35mm, 50mm, and 85mm are the most common prime focal lengths and can profit from having several solutions available. 24mm and 135mm may also fit this strategy. If I were Canon I'd segment the product line as follows:
The Street categy may be the lowest spec, yet more expensive than amateur lenses with higher spec. This should pay for better image quality, durability and weight savings. The epitome of this category would be the Leica APO ASPH lenses such as the APO-Summicron 50mm f/2 ASPH. It's a boring-sounding spec but one of the sharpest lenses on the planet, and you could almost buy a cheap new car for the price of one. Canon pricing would be far lower but it might make sense for a 35/2L to cost $1000-1500 if it is sharp enough and small enough.
The Halo category may range from relatively common lenses like the EF 50mm f/1.0L to the basically unobtainable EF 1200mm f/5.6L. It could also include tilt-shift lenses, for instance, or perhaps even fisheyes: these lens types aren't used most of the time by most shooters, but the mere fact they're in the catalog gives a prospective buyer the feeling that wherever they need to go Canon will have the lens they need.
The lenses I'd offer for various focal lengths and categories would be:
35mm f/1.0 or even f/0.95 lenses are available for smaller sensors and with manual focus, so I think an RF 35mm f/1.0 may be technically achievable.
A 50mm f/0.7 lens was made in 1966 by Carl Zeiss. 6 were sold to NASA, 3 were used by Stanley Kubrik who used them for the candelight scenes of the movie Barry Lyndon, and 1 remains at Zeiss. Some glasses used in the past containing lead or radioactive elements are no longer available, but we also have 60 years more technology to throw at the problem and I believe Canon could turn out an RF 50mm f/0.7 in small numbers and this would attract some users to the product line as well as making certain special projects possible.
The one lens I'd most like to see Canon make is an RF 135mm f/1.0 DS. Wide open this would give typical American-football-shaped highlights in corners, but stopped down to 1.4 would have perfectly round highlights across entire image. Then, a DS filter would cut transmission a stop to T/2.0. So you'd have the "amount" of blur of a 135/2. On one hand, to me that's plenty, as any user of the 135/2 would attest, but on the other, it's hardly absurd. The key though is that instead of hard circles, turning into hard footballs, it'd be soft-edged round cotton balls 40% wider than a 135/2's circles that fade into nothing, and are even across the image. Note the front element would be the same as a Nikon 300/2 or Cannon 400/2.8 or 600/4: huge, but not at all unprecedented. Personally I would make the DS and aperture as drop-in filters like on the big white lenses, so you wouldn't have the DS if you didn't need it.
Category | Spec | Image Quality | Low Size/Weight | Low Cost | Durability |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Street | critical | critical | critical | ||
| Amateur | important | critical | |||
| Pro | important | critical | critical | ||
| Halo | critical |
The Street categy may be the lowest spec, yet more expensive than amateur lenses with higher spec. This should pay for better image quality, durability and weight savings. The epitome of this category would be the Leica APO ASPH lenses such as the APO-Summicron 50mm f/2 ASPH. It's a boring-sounding spec but one of the sharpest lenses on the planet, and you could almost buy a cheap new car for the price of one. Canon pricing would be far lower but it might make sense for a 35/2L to cost $1000-1500 if it is sharp enough and small enough.
The Halo category may range from relatively common lenses like the EF 50mm f/1.0L to the basically unobtainable EF 1200mm f/5.6L. It could also include tilt-shift lenses, for instance, or perhaps even fisheyes: these lens types aren't used most of the time by most shooters, but the mere fact they're in the catalog gives a prospective buyer the feeling that wherever they need to go Canon will have the lens they need.
The lenses I'd offer for various focal lengths and categories would be:
Category | 35mm | 50mm | 85mm | 135mm | Example: EF 50mm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Street | 35/2 L | 50/2 L , 50/1.8 L, or 50/1.4 L | I'd say 85/2, but a 85/1.4 recognizes that even 85/2 is no longer so portable; if you've got that length, perhaps widening to 1.4 is in order. | (too big for street?) | 50/1.8 Mk I (pro chassis) |
| Amateur | 35/1.8 IS Macro | 50/1.4 IS Macro | I'd say 85/1.4 IS Macro but 85/2 IS Macro emphasizes cost over spec | 135/2.8 IS Macro | 50/1.8 Mk II heading towards 50/1.4 as amateur gets richer |
| Pro | 35/1.2 L | 50/1.2 L | 85/1.2 L | 135/1.8 L | 50/1.4 heading towards 50/1.2 L as time goes on |
| Halo | 35/1.0 L or 35/0.9 L | 50/1.0 L or 50/0.7 L | 85/1.2 L DS. It doesn't matter if no-one buys it, it's just cool that Canon even has it. | 135/1.4 L or 135/1.0 L DS (see below) | 50/1.0 L |
35mm f/1.0 or even f/0.95 lenses are available for smaller sensors and with manual focus, so I think an RF 35mm f/1.0 may be technically achievable.
A 50mm f/0.7 lens was made in 1966 by Carl Zeiss. 6 were sold to NASA, 3 were used by Stanley Kubrik who used them for the candelight scenes of the movie Barry Lyndon, and 1 remains at Zeiss. Some glasses used in the past containing lead or radioactive elements are no longer available, but we also have 60 years more technology to throw at the problem and I believe Canon could turn out an RF 50mm f/0.7 in small numbers and this would attract some users to the product line as well as making certain special projects possible.
The one lens I'd most like to see Canon make is an RF 135mm f/1.0 DS. Wide open this would give typical American-football-shaped highlights in corners, but stopped down to 1.4 would have perfectly round highlights across entire image. Then, a DS filter would cut transmission a stop to T/2.0. So you'd have the "amount" of blur of a 135/2. On one hand, to me that's plenty, as any user of the 135/2 would attest, but on the other, it's hardly absurd. The key though is that instead of hard circles, turning into hard footballs, it'd be soft-edged round cotton balls 40% wider than a 135/2's circles that fade into nothing, and are even across the image. Note the front element would be the same as a Nikon 300/2 or Cannon 400/2.8 or 600/4: huge, but not at all unprecedented. Personally I would make the DS and aperture as drop-in filters like on the big white lenses, so you wouldn't have the DS if you didn't need it.
