In an interview with Mynavi News, Canon executive Kengo Iezuka says that their recently released 600mm f/11 and 800mm f/11 lenses would’ve been impossible to produce for DSLRs. They had planned to attempt these for DLSRs, but due to AF limitations, it couldn’t be done. Their creation only became possible due to the design and capabilities of their new RF mount mirrorless cameras. Mr Iezuka is one of the executives responsible for the planning of lenses at Canon and also hinted that more such lenses might be on the way, depending on the success of these two. In a world where people typically want primes to be as fast as possible, it could be a tough sell – of course, these do have that budget advantage.
As Mr Iezuka tells it, the main advantage Canon’s RF mount mirrorless cameras have over their DSLR counterparts is the AF performance when shooting with lower light levels, which allows them to use lenses with such small apertures quite adequately.
He goes on to say that the concept for these lenses actually came about for the EF mount, but there’s a limit to the minimum aperture you can use while still allowing the autofocus system to see well enough to actually do its job. AF might theoretically work with the DSLRs, but only in the very centre. Their goal has been to bring such focal lengths down to the price range of average consumers – because most aren’t going to spend $10,499 on a lens for their hobby – especially if it’s big and difficult to transport and use. Lenses such as 600mm and 800mm are generally large and heavy, and are extremely expensive. However, if you don’t have this focal length, you can’t enjoy shooting wild birds and aircraft. Especially in the world of wild birds, “600mm is the standard lens”. We have developed these two lenses because we want to make super-telephoto shooting, which is expensive and difficult to reach, familiar. He was asked why 600mm and 800mm focal lengths were chosen. He suggested that many users who shoot sports and wildlife were using zooms only at the long end and trying to reach those longer effective focal lengths using teleconverters. This led to the decision to go with the focal lengths that they did and admits that f/11 was a bit of a gamble – although it seems to have paid off. But what he said next suggests that there are more long, inexpensive RF mount lenses on the way. When asked if we can expect an RF 400mm f/8 lens… The repeated use of “will be”, rather than “would be” suggests that the lens is already in the works, perhaps even designed and prototyped, even if not announced yet. But he also suggests that its release would depend on how well the sales of the current 600mm and 800mm lenses go. You can see the complete interview on Mynavi News. Do you use Canon’s RF 600mm f/11 and 800mm f/11 lenses? What do you think of them? Would you want more? [via Digicame-Info]
