The 2020 RF lens roadmap, up to 8 new lenses coming in 2020

Michael Clark

Now we see through a glass, darkly...
Apr 5, 2016
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But my point is why release all these great lenses if there is not yet a pro body to use them on. The EOSR isn't a pro body. I'm solely focussing on mirrorless cameras here, not dslrs.

Why release a pro body until there are some great pro lenses to hang on them?
 
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Apr 25, 2011
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Does this image(s) represent the Sigma Art entire range rendering character qualities you are referring to?
That's quite harsh bokeh, to be honest. Granted, the background itself is not cooperating, so some degree of apodization or undercorrected spherical aberrations would be good to have here.
 
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As MayaTlab wrote above, it is ultimately about impossible to prove or disprove stuff like hypotheses

It absolutely is possible to prove or disprove an hypothesis, that's the whole point of it. If it's unfalsifiable, it simply isn't an hypothesis, merely an opinion or a thought. So far no one talking about 3D pop has come up with an hypothesis.

However, when someone claims that 3D pop is altogether non-existent BS

I didn't. I'm simply saying that I don't know what it is. And neither do you since you're having trouble explaining it.

It is also likely that such person really lacks photographic vision

Bring it on. Where are your pictures ?
 
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SecureGSM

2 x 5D IV
Feb 26, 2017
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Yes, it does. The background blur is course and uneven. Put those shots side to side with the same model, scene, camera, and lighting using the EF 85mm f/1.2L II and you'll immediately be able to see the difference. But keep on believing that you're using a better lens because it does better shooting flat test charts at closer distances with no background to render.

The 85L would smooth out those cut-off bokeh balls that are fouling some of your edges and make that mistake hardly even noticeable, too.

did i say that sigma 85 is a better lens? when and where? why you are implying that I am a flat test chart warrior?
Sigma 85 1.4 Art is quite poor at closer distances - what is your point?

why are you attacking someone who asked a simple question? i trust my visual perception but am an open minded person enough to maintain a critical judgement.
 
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Many pro's, such as Thom Hogan, have been asking for a kit of light, compact lenses for years. I had to go way outside of Canon's lineup to find such a kit to pair with my RP. Canon needs to at least make a pancake -- that doesn't require an adapter -- ASAP.

Yes, but with a contracting market, these lenses are not a high priority. If Canon's plan is to upsell FF (i.e. RP) to consumers, then the first and possibly only lens is a mid-range zoom or a megazoom. Pancakes are used by people that have multiple lenses, and that group is much smaller, and it looks like your solution might still be larger than EF 40 + adaptor. With fewer camera users, the breadth and variety of lenses will go down. If a 5D/EOS-R + 24-70/24-105 is too large, then the 5D/EOS-R + slow pancake will still likely be too large, and something like a M + EF-M 22 will be significantly smaller anyway.

The only time I bring the EF 40 is to pair it with a 100-400 for soccer. If I'm walking around, it's a mid-range zoom or a fast prime. I'd rather bring one zoom rather than three pancake primes. I'm not saying that Canon won't bring out a pancake eventually, but I am saying that Canon knows its bread and butter are f/2.8 zooms and fast primes. And now that the RP has been released, it'll be more important for Canon to produce consumer RF 24-70 or 24-105.
 
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mk0x55

[5DsR]
Nov 16, 2018
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... So far no one talking about 3D pop has come up with an hypothesis. ...
... since you're having trouble explaining it. ...
Perhaps it's you who don't see nor hear them - just as you claim that I haven't provided evidence or definition although I have. Selective perception on your side, looks like. Or conscious manipulation attempts (trolling)?
I made an explanation, but now it seems that you have a hard time understanding it and keep claiming that I have trouble explaining it. You seem to want everything readily served on a golden plate right in front of you... come one are you so spoiled?

... Bring it on. Where are your pictures ? ...
Thanks for yours. I uploaded four of mine, downsized, and you should still be able to see how the contents pop out:

At 50%-100% magnification (the original 50mp files), I can see that the objects really pop out, and that is probably further amplified by the crisp interfaces between the objects and their surroundings (great high-frequency MTF performance), as Lloyd Chambers describes in his Lenspire article. But that falls beyond the discussed question, so I don't provide crops of them here.

