These lenses feature "high-level" optical design and performance, according to Canon, while maintaining the style and ease of use of Canon’s EF Cinema lens series. With the introduction of these zoom lenses featuring focal length ranges of 20-50mm for wide-angle and 45-135mm for telephoto, Canon now offers zooms that cover the same range as its existing CN-E primes.
When paired with full-frame or large-format cameras, these lenses fully leverage those cameras’ signature shallow depth-of-field look and provide smooth and natural background blur, helping to produce powerful storytelling imagery. The lenses also maintain a bright T2.4 aperture across their entire zoom ranges allowing for image capture in both natural light and darker environments. This feature helps to reduce the need for intricate lighting setups, enabling more efficient and cost-effective video production workflows.
The new lenses were engineered with "an optical configuration that creates the optimal placement of lens elements," including aspherical and anomalous dispersion elements, which help reduce the potential for color fringing and other chromatic aberrations. This should enable them to maintain high optical performance from the center of the image to the periphery when paired with 8K cameras like the EOS R5C. Additionally, both of the new lenses are less than 10" long and weigh less than 7.5 lbs.
In addition to supporting lens metadata transmission via the EF mount – meaning they will activate the Focus Guide on recent Canon Cinema EOS and mirrorless video bodies – they also support /i Technology3 from Cooke Optics for the PL mount versions with contacts at the 12 o'clock position. With this capability, recording metadata such as focus, zoom, aperture, and lens model can be transmitted via the lens mount for visualization on the camera itself. This additional information helps to contribute to more efficient workflows not only during on-location recording, but also during post-production and editing. Watch Canon's official Product Showcase and Behind the Scenes videos above and stay tuned – we're looking forward to taking a closer look at these lenses!
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