Old arms will keep in mind the times of video lens equipment which projected the picture onto a floor glass display screen the scale of a 35mm movie body, so {that a} small-sensor video digicam might rephotograph it with its inbuilt zoom and seize the traits of a bigger efficient sensor. It was sometimes used on high-end tasks, however it was considerably lower than ideally suited, costing an enormous quantity of sunshine and fairly a little bit of sharpness at a time when digital cinema cameras wanted all they may get of each.
Now Canon is speaking a couple of modification for its UHD-Digisuper122 and 111 broadcast zoom lenses which creates what the corporate calls a “novel look”, with “stunning shallow depth of field”. This could be attention-grabbing in its personal proper, however given the present fascination for attention-grabbing optical results, lens aficionados may nicely take an curiosity within the methods underlying what’s been achieved right here – on the premise it could be relevant to different, extra on a regular basis considerations.
Needless to say, the corporate isn’t precisely handing out the manufacturing drawings for the machine, however it clearly isn’t a reincarnation of the bottom glass adapter. That ought to provoke sighs of aid from broadcast digicam operators around the globe whose focus-pulling problem is already acute sufficient. Let’s be clear: the lenses we’re speaking about within the context of Canon’s largest broadcast zooms are principal instruments of mainstream broadcast camerawork, generally used on issues like dwell sports activities OBs, and there are problems with each know-how and person expertise to contemplate.
Staggering functionality
By the requirements of anybody used to stills zooms for a lot larger sensors, ⅔-inch field lenses are staggeringly succesful. The 122 (the quantity is the multiplication issue) is an 8.4 to 1000mm zoom lens which achieves an f/5 even at that lengthy (lengthy, lengthy) finish. OK, it’s the scale of a wheeled carry-on, as such issues are typically, however such is the ability of small-chip cameras. That’s why broadcasters nonetheless use small-chip cameras, and why the likes of Grass Valley nonetheless sweat to wring increasingly more efficiency out of ⅔-inch, 3-chip imaging blocks.
Strolling as much as the Canon sales space at NAB 2025, we uncover the 122x zoom in pleasure of place within the broadcast finish of the exhibit. The implementation of Canon’s new concept takes benefit of a deleted function within the lens’s extender, which was as soon as used to accommodate a 1.5:1 magnifying optic to enrich the 2x extender which remains to be in place. The 1.5x function was not extensively used, and in some unspecified time in the future was deleted and changed with a balancing weight.
The new optical element sits in the identical place because the 1.5:1 extender optic would have, so the lens is able to both 2:1 prolonged operation (with focal size to, sure, 2000mm), or 1:1 non-extended operation, or 1:1 with the brand new look. There is not any possibility to make use of 2:1 prolonged mode with the brand new look, though it appears seemingly that ultra-long prolonged focal lengths are prone to generate sufficiently shallow pure depth of area that including different results could be gilding the lily.
The query, then, is what precisely this new optical element does, as a result of with out re-projecting the picture onto a floor (corresponding to a floor glass) then rephotographing it, there is no such thing as a option to alter depth of area. What Canon’s new concept does is just not fairly precisely described as “shallow depth of field.” Instead, it provides some additional character – within the sense of “character” as coveted by single-camera folks – to already-soft elements of the image.
Softening gentle issues
It’s actually a novel look and it does clean out a few of the bokeh traits of a lens which was most likely engineered with precision and zoom vary as priorities over lovely bokeh. Going by the demo footage proven by Canon at its sales space, the impact works greatest on digicam positions trying up at (for example) baseball gamers, inserting them towards a distant crowd. It softens gentle issues; it gained’t add softness to photographs which don’t have already got it.
So, no, this isn’t a nearly-magical method of lowering the depth of area of an current picture with out the disadvantages of old fashioned floor glass adaptors. It’s clear what calls for are being addressed right here: the massive curiosity in big-chip seems for broadcast and concurrently serving the experience of dwell broadcast operators, whose lens-aiming ninjutsu should be permitted to stream freely. Strapping a set of motors onto a cinema lens is an interim answer at greatest.
That’s additionally why lenses corresponding to Fujifilm’s HZK 25-1000mm field lens exist; to deliver broadcast-style operability to cameras with true Super-35mm sensors, such because the LDX-180, which Grass Valley is introducing at NAB 2025. At 1 / 4 of 1,000,000 {dollars} for the HZK lens, although, and missing the sheer attain of a 1000mm lens on a ⅔-inch digicam, it’s clear why different choices are being explored. Whether or not they’ll tickle the flowery of broadcasters is one other matter – let’s meet again right here in twelve months, and if everybody’s large field zoom lenses have novel-look choices, we’ll realize it’s gone down nicely.
Leave a Reply