There are some logical prerequisites to seeing the pop though. Among other, your screen must be capable of displaying the tonality faithfully enough - if you use a poor screen (or a heavily miscalibrated one), there would be no wonder that you can't see it.
It's the subtle tonal transitions in the picture (e.g., a round pipe or anything with discernible 3D shape) - the low-frequency intertonal detail as in not from pixel to pixel, but across distances of several pixels to very many pixels (even all the way to across the entire frame if needed).
If the smoothness of the transition is lost or damaged - i.e. if the transitions begins very mildly and then there is a sudden shift to the other tone - then the 3D pop is negatively affected (or lost, put simply). That's my observation subjectively confirming what Yannick writes about on his blog.

For the addition, the 3D pop I am refering to is the function of both the image (sort of "hard data" in 2D) and human perception (highly intersubjective, but there are individuals who may have formed/trained the perception differently, or who might simply lack the ability to distinguish it, as in any other type of human perception).

Lastly, I have no pictures to compare that 3D rendering characteristic between different lenses so far (as e.g. Tony did in his video or Yannick does on his blog, both of which I linked to previously). In a follow-up to this I can try comparing Canon's EF 70-200 2.8 IS USM II with the Milvus 2/135 at 135mm... While I'm curious to see the difference when testing, I expect the Canon lens to retain the 3D pop better than e.g. the Sigma 135, but not as well as the Milvus. I'll be only able to verify the Canon vs. Milvus lens hypothesis, though.

EDIT:
By the way, your pictures have an interesting artistic style, but because the contrast is so maxed out in them and the pictures are so heavily edited, they are not suitable to judge stuff like tonal transitions at all. Even if the tonal transitions were captured by your sensor into your RAW files, they would have been eliminated by such heavy editing.
By that I don't want to say that the pictures are anyhow faulty - they may be great pieces of art, but they are simply not suitable for this type of inquiry (3D pop), as far as I can see.
 
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No. It is possible to disprove a hypothesis but technically it is not possible to prove one.
</pedantry>

Not to mention, the correct approach is to form a hypothesis and then attempt to disprove it (and hopefully fail), not form a "hypothesis" and cherry-pick supporting data (or "data") and impressive-sounding words to "prove" it.
 
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Apr 25, 2011
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Thanks for yours. I uploaded four of mine, downsized, and you should still be able to see how the contents pop out:

At 50%-100% magnification (the original 50mp files), I can see that the objects really pop out, and that is probably further amplified by the crisp interfaces between the objects and their surroundings (great high-frequency MTF performance),
What I see there is postprocessing (sharpening) artifacts (dark contours of light-colored objects).

Is that what you are calling "the 3D pop"? If so, it has nothing to do with the lens.
 
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mk0x55

[5DsR]
Nov 16, 2018
56
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What I see there is postprocessing (sharpening) artifacts (dark contours of light-colored objects).

Is that what you are calling "the 3D pop"? If so, it has nothing to do with the lens.
Could you please be more specific on which picture and which part do you see it on?
I can't see that somehow. Remember, the original picture size (except the swan that is heavily cropped) is around 8868 pixels on the longer side. It is downsized to 1024. Sharpening visibly showing strong artifacts that are 8 pixels in width? That would have to result in a truly ugly output, which I surely would have tossed. What you see must be JPEG artifacts or something like that, not sharpening artifacts.
Moreover, the pictures were sharpened using default sharpening in Capture One, which doesn't tend oversharpen images like some other editors do.

Perhaps the lens itself draws that way - and perhaps that's a part of what Zeiss does on purpose to achieve their famous 3D pop - this is pure speculation though.
 
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Yes, but with a contracting market, these lenses are not a high priority. If Canon's plan is to upsell FF (i.e. RP) to consumers, then the first and possibly only lens is a mid-range zoom or a megazoom. Pancakes are used by people that have multiple lenses, and that group is much smaller, and it looks like your solution might still be larger than EF 40 + adaptor. With fewer camera users, the breadth and variety of lenses will go down. If a 5D/EOS-R + 24-70/24-105 is too large, then the 5D/EOS-R + slow pancake will still likely be too large, and something like a M + EF-M 22 will be significantly smaller anyway.

The only time I bring the EF 40 is to pair it with a 100-400 for soccer. If I'm walking around, it's a mid-range zoom or a fast prime. I'd rather bring one zoom rather than three pancake primes. I'm not saying that Canon won't bring out a pancake eventually, but I am saying that Canon knows its bread and butter are f/2.8 zooms and fast primes. And now that the RP has been released, it'll be more important for Canon to produce consumer RF 24-70 or 24-105.

What, then, is the point of a tiny camera without tiny lenses?

Here's my makeshift set:
184179

19mm f/3.8
40mm f/2.8
105mm f/2.5
10mm f/5.6

Mostly MF, but compact, lightweight, and competent. The 105 f/2.5 is a legend, and the 10mm is the widest lens, period. Having one of these attached is much more balanced than the 24-105.
 
