Canon registers a new RF mount lens

[JMV Portraits]

Actually it makes a lot of sense. Cannibalizing their best sellers is not the same as taking those best sellers off the market. People who want to buy M equipment can still do so. Granted there is the R&D redundancy, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of M-system R&D going on.

Exactly. Something to keep in mind is that people buying the most basic bodies are generally buying kits and little else- they're generally not buying a lot of lenses and getting deeply-invested in the system. They tend to want one lens to live on the camera, and if they're willing to change lenses don't want to have a bunch of specialized lenses. Even when it comes to focal length, a single superzoom is more appealing to that crowd than a standard zoom and a telezoom. If they go for two lenses, they tend to want two lenses with very discreet use-cases- a standard zoom and a tele zoom, or a standard zoom and a portrait prime are popular combinations with that crowd.

Somebody who bought an m50 three years ago might have bought a second lens to compliment their kit lens, or upgraded their kit lens to a supezoom, but if they feel the need to upgrade from there is very likely to buy a new kit- and so can easily transition to a new ecosystem, whether from canon or another brand. While the M6II largely appealed to a crowd that's likely to continue to work with the system they have, most of the rest of the M series appealed to the segment of the market described earlier. I suspect the M6II's sales numbers, along with the sales numbers of lenses prompted by an m6II purchase, will largely influence Canon's long-term decisions about whether to grow the EF-M line into the upper-end market, or grow the RF line down into the budget market.

 

[JMV Portraits]

Those are light. Have you ever tried a 1.2 85mm, 70-200mm 2.8 , or a 28-70mm. What are we going back and forth about. Canon needs to replace the 17-55.

So you're saying that it's light only if we compare it to some of the heaviest non-super-tele, non-cine lenses of a larger format? That's not saying much.

An RF or EF-M replacement for the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 IS USM probably wouldn't resemble the sigma 18-35 f/1.8. It will most likely resemble the 17-55 in both zoom ratio and aperture. The higher weight and higher cost of something any faster would make an already low-selling lens even more niche, and the market segment that buy's Canon APS-C generally values zoom ratio.

 

[unfocused]

Doesn’t really matter what it is. You won’t be able to buy it anyway.

 

[JMV Portraits]

I think the original 400mm f/4.0 DO did way more damage than the 70-300. The original 400 had rather awful IQ and it took a lot of convincing for people to try out the second edition which by all accounts is spectacular.

I don't think a lot of photographers outside of the wildlife scene really remember hearing much at all about the original 400mm f/4 DO beyond "it's a birding lens". A lot of people heard a lot about the 70-300 DO, with that being a focal length with a lot broader application, and the general buzz was "you pay a lot more for slightly worse image quality". Even if the original 400mm was bad, most people following it closely I expect would have heard about the superiority of the mk II as well.

 

[JMV Portraits]

And the 7DII. They needed to replace the 10-22, and they did…with the slower, softer, plastic-mount, cheaper 10-18.

Those are clues to the importance Canon places on the ‘high-end APS-C market’.

That's one way to read it, but it ucould also just be that Canon didn't see the importance of an ultrawide in that category.

It might be mostly because of the kinds of bodies Canon makes in that space, but most of the people shooting high-end Canon APS-C bodies tend to be in more of a sports or wildlife scene, and buying more teles than ultrawides.

What we see right now is Canon seems to have made a pretty solid APS-C sports and wildlife body, but without any pretense of pro-oriented features, like redundant cards, in the 90D and M6II. We also have full-frame bodies without professionally-oriented features in a similar price bracket in the R and RP, and a professionally-oriented body without the burst rate and resolution at about twice the price in the R6. I'd say, at the very least, we're seeing a shift in definitions.

For a long time we've had a "prosumer" category split between large sensors but otherwise stripped down (in the 6D line), or APS-C sensors with all the bells and whistles (in the 7D line). The newest bodies the last few years seem to imply separating large sensors or high-speed features from professional assumptions, lowering the barrier to entry for either a sports and wildlife camera, or large sensor camera, or camera to make a living with, so long as you don't need one body to do all three.

 

[JMV Portraits]

I've become convinced that Canon (rightly or wrongly) believes there is no commercial future in the high end APS-C market.
I'll be very surprised if they ever introduce an APS-C in RF mount.

They clearly want to move people completely away from EF mount, and leave us with a choice between 2 very different systems:

• M series, seemingly aimed at novices or people who want a very compact system and who don't want or need exotic or more specialised lenses.
• RF series, full frame only, with a range covering novices, enthusiasts and pros, and with 2 distinct sets of lenses - "budget" lightweight glass, and exotic and expensive L glass.

The M6II is definitely a high-end APS-C body. It, and the very-similar 90D, are both a bit more than what most reasonable consumers would have expected out of a follow-up to the 80D, but without the professionally-oriented features we would have expected from a follow-up to the 7DII. Right now, we have a high end sports and action oriented APS-C body in the M6II, a budget full-frame body in the R or RP at a similar price, and a basic full frame body that doesn't compromise on "I depend on this for my paycheck" features at a lower price than we could previously expect that overlap in the R6.

