I was invited by a friend with Canon USA to hear Larry Thorpe discuss Canon's new ultra high level HD lens and discuss the demands of UHD and 3D on optical systems. As many of you know, Mr. Thorpe is the inventor of the CCD, starting his career with the BBC, then RCA in the 60's, developing the first electronic broadcast camera, working with Sony for 20 years, and spearheading development of HDTV before signing up in his current role as an exec with Canon. He went into the fundamentals and trade offs of lens design and the extreme demands of trying to accommodate 4K and 8K optics. It was a fascinating presentation by an extremely bright man that could keep highly technical content interesting. My son who graduates from film school in March was able to attend and mix with Mr. Thorpe and a small audience of 30 or so film and broadcast professionals.

I'll try to resist complaining about the cost of a good lens from this point forward. It was very interesting to be in an audience where $10,000 lenses were considered the extreme low end and $200,000+ the high end! And I thought L-Glass was expensive!!

Willard S. Boyle and George E. Smith are being awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2009 for co-inventing the CCD. I think the Nobel committee would be very surprised to hear that Larry Thorpe invented the CCD.

David, guess I screwed that up. Evidently he played a huge role applying the CCD technology into a viable camera and promoting digital and ultimately HD into what we enjoy today.

I figured that he probably played a role in implementing CCD's in video cameras, and that was what was being referenced.

By the way, I've been following your Canon 7D thread on the Bogen monopod. I'm leaning toward obtaining a 7D as it would be perfect for some things that I need to do.

David,

It's a good camera. I'm starting to understand the pro's and con's versus a traditional camera, but for me, its a good trade off. I've been purchasing several SMC Takumar manual lenses and am finding them very good for the work I do for a reasonable price.