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I don't think the RF mount makes that any more possible than EF... I think I wonder if they can make the image circle that much larger, thus offering more shifting ability. Or, maybe the new mount will make it easier to have better, sharper images when fully shifted? ‍♂

Focus confirmation and (possibly) AF become more likely with DPAF that can focus down to f/11.
 
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This is the sort of thing I'd imagined when the RP was announced:

View attachment 184161

Voigtländer 10mm Heliar-Hyper Wide f/5.6 with an RF to Leica M adapter. Widest non-fisheye lens on the market. 1/3 the size and weight of the nearest Canon lens. Much less distortion, too.

An f/5.6 prime released in 2016 is smaller and has better IQ than an f/4 zoom released in 2003? How surprising!
 
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May 11, 2017
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Yes, but with a contracting market, these lenses are not a high priority. If Canon's plan is to upsell FF (i.e. RP) to consumers, then the first and possibly only lens is a mid-range zoom or a megazoom. Pancakes are used by people that have multiple lenses, and that group is much smaller, and it looks like your solution might still be larger than EF 40 + adaptor. With fewer camera users, the breadth and variety of lenses will go down. If a 5D/EOS-R + 24-70/24-105 is too large, then the 5D/EOS-R + slow pancake will still likely be too large, and something like a M + EF-M 22 will be significantly smaller anyway.

The only time I bring the EF 40 is to pair it with a 100-400 for soccer. If I'm walking around, it's a mid-range zoom or a fast prime. I'd rather bring one zoom rather than three pancake primes. I'm not saying that Canon won't bring out a pancake eventually, but I am saying that Canon knows its bread and butter are f/2.8 zooms and fast primes. And now that the RP has been released, it'll be more important for Canon to produce consumer RF 24-70 or 24-105.

There are also the f4 zooms and the variable max aperture zooms which are lighter and less expensive than the f2.8's. For a while now, there have been good quality zooms which a lot of people prefer to primes. This has really put a dent in the demand for light weight, lower cost primes. Canon put out the 24, 28 and 35 IS primes in 2012, but I wonder how many have actually been sold. I bought the 28mm the year before the 16-35 f4 came out, and I haven't used the 28 since I got the 16-35. If the 16-35 had been available, I would not bought the 28mm. The 28 weighs half as much as the 16-35, but having the 16-35 is like having a whole bagfull of very good wide angle primes.
 
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What, then, is the point of a tiny camera without tiny lenses?

Here's my makeshift set:
View attachment 184179

19mm f/3.8
40mm f/2.8
105mm f/2.5
10mm f/5.6

Mostly MF, but compact, lightweight, and competent. The 105 f/2.5 is a legend, and the 10mm is the widest lens, period. Having one of these attached is much more balanced than the 24-105.

And that proves that your are not the typical target user for the RP. ;)

All kidding aside, I do hope that Canon produces some smaller/lighter options, but I'm not expecting them to be high priorities when they're building out the system the next few years. SwissFrank is still waiting for a pancake RF 35 f/2 the RF 35 f/1.8 IS macro is too large for him.
 
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There are also the f4 zooms and the variable max aperture zooms which are lighter and less expensive than the f2.8's. For a while now, there have been good quality zooms which a lot of people prefer to primes. This has really put a dent in the demand for light weight, lower cost primes. Canon put out the 24, 28 and 35 IS primes in 2012, but I wonder how many have actually been sold. I bought the 28mm the year before the 16-35 f4 came out, and I haven't used the 28 since I got the 16-35. If the 16-35 had been available, I would not bought the 28mm. The 28 weighs half as much as the 16-35, but having the 16-35 is like having a whole bagfull of very good wide angle primes.

Agreed. I tried using the 24, 28 and 35 IS because I wasn't a fan of the original 24-70 f/2.8. They originally came out around 800 each, but the price quickly dropped for those lenses. Of the 3, I found the 35 f/2 IS to be the most useful just because it has a larger aperture. And I also agree on the new 16-35s (f/4 IS and f/2.8 III) -- they are great.
 
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Apr 25, 2011
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Could you please be more specific on which picture and which part do you see it on?
Every single picture, any part that has a sharp contrast between light subject and dark background (and vice versa). This, for example:

184182

Or this:

184184

Which is at least a millennium old technique of "3D pop" image enhancement, but has nothing to do with lenses.

Perhaps the lens itself draws that way
No, it's physically impossible.
 
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