Canon USA Introduces Three New EF Lenses

[Chris Hurd]

"Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging solutions, today announced
two new versions of its coveted Wide Angle Lenses and a new version of its
popular 24-70mm Standard Zoom Lens for professionals and photo enthusiasts.
The new EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM, EF 24mm f/2.8 IS USM and EF 28mm f/2.8
IS USM lenses use a rear focusing system, high-speed CPU, and a powerful ring-
type Ultra Sonic Motor (USM) with optimized AF algorithms for faster auto focusing
and sharp images."

Full press release here, with images:

Canon USA Introduces Three New EF Lenses at DVInfo.net

[Justin Molush]

Curious to see how the new 24-70 performs... Those IS primes don't look too useful though at those prices unfortunately.

[Dylan Couper]

Interesting... expected the 24-70L to be upgraded with IS, too bad that it wasn't. Good to see its lighter and smaller than the old one, its a bit of a brick.
Funny that Tamron just announced their 24-70 f2.8 *with* IS on the same day as Canon. I swear some of these announcement timings can't be coincidence.....

[Justin Molush]

Canon said in an interview (cant remember where unfortunately) that the main reason for not adding IS was because of weight and sheer size. If Tamron can do it though, I don't know whats stopping Canon.

Those IS primes aren't going to sell well... at those prices I would just pick up a 17-55 IS if I was shooting crop or S35.

[John Vincent]

Now if only their was a new Mark III to attach them to.

Seriously, I like Canon a lot, but can't see buying any new glass from them until they announce a new camera costing less then $7,000... It'd be one thing if you could strap EOS glass to Nikon bodies, but you can't.

Also, if anyone from Canon is reading this, the new camera should have a headphone jack. Just saying.

;)

[Andy Wilkinson]

I guess I'm not the only one who is very surprised (and disappointed) about the lack of IS on the new 24-70mm. When I saw the recent rumours I thought it can't be true - but here it is.

Seem's strange they think it's a "must have" feature (i.e. that people will pay for it) on those wide angle primes and not on the longer zoom. Heck, even the excellent Canon 17-55mm EF-S F2.8 USM that lives on my Canon 7D has image stabilisation - and that is, in some ways, a "non-professional, sub L standard" lens, in terms of build quality and weather sealing, but not in terms of image quality though. I think IS is terrific for hand-held video in eliminating those micro-jitters, even with a "naked" (no-rig) camera in your hand. The Hybrid IS on my Canon 100mm F2.8 Macro is also terrific - and that's not a big/heavy lens.

I think this is a big marketing mistake on Canon's part - amazing - but they must have their reasons. I guess those Tamrons will sell very well now.

[John Vincent]

"I guess I'm not the only one who is very surprised (and disappointed) about the lack of IS on the new 24-70mm. When I saw the recent rumours I thought it can't be true - but here it is.

Seem's strange they think it's a "must have" feature (i.e. that people will pay for it) on those wide angle primes and not on the longer zoom."

Agree totally - it's underwhelming, esp given the $2,300 price tag.

And IS on wide primes? OK I guess for still shooters, but would seem to be all but useless for video shooters. More disappointing to me is the relative slowness of them - a F/2.8 24mm for $850? Come on, you can get a Canon F/2.8 24mm prime for $360 on Amazon or B&H right now. These new wides aren't even "L" series glass.

I'd be hard pressed to say that one extra blade and VC is worth $500....

For the same $850, I'd be looking at the also newly announced Rokinon F/1.4 24 mm (of course, no autofocus or VC). I have the Roki F/1.4 35mm and it's amazing.

[Tim Polster]

Yes, I am more than surprised that the 24-70 II does not have IS. This is a huge hurdle for an upgrade for those that already have the 24-70 v1. Upgrading to the second generation lens with IS would be sort of a no brainer. Spending an extra $1,000 for some image quality improvement alone is a much tougher sell.

Mainly for still work I find IS so useful that I do not want to ever own a lens without it.

[Evan Donn]

Originally Posted by John Vincent

And IS on wide primes? OK I guess for still shooters, but would seem to be all but useless for video shooters.

Don't forget that Canon's largest market for lenses is still photographers, not videographers, probably by a pretty wide margin. I don't find it all surprising that they'd cater to that market with features on new products.

[Jon Fairhurst]

Note that wide lenses don't need stabilization for video - until they get close to something.

The need for stabilization relates