If you are particularly keen to difficult DIY projects, this one may be for you.
Andy George of How To Make Everything redefines the concept of DIY with this project: a lens build from scratch using raw sand, rocks, and metal, and a huge amount of skills too, I guess.
Previously, Andy built a pinhole camera, as you can see in the video below.
Not satisfied with the pinhole camera, Andy decided to build a lens from the scratch. Well, it took him a dozen attempts before getting it done right. Guess making your own glass isn’t everyone’s thing. The video below explains all steps. Enjoy.
We all know Canon has the best on sensor AF, Dual Pixel AF. But there are other AF technologies.
The video below by Gerald Undone compares the technology behind autofocus systems like Canon’s Dual Pixel AF in the new EOS R, the hybrid phase-detection in the Sony a7 III, and the Depth from Defocus Contrast Detection found in the Panasonic Lumix G9. Enjoy.
The spring-loaded adjustable collar collection is something of a mystery to us and will remain so until we can spend some days doing optical adjustments on one. The use of the same motor as the RF lens is very interesting in several ways. Only some more tear downs will tell us if this is just a superior motor type that Canon is going to use in all electrically focused lenses (I suspect this is probably the case), or just in lenses with a lot of glass in the focusing element (another likely thing).
Canon has really been very quiet about this lens, despite the known changes inside. I had a lot of trouble finding out which elements are fluorite (two of them are, apparently). There has been some talk about improved focusing speed and accuracy, which I assume has something to do with the new electronic focus system, but not much.
The teardown is explained step by step with a lot of pictures, see it here.
DCWatch posted some information about an internal Canon presentation.
The benefits and advantages of the large diameter of the RF mount featured on the Canon EOS R are discussed. The main reason is that the RF mount allows for a new and improved lens design.
Apparently, Canon had a try to use the EF M mount for their EOS R full frame mirrorless camera (machine translated text):
Initially, Canon also considered to realize a 35mm full size with the EF-M mount of the APS – C mirrorless “EOS M” series, but satisfactory results were not obtained, such as no performance aimed at .And since the system becomes large when unnecessarily increasing the mount diameter, we actually designed multiple lenses, decided to 54mm while looking at the balance of optical merit and size, the strength of the camera and so on.
This didn’t work out well, as it seems.
Canon sees these main advantages of the larger mount:
more flexibility on where the optical elements have to go
larger elements can be placed closer to the sensor
lenses are easier to design
complex lenses like the RF 50mm f/1.2L and 24-70mm f/2L are feasible
vignetting and other optical issues are better controlled
Note that while most of the above points would have been technically done also with the EF M mount, Canon clearly decided to go for the new mount type on the Canon EOS R because of the many advantages.
Some rumor outlets still push the rumor that Canon might release an APS-C model in the EOS R line-up; that’s not going to happen.
It seems that for once they were a bit overwhelmed by Canon’s latest optical masterpiece. From the conclusion:
[…] the R lenses are not only entirely new optics, they are also largely new electrical and mechanical systems. There are a lot of different things in here that we haven’t seen in any Canon EF lenses. Some of them we should have expected, like the increased electronics going to the control ring. Others we don’t really understand yet, like the tension spring in the ring USM motor or the increased electrical shielding.
[…] We also saw lots of new stuff we don’t completely understand yet and a level of complexity we weren’t expecting.
[…] the RF lenses contain some new technology they [Canon, editor’s note] haven’t used before. There’s a lot of engineering that’s gone into these. Things are different inside here. As we’ll see in the next teardown we do, some of that is carrying over to at least some EF lenses. What does this mean? It means Canon has invested very heavily into developing the lenses of the R system. This level of engineering didn’t all happen in the last year, they’ve been working on this for quite a while.
You can see a few images of the teardown below, though I recommend you head over to Lens Rentals for the many pictures and the step by step description of the teardown. Just don’t do it a home yourself.
The Canon RF 50mm f/1.2L is a highly regarded lens, universally seen as one of the two lenses Canon made to showcase the possibilities of their new RF mount (the other one being the RF 28-70mm f/2L.
The folks at Cinema5D made a neat video where they explain what Canon’s 8K video technology is about.
At Inter Bee 2018 Cinema5D met with Canon’s Toshiyuki Akimoto who is responsible for the development of 8K monitors and cameras. He was kind enough to explain Canon’s take on 8K acquisition.
The Canon 8K camera concept presented at Inter BEE 2018 has quite a compact body very similar to the Canon C300 Mark II. It will have a super 35mm sensor and an 8K processing unit inside and mind you that recording will not be done internally. You will have to find and attach an external 8K recording solution. According to Canon, the purpose of this demonstration is to research the market and to gather the customer’s opinion regarding future 8K demand.
Since this 8K camera is still only a prototype and future technology demonstration, there is no detailed explanation of its functions or ergonomics yet. The presented camera, however, looks to being very close to the production stage.
Canon has in fact already demonstrated the same system at the “Canon Expo” in 2015. It seems that Canon has had 8K technology for quite a while already. We can only guess the reason for not releasing a Canon 8K capable camera til now was because the 8K market has not grown enough yet. 8K is being promoted mainly in Japan – there were very few 8K demonstrations at international trade shows like NAB or IBC.
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