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Only a month after the Canon R5 got here out in 2020, Canon filed a patent utility – revealed solely this morning – That makes an attempt to make a smaller 600mm f/4, with out resorting to fresnel DO optics and avoiding catadioptric designs that use a central mirror that blocks some mild and causes doughnut bokeh.
The brand new design locations two optical tubes atop one another, with a pair figure-four mirror preparations that bump the sunshine from the highest, bigger aperture tube finally right down to the decrease tube that accommodates many of the focusing and aberration-correcting lens teams. The motion of the sunshine between the 2 tubes takes up 575mm of the 600mm focal size, permitting for important size financial savings.
This leads to a two-tubes-squished-together look seen generally amongst recognizing scopes.
Based mostly on the back-focus being listed as 80mm, the size of this lens seems to be about 24 (~9.5 inches) centimeters lengthy, solely about an inch and a half longer than the RF 70-200 f/2.8 L lens when shot at 200mm. The target lens ingredient on the finish, although, must be the identical diameter as present 600mm f/4 lenses, making it fairly a stubby design.
The middle of gravity could be about the identical distance from the digital camera as the place one places a hand beneath a 70-200 f/2.8 lens, giving the lens fairly much more maneuverability.
Canon plainly determined to discover all methods when trying to enhance on its supertelephoto line-up when shifting to the R mount. Within the meantime, it repurposed its latest EF 600mm f/4 and 400mm f/2.8 Mark III designs by slapping a everlasting R mount adapter on them.
It concurrently designed and launched a brace of small-aperture 600mm and 800mm f/11 fresnel DO lens to many constructive opinions. The size of these lenses was abbreviated each by the fresnel ingredient, and in addition with a collapsing optical tube that must be prolonged prior to make use of.
Very just lately, different patents utilizing the extra conventional catadioptric “mirror lens” designs appeared from roughly the identical time interval.
The truth that the DO design effort required the addition of a telescoping tube to save lots of size might point out that Canon might have given up on the much-hoped-for 600mm f/4 DO lens that appeared briefly at a commerce present as a prototype mannequin seven years in the past (pictured at high). Since that point, Canon launched into a notably various analysis effort primarily to scale back measurement and weight of supertelephoto lenses, with the picture high quality remaining about equal to the wonderful outcomes first achieved with its EF Mark II supertelephoto lenses.
Canon’s latest announcement of variations on the RF 400mm f/2.8 and RF 600mm f/4 designs – adapting them into an 800mm and 1200mm providing by means of the makes use of of teleconverting lens teams – upset some, as many RF supertelephoto shooters had been hoping for extra design innovation than adapters and teleconverters on the older EF lense designs. The lenses’ reception didn’t get a lift from the introduced pricing, with a roughly 30 p.c increase in versus with the corresponding base lense.
The technique of re-using older designs – particularly ones thought-about near optical optimums – might have proved well-liked if the efficiencies created resulted in additional individuals having the ability to buy them.
Within the meantime, Nikon’s Z mount – lengthy criticized for sporting a principally newbie lens lineup – two days in the past began delivering its 400mm f/2.8 lens that comes with an inner, switchable teleconverter, rendering the lens additionally a 600mm f/5.6. To high it off, it began seeding some pre-production fashions of its svelte 800mm f/6.3 fresnel-based design lens final week. That lens is rumored to price a couple of third the value of the introduced upcoming 800mm RF lens. That distinction in worth between Canon’s new 800mm lens and Nikon’s is in regards to the worth of a replica of Nikon’s new flagship Z9 digital camera.