I would say more that what we can tell from the current lineup is a loss of the "prosumer" category, and an increase in the APS-C sports and wildlife amature, full-frame but u abashed armature, and budget but clearly professionally-oriented categories. At the same time, there isn't a recent APS-C body with those same professionally-oriented features. The R6 adding redundant shooting at such a low price leaves a very narrow range for such a body to fall in in the future, too.

Whether this continues has yet to be seen. Either a follow-up to the M6II or an APS-C RF body would tell us a lot about Canon's plans for the next several years at least.

 

[sanj]

35mm will be great, I personally would be happier with 25mm.

 

[JMV Portraits]

Funny thing about the 'ancient' 135L. It doesn't degrade with age fwiw, lol and it actually out performs in terms of AF and and imho rez while adapted on an RF mount over a dslr. It's timeless and very special. I've been shooting with one or another since 1999 and never once could come up with anything negative to say.

But don't you know that any product launched more than two years ago has crumbled to dust by now?

I us my 135 f/s at pretty much every job- on an adapter- and I love it. While it's been out for a while, I really don't know what else I would want out of such a lens. Maybe IS if it wouldn't compromise anything optically? There are some lenses Canon doesn't update because they don't have the sales to justify it, but the 135 is definitely a lens they haven't updated because it would be hard to improve enough to justify it. It has me cautiously optimistic about the rumored RF 135, even if I expect the budget not to stretch that far

 

[InchMetric]

While I hope for the sake of my birding friends that we're going to continue to see more diffractive designs, I suspect Canon might be dropping the "DO" designation. It's been seen as a negative by segments of the market who didn't "get" it, especially in regards to the 70-300 DO, so I wonder if that's why Canon didn't mark the two f/11 teles as such. Of course, it could just be that they're reserving it for high-end diffractive lenses.

While the advantage of a short flange distance typically doesn't make much of a difference in the size of teles, Canon has already shown a couple ways they intend to do that, so I expect they could do something for a fast prime explicitly designed to be compact.

“Diffractive” has always been an unfortunate misnomer as not a single ray of light employed to generate the image in a Canon DO lens is directed by diffraction. Presumably they adopted this mistaken name because the immersion fresnel lenses minimize the otherwise objectionable diffraction artifacts caused by such systems.
Good technology. Bad branding.

 

[InchMetric]

I can’t wait for the announcement of the RF 35 L that’s so expensive and so hard to get hold of it’s only possible to get once the mk II is released….

Name a Canon product that wasn’t obtainable in the first day it shipped if ordered the first day of ordering.

 

[i_SH]

Perhaps RF 18-45 / 4-5.6 will be released? For a complete amateur lens kit.

 

[neuroanatomist]

Perhaps RF 18-45 / 4-5.6 will be released? For a complete amateur lens kit.

That would be clever of Canon. The sub-$1000 FF body, and a 24-105 kit lens that will have those wanting wider buying the 18-45 or 16/2.8, or an 18-45 kit lens that will have those wanting longer buying the 24-105 or 85/2.

 

[Chris.Chapterten]

I just recently picked up the EF 35mm 1.4Lii to use with an adapter on my R5.

I previously used a 35Lii on my 5DIV and it was my sharpest lens but now, on the R5, it is the softest. Compared to the RF50 1.2 and RF85 1.2 it is noticeably less sharp. But vignetting does seem to be a bit better than the RF50 1.2 and in terms of colour and contrast it matches quite seamlessly with the new RF L lenses.

My concern for the new RF35 1.2 is that it will have very heavy vignetting.

All that is to say it would have to be freaking amazing for me to want to sell the EF 35Lii

 

[Foxdude]

It’s the 18-55mm f/8-13 kit lens for the low cost APS-C R body that will replace the M series.

This is the rumored f stop range, but I overheard it is actually f 13-22. Bit slower than rumored, like the 100-400 being f8 and not f7.1. Wide open this new kit lens will probably vignette about 5 stops, but they fix it in-camera correction.
;P

 

[Foxdude]

I think the upcoming lens is RF24mm macro, or the RF18-45mm. Both these are confirmed, if I'm correct.

 

[Skux]

It's time for an old school 58mm f1.4.

 

[The_Alpha]

In my opinion it's time for a RF 28-300

 

[i_SH]

In my opinion it's time for a RF 28-300

The patent and rumors were, as if, for a 24-300 lens.

 

[canonmike]

Doesn’t really matter what it is. You won’t be able to buy it anyway.

You took the words right out of my mouth, unfocused. I'm still waiting on an EF12-24 replacement, supposedly the projected RF10-24 F4L. If and when it does get announced, it'll probably be priced at $3299.00 and Canon will only make two of them, which will be immediately sold out in the Canon store, then listed as backordered forever.

 

[fabao]

We need a 10-24!!! Period!