others this is 35mm or 50mm, apparently, and so be it. It also matters how far away your subject is, and mine tend to be short-to-medium distances... I would probably choose 50mm if I was trying to capture things that were farther away on average.
I would love to replace my 15 - 35mm f/2.8 IS with a similar lens that gets a bit wider at the expense of the other end, like a 13 - 24mm or something, but only if it could take screw filters and those filters were 82mm or 77mm. That way I could justify carrying a big 28mm f/1.4 more frequently.... Then just toss a nifty 50 in the bag and I'm pretty much good to go for all the walkaround stuff I do. Or, if I'm doing family portraits at Christmas, replace the 28mm with the 24 - 105mm f/4 (for scampering children) and the EF 85mm f/1.4 IS or RF 135mm f/1.8 IS (for poses).
I would love to replace my 15 - 35mm f/2.8 IS with a similar lens that gets a bit wider at the expense of the other end, like a 13 - 24mm or something, but only if it could take screw filters and those filters were 82mm or 77mm. That way I could justify carrying a big 28mm f/1.4 more frequently.... Then just toss a nifty 50 in the bag and I'm pretty much good to go for all the walkaround stuff I do. Or, if I'm doing family portraits at Christmas, replace the 28mm with the 24 - 105mm f/4 (for scampering children) and the EF 85mm f/1.4 IS or RF 135mm f/1.8 IS (for poses).
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