Canon has announced their new 17-120mm T2.95 Cinema Zoom Lens. Usually we have to wait until at least the first or second day of NAB for major new gear announcements. Canon was kind of enough to provide their big news a week ahead of the big show. Canon announced their original Cinema EOS lenses back at NAB 2011 and were ready to ship in 2012. So far the feedback on the Canon cinema lenses, both zoom and primes, has been a bit slow to gaining traction, but they’re running at full steam now and there’s a lot of ground to cover. Continue reading “Canon Announces 17-120mm Cine Zoom Ahead of NAB”
Tag: pre-order
It’s Coming! The New Zeiss 55mm f/1.4… Otus?
Zeiss has officially released all of the details around their elite new line of lenses which they are calling Otus. Otus? That’s almost as weird as Touit. But with the kind of specs and image quality Zeiss has been touting with this new line of lenses, I don’t care what they call it. The 55mm f/1.4 is the first prime lens to be released this coming November and if Zeiss can stick to the extremely high manufacturing tolerances and quality required for such a lens, I think everyone will want one of these in their kit.
It’s going to be available in the ZF.2 (Nikon F) and ZE (Canon EF) mount just like the former ZF.2/ZE lenses. Again, the ZE version will not have a manual aperture ring but the ZF.2 version will. Duclos Lenses will be offering the full Cine-Mod and possibly the same great Leitax Canon EF mount for the ZF.2 version so that you can have the beautiful de-clicked aperture ring on your Canon EF mount camera. It makes perfect sense that Zeiss started with the 55mm focal length as it’s considered the “normal” field of view for 35mm full frame cameras (and if we’re being honest, the 50mm f/1.4 ZF.2/ZE is the weakest link in the older model line-up and deserves the refresh the most).
If you haven’t heard about why the new Otus line of lenses is so desirable, you should check out the post here. Zeiss is really talking up the superb image quality of these new lenses which are setting my expectations very high with quotes like:
…the new ZEISS Otus 1.4/55 offers ambitious photographers who do not accept any compromises in image quality…
Our goal was to bring the best standard lens for SLR cameras onto the market. The Otus 1.4/55 delivers outstanding sharpness and contrast rendition all the way into the corners of the image.
If you’re already aware of this amazing lens, Duclos Lenses is accepting Pre-Orders which should be available November 2013. As soon as these beauties begin rolling in, I assure you I’ll be taking one out for some stress testing. Exciting.
Schneider To Offer Mid-Range Xenon FF Primes (Updated)
This post has been updated since it was first released to reflect up-to-date information including pre-order details (above).
One would assume that these full frame (FF) prime lenses are intended for still photographers, but there are a lot of features that will appeal to cinematographers just just as much as still photogs. I recently had the opportunity to review an early set of the Schneider Cine-Xenar III primes which I consider to be proper, classic cinema primes. Read the whole post here. At the moment the mid-range cine lens options include the likes of the Zeiss CP.2, Canon CN-E Primes, and a few others not worth mentioning. A bit of background on this class of lenses; the CP.2s are based on their lower-priced cousins, the ZF.2 photo primes. The CN-Es are also based on their lower-priced cousins, the L Series photo primes.
Continue reading “Schneider To Offer Mid-Range Xenon FF Primes (Updated)”