Samyang has officially announced the AF 85mm f/1.4 EF, their second autofocus lens for Canon’s EF mount.

This new 85mm offering for Canon’s EF mount offers a very compact size at only 72mm in length (without hood) and weighing in a rather light 485g. By comparison, Canon’s EF 85mm f/1.4L IS weighs in at 950g and Sigma’s 85mm f/1.4 Art at an very heavy 1130g.

The lens construction is nine-elements with seven groups. The AF 85 f/1.4 EF employs hybrid aspherical glass and something called “Ultra Multi Coatings”.

Pricing for the new Samyang AF 85 f/1.4 EF is £599.99 in the UK, pricing for elsewhere in the world has not been released at the time of publishing this.

Canon has posted an article about what they claim is “The World’s Largest Ultrahigh-Sensitivity CMOS Image Sensor”. You can see by the image above that the sensor dwarfs the Canon EOS Rebel T3i (600D).

This large image sensor was announced back in 2010.

As noted by Canon News, this sensor has no real impact on modern sensor technology, but it does show Canon’s ability to scale an image sensor up to a massive size.

Read more…

It looks like we’re going to be getting another autofocus 85mm option, this time it will come from Samyang who will be announcing an AF 85mm f/1.4 very soon.

This joins the Samyang AF 14mm f/2.8 in the company’s new autofocus line of lenses for Canon’s EF mount.

We were sent the following information about what may be the next Canon cameras to be announced. I don’t think these will be the big announcements for Photokina. We’re all hoping for a big splash from Canon fpr the marquee photographic trade show.

EC801 – Canon Powershot SX740

• 40x Zoom travel compact
• 1/2.3 Sensor
• Touchscreen
• GPS

EC804 – Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III

• 4.2x Zoom
• 1″ sensor
• DPAF
• 4k Video (no DPAF)
• GPS
• This camera features a new Canon 1″ sensor

EC811 Canon EOS M5 Mark II

• 28.3MP APS-C mirorless camera
• 4K@30fps video and DPAF.
• This camera features a new Canon APS-C sensor

Canon continues to put R&D into stacked sensors. This latest patent for the technology is quite detailed in its delivery.

According to Canon News:

This patent application is for suppressing the dark current and/or leakage current by using diffusion preventing films surrounding the bonding areas.

This is a very highly detailed patent application, going into a significant amount of diagrams and specifics.  It stands to reason that Canon is heavily investing it’s time in and energy into stacked sensors, and these patents seem to indicate just that.

We’re all hoping for some sensor breakthroughs from Canon for the next generation of DSLRs and mirrorless cameras.