Canon announced the launch of a new series of lenses in the company’s EF Cinema Lens lineup — the Flex Zoom Lens series of lenses, which were developed “to create cinema-style productions with greater workflow efficiency.” The first lenses in the series are the CN-E20-50mm T2.4 L F/FP wide-angle zoom lens and the CN-E45-135mm T2.4 L F/FP telephoto zoom lens.
“Designed in the pursuit of cinematic beauty, the new large-aperture lenses feature both high-level optical design and performance while maintaining the style and ease-of-use of Canon’s EF Cinema lens series,” Canon said.
These new cinema lenses are designed for a range of applications, Canon said, “including film, TV programs, commercials, and much more.”
“When paired with full-frame or large-format cameras, these lenses fully leverage the cameras’ signature shallow depth-of-field look and provide smooth and natural background blur, helping to produce powerful storytelling imagery,” the company stated.
“The lenses also maintain a bright T2.4 aperture across their entire zoom ranges allowing for image capture in both natural light and darker environments. This feature helps to reduce the need for intricate lighting setups, enabling more efficient and cost-effective video production workflows.”
The new Canon Flex Zoom Lens series are “engineered with an optical configuration that creates the optimal placement of lens elements, including a large-aperture aspherical lens and an anomalous dispersion glass lens.” The result is the CN-E20-50mm T2.4 L F/FP and the CN-E45-135mm T2.4 L F/FP lenses help reduce the potential for color smudging and chromatic aberrations. This enables the lenses to maintain high optical performance from the center of the image to the periphery when paired with 8K cameras, Canon said.
Along with supporting EF-mount data transmission, the new lenses are also compatible with /i Technology from Cooke Optics.
“With this capability, recording metadata such as focus, zoom, aperture, and lens model can be transmitted via the lens mount for visualization on the camera itself,” Canon said. “This additional information helps to contribute to more efficient workflows not only during on-location recording, but also during post-production and editing.”
Pricing and Availability
The Canon CN-E20-50mm T2.4 L F/FP wide-angle zoom lens and Canon CN-E45-135mm T2.4 L F/FP telephoto zoom lens are scheduled to go on sale in early June 2022 and early September 2022, respectively, for an estimated retail price of $21,999.
