A new patent discovered by the folks at Canon News seems to suggest that Canon’s been working on some RF mount cinema zoom lenses. What leads them to believe that these are cine lenses, are that they’re designed for an APS-C format and that the image circle is larger than that of a typical 3:2 format Canon APS-C sensor. There are rumours of upcoming APS-C RF mount mirrorless cameras on the way, although none exist as of right now. If the rumours on such a camera turns out to be true, then these may end up being very high-end APS-C zooms. I think Super 35mm cine lenses is far more likely, though, especially with the recent release of the EOS Cinema C70.
In the lens lineup on the patent, there are two 18-55mm f/2.0 zooms, a 19-50mm f/2.0 zoom and a 16-70mm f/2.8 zoom. Such wide and constant apertures put them well out of the range of low end users, although 18-55mm is a typical zoom range for APS-C kit lenses (usually with a much slower variable aperture).
If we see any of these lenses actually come to fruition, then I think we’ll likely only see one of them. Perhaps one of the 18-55mm f/2.0 options. It is still possible that these are to become high-end APS-C lenses for whatever APS-C RF mount mirrorless camera Canon may have up their sleeve, although I suspect they wouldn’t want to invest this heavily into such a wide-angle APS-C lens when they’re still trying to establish the full-frame EOS R system. Right now, it makes a lot more sense that these are destined to go with the new Canon EOS Cinema C70 and whatever other new RF mount cinema cameras Canon has on the way. And the focal lengths described in the patent are quite versatile, especially with a constant wide aperture. [via Canon News]
