This is likely Canon’s lens roadmap for 2020

[Deleted member 381342]

No mystery at all. They were announced and shown alongside the RF 100-500L lens. As far we can see that's the only lens they currently work with. They certainly WON"T work with the RF 70-200 f/2.8

1000mm f/14 makes the new f/11 lenses seem super fast. I'll count on Canon having tested these things out and ISO 51200 being super clean (1/250, F14, shade).

 

[Quarkcharmed]

Please do not see this as me trying to be right. I'm just trying to confirm and demonstrate what I'm saying here so that we don't need to argue endlessly. Far more than 1000 words have surely been said about the subject, and I think images add more than written back and forth.

Fantastic comparison!
Yes I must confess they look very close. But surprisingly that means, instead of getting say 800mm f11 lens you can get the same quality at the same shutter speed by using a faster 400mm at f5.6 - considering the images will be normalised/scaled to the same size.

 

[Kit.]

Some here get it, but let me say it: these f11 teles are mostly for FUTURE cameras.

There is some market for slow and long now, but as with Moore’s law, camera sensors advance rapidly and inexorably. How many years has it typically taken per stop of low light performance.

Moore's law has nothing to do with photoelectric conversion. Nothing at all.

But I have a better idea about future cameras: these lenses are for making sketches. The AI of the future cameras will take these sketches and paint the pictures they could correspond to.

 

[Joules]

Fantastic comparison!
Yes I must confess they look very close. But surprisingly that means, instead of getting say 800mm f11 lens you can get the same quality at the same shutter speed by using a faster 400mm at f5.6 - considering the images will be normalised/scaled to the same size.

You can definitely see a difference in the grain structure in the original files I have here. The 200mm 11 image looks a bit less mushy than the enlarged 100mm 5.6 one. So even though numerically speaking, the noise should be the same, it isn't quite in practical terms. It's close though. It's not the same quality, but similar enough that I feel it is appropriate for me to call it equivalent.

But yes, a high resolution sensor and a fast, but not super long lens, might be a practical substitute for a long, but pretty slow lens. It depends on how high the sensor resolution is and how sharp the lens is. If you aren't left with enough detail after the crop, the longer lens would have been better. Still, that is the reason I for one am excited for higher resolution sensors, even though they don't provide much benefit for most situations and may sacrifice on per pixel dynamic range.

 

[Deleted member 378085]

And it will be useless shooting football inside a stadium at night too.

It will be a budget lens. Not for every occasion or lighting condition but plenty. I did shot very good images in the dark forest at ISO 800-1600 at F5.6 and 640mm on old Canon 20D/7D so 1 or 2 stop ISO increment should be still usable on a modern full frame.

Of course, you can always buy the $15000 800mm 5.6 and carry all the 4.5 kg weight up to a mountain. I am happy that there will be choice.
Brighter lenses will be there too.

I have a feeling these lenses will be more unusual than the specs show. They will have some weird optics/design.

Firstly, there is far more practically options then the 800/5.6 from this 800/11. Secondly, this obsession with extreme high telephoto lenses is just overboard, I have no problem getting close enough to wildlife at 420mm/F4 which is my setup. It takes some practice and patience to get wildlife to get close, creates a more intimate encounter as well but you can get close to wildlife if you know what you are doing. Shooting at such high focal lengths just seems quite lazy to be honest.

I would much rather have my 420/f4 combo and get amazing photography that is useful another 15minutes past the sun setting then to have a f/7.1 or f/11 which is honestly poor light gathering and really only useful in harsh daytime sunlight. People tend to say, oh well the iso is getting better and you can push this. What they fail to mention that the opposite is true as well, if you have faster glass, that can be pushed far more as well. But too each their own.

 

[Traveler]

tricky... even 1/180 with 600mm + 2x moves 2-3 pixels and blurs detail. You need 1/500th if shooting around 1000mm to get a sharp image.

No problem. The moon is almost as bright as anything on the Earth during the day. You can shoot at 1/500s and the iso will be reasonable

 

[privatebydesign]

It takes some practice and patience to get wildlife to get close, creates a more intimate encounter as well but you can get close to wildlife if you know what you are doing. Shooting at such high focal lengths just seems quite lazy to be honest.

I think the counterpoint to that mentality is, just because you can doesn't mean it is the best for the animal. For example there have been many incidences of people thinking they can get close to bears, and they can, but then the bears get comfortable around humans and then become considered pests and are then euthanized, or they take a dislike to the humans, hurt them and are then euthanized, neither scenario is good for the bear.

I have deer in my backyard, I don't want them to get comfortable around people because 90% of my neighbors would happily 'hunt' them. If I want close and intimate I can go to a petting zoo where the animal has nothing to fear.

 

[stevelee]

No problem. The moon is almost as bright as anything on the Earth during the day. You can shoot at 1/500s and the iso will be reasonable

Of course. You are seeing the moon in the middle of the day, even if you are in the middle of the night.

 

[SteveC]

1. How can you claim that f/7.1 on aps-c is the same as ff at f/11?

I too wonder about this.

I don't recall seeing sensor size OR focal length on the exposure triangle--which pretty much talks about amount of light per unit sensor area, unless I'm totally off base. For purposes of exposure f/7.1 is in no way equivalent to f/11, though you can get to a similar amount of "brightness" in the picture by altering time or ISO.

EDIT: I see you're talking about noise, not exposure.

 

[Joules]

The exposure triangle--which pretty much talks about amount of light per unit sensor area, unless I'm totally off base.

EDIT: I see you're talking about noise, not exposure.

Yes, sorry that I didn't mention brightness / ISO properly in my first statements.

The thing is this: the more light you gather, the less prominent noise appears in an image. I am not talking about brightness (which can be significantly altered in post anyway) or DOF here.

As you said, f-number determines the amount of light per unit area. So f/11 is 4/3 stop slower or 7.1^2 / 11^2 = 0.417 times as much light per unit area as f/7.1. And the area of a FF sensor is 1.6^2 = 2.56 times as large as an APS-C one.

So less light per area multiplied with more area yields the absolute difference in gathered light. 0.417 * 2.56 = 1.07. Which is close enough for me to call that equivalent, since the actual dimensions in lenses don't quite match the reported numbers and therefore there is a certainargin of error anyway.

I posted a visual demonstration of what I'm talking about earlier: https://www.canonrumors.com/forum/i...non’s-lens-roadmap-for-2020.38657/post-835901

 

[SteveC]

I guess I am treating exposure as equivalent to the concept of "flux" (amount of something flowing through per unit area, used for radiation and electromagnetic fields), and the exposure triangle is just a quickie way of comparing two different sets of settings to see they have the same flux (or how different they are). But photographers never use the word flux (my engineering background betrays itself).

There is, however, one more thing to consider, and that's how much of the light is simply absorbed in the glass elements of the lens itself. If you're using the same lens in two different settings, you can ignore that (since you're making comparisons), but with two different lenses that can become a factor as they might differ.

Once accounting for that I think I can safely think of the two things as equivalent.

It sounds like for noise comparisons you will want to compare the amount of light hitting each pixel, and of course the pixels will have different areas AND might be engineered differently to boot (imagine a pixel off a fifteen year old sensor versus one today). You then have total light hitting an object (flux times its size). (And thus it seems to me the total sensor size is relevant ONLY IF paired with the number of pixels so you can then effectively be using its the pixel size.)

I wonder if all the arguments about "full frame being less noisy than APS-C" or alternatively "Resolution being proportional to noise" are just because people are leaving out half of what determines pixel size (either the count or the sensor size).

 

[Joules]

There is, however, one more thing to consider, and that's how much of the light is simply absorbed in the glass elements of the lens itself.

[...]

It sounds like for noise comparisons you will want to compare the amount of light hitting each pixel, and of course the pixels will have different areas AND might be engineered differently to boot

Good point, how much light effectively passes the lens, also called T-stop, should be considered for comparisons of pictures with different lenses. But I'm not aware of any site that measures and publishes these values for regular lenses. In cinema lenses it is common to consider T-stop, but f-number is all the photography world seems to use. Would be interesting to know how big the discrepancy is with the new RF lenses.

On that note, do we know how DO affects transmission?

As for pixel size, noise isn't something that is directly tied to resolution. You can sample your image at a lower frequency / downscale it / view it with smaller magnification, and that will have an effect on how prominent the noise appears in the image. How apparent the noise in the whole picture is to the viewer doesn't really depend on the size of the pixels that originally formed it. What matters is how they are sampled. If you look at an image from very far away, you'll see less noise than when you're really close.

You are absolutely right that the sensor does play a big role in these comparisons as well. After all, while most of the noise is actually part of the signal itself, some noise is generated in the camera during image capture. If we're talking about cameras from very different generations, that clearly muddies any comparison one could make.

But the component of the noise that is inherent to the light itself, the shot noise, does not depend directly on the pixel size. If you view your images at 1:1, yes a higher resolution sensor will look noiser than a lower resolution one when comparing an otherwise identical image. But by viewing them both at 1:1, the comparison is flawed. At the same magnification, given sensors from the same generation, noise will appear similar even between sensors with different resolutions. I can't demonstrate that with my equipment, but there are appropriate images in the studio shot comparison tool by DPR to demonstrate that.

 

[arbitrage]

So would anyone here opt for the 600/11 over the 800/11? The patents show the 600 to be about 5.5cm shorter. The 600 will have a smaller front element so overall, shorter, narrower and lighter. But still, I think I'd just go to 800 no matter what. If they'd gone for the 600/8 in the patent then I'd go for that one if it accepted the 1.4TC.

 

[Aussie shooter]

I have a feeling that Canon is preparing the RF ecosystem for being FF exclusive. And that means in order to still have some very compact lenses, we're now seeing what appears to be shockingly slow apertures.

But in reality people with MFT and APS-C have been getting by with camera and lens combinations that are the same or worse with regards to low light performance. People also have and still do put teleconverters to good use, which are even worse than these lenses as they can impact AF performance. I think talking about it just helps to put Canon's actions into context. I've read the terms absurd and stupid used to describe Canon's new lenses in this thread, so I believe there is a benefit to bring up some of the technical contexts that can explain why they are doing what they do.

In the end, not everybody can afford a big white. If Canon moves away from DSLR entirely, slow lenses allow them to offer something in the RF system to those that don't fancy the limits if the M system without offering a RF crop line of lenses. It makes sense to me.

As someone who uses aps-c(7d2) for wildlife I can let you know how I work. Sigma 150-600c is the most used lens. Generally shot wide open and very occasionally stopped down to 7.1 or 8 if shooting in perfect light conditions. Light shade(cloudy conditions and not too dense woodlands and the sigma is still acceptable with a bump of the ISO(I generally shoot auto ISO limited to 3200 but dislike going over 1600). Deep shaded forest and woodlands I switch to a 70-200 2.8 and crop if needed. Not only because it does produce better images despite giving up resolution but also because the AF performs WAAAAAAAAAY better. I also run the 2x extender on the 70-200 but only in perfect lighting conditions and only if the travel I am doing means it is impractical to take the sigma.
I am currently considering the possibility of the R6 but would definitely stick with the sigma or the 70-200 2.8 and retain the ability to get a wider apature when needed

 

[Kit.]

I guess I am treating exposure as equivalent to the concept of "flux" (amount of something flowing through per unit area, used for radiation and electromagnetic fields),

That would be "flux density". "Flux" itself is the amount of something flowing through the contour.

and the exposure triangle is just a quickie way of comparing two different sets of settings to see they have the same flux (or how different they are).

...to see they hit the same slope on the sensor's response curve.

As far as the sensor can be considered linear for our practical purposes, the exposure triangle (and in particular, the "ISO" part of it) can be ignored.

 

[scyrene]

I also have used my 500mm 4L IS II with 2XIII at f/8 f/9 and f/10 with my 5DsR. But there is always the option to use it at f/8 to be close to DLA (f/6/7) and at the same time to enjoy 1000mm. And I realy have enjoyed the results!

But 1000mm at f/8 is not the same as 800mm at f/11. Of course portability is a totally different matter. But for that there is always D500 + 500mm f/5.6 PF !!! A really portable combo.

Now if only they made 800DO a stop brighter (but that would be rather big like 400DO +2X big).

I stop down the 500+2x combination to f/10 because I found the IQ was slightly better than way. In my opinion, 1000mm f/10 is close enough to 800mm f/11 for the purposes of countering the claim that such a lens could never be used in anything but bright midday light, a claim which seems to be based of supposition and received wisdom. I present my experience as a counterexample.

 

[scyrene]

Ok, so lets say you're birding in the dark shadows of the woods. You need some shutter speed so you're shooting at 1/1000, f.5.6, ISO 3200 for proper exposure. Lets go to f/8 - now you're at iSO 6400, or you give up more shutter speed. At f/11, you're at ISO 12800 for the same exposure. Unless 12,800 in the new camera can give me the same noise characteristics as today's ISO 3200, then it's a non-starter for me.

I've shot birds in the woods at ISO 12800 on the 5D3, and it can produce okay results - the newest Canon sensors are better at high ISO than that old body, and I'd argue you could go down to 1/500 or even 1/320 with some birds. It's not going to be perfect for these conditions, but it will open up new opportunities to some people.

 

[dolina]

+++++ these f11 lenses in several years will be performing like the f2.8 pro lenses of recent years.

+++++Some here get it, but let me say it...

A.M.:let me say it: this is a pure garbage. Not even going to explain that F11 is a 4 full stops slower than F2.8 And what are the implications.
some here get it. correct. Not you though.

It's a budget lens.

People who cannot afford to plunk down more than $2,000 or carry anything heavier than 2kg of lens will buy the f/11 lens.

Sigma, Tamron and Tokino proves there's a market for it.

Still photography market's in a 10 year free fall with the last year being the worst in terms of units shipped.

Canon probably has a image sensor that can go to crazy high ISO and be clean with somewhat alright autofocus.

Retirees are a large market for photography so gear they can move around is great for them,

 

[scyrene]

You would hope to be shooting at least 1/800s with 800mm lens even when shooting a dead bird.
yeah, IS and everything I know

What on earth are you talking about?

 

[SecureGSM]

What on earth are you talking about?

Talking Shooting handheld with IS on @800mm. That’s 400/2.8 II + x2III. I could not get sharp shots unless was shooting at around 1/800s.
5d4. It could be me or could be my setup but my experience is as described.