Canon Fills Out Nicely With a New 35mm Cine Prime

Canon wiggled their way into the professional cinema lens market with a few zooms and a trio of primes. Shortly after their initial line-up they added a wide and telephoto prime option to cap the end of their prime lens family. The line-up included a 14mm, 24mm, 50mm, 85mm, and 135mm. Not a bad set of primes, but the gap left between the 24mm and 50mm was painfully obvious. This week Canon has announced the development of a 35mm CN-E prime lens to add to their offering.

This is a focal length that everyone has been asking for from the beginning of the CN-E generation. Now with a six lens family of primes, Canon can really consider this a complete set. The 35mm will fall in line with the other primes in terms of size and shape. No word from Canon on the speed of the 35mm quite yet but I’ll be sure to check the engravings on the lens itself while its on display at NAB. In my opinion, the new 35mm would have to stay consistent with the other primes in the set at T1.3 or at least T1.5. Unfortunately I’m guessing that it will be a T1.5, borrowing optics from its 35mm f/1.4 Canon L still photo cousin. At T1.5, it would still be a respectable speed and fill in nicely with the rest of the CN-E primes. I’ve been pretty pleased with the image quality of the Canon CN-E primes so far. The only issues I have with them now that the set is actually a true set, is the fact that they only come in a Canon EF mount and the speed of the 14mm is a tad slow for my taste. At Duclos Lenses, we’ll see if we can’t fix one of those issues. 😉