Canon appeared with site editor Dan Chung on the Teradek booth live show at NAB today – although their star turn, the 18-80 lens we wrote about last week – was in such short supply they couldn’t bring one with them on to the sofa.
However, due to the magic of live production, we were able to play in some pictures that had been shot earlier. Dan also had a chance to get hands-on with the lens at Canon’s booth and had this to say about it:
“The build quality is a step up from Canon EF stills lenses but still feels lighter in construction than the 17-120. It has fully manual control of focus, iris and zoom but manual focus is a constantly rotating ring like the EF series with no end stops (possibly due to the fact that it has AF capabilities).
Manual focus is mechanical and has a positive feel but it’s more like using the Sony 28-135 G lens or a Sigma art lens. It’s hard to articulate – although it is mechanical it doesn’t quite feel like a fully manual lens.
There’s been a lot of chatter online about the modest aperture of the lens – it’s an f/4 equivalent, so not incredibly fast. But I think it’s a good tradeoff – it’s small, it’s sharp and it’s still possible to get good separation of your subject from the background at the longer end of the zoom range. The bokeh is also pleasing.
The optional grip is more of an essential accessory – it attaches via an Arri rosette, which means it will be possible to use third-party extension arms and reposition it where it’s most useful on your rig. The grip also has customisable buttons, which you can use for functions like focus magnification as well as record start/stop.
The zoom speed adjustment is also excellent – there are 16 steps of zoom speed adjustment and the slowest speed is very. Slow. Indeed.”
Lastly and perhaps most significantly, on the show Jon Romer hinted that this was the first in a line of more affordable Canon cine lenses. Should we be looking forward to a cine-ised 70-200 at next year’s NAB? If Newsshooter were a betting website we might place a small wager.
Anyway, even though the lenses we’ve seen on the show floor are pre-production examples, we think there’s a lot to like about Canon’s 18-80 and reckon they’re on to a winner. Expect to see a lot of them in the wild later this year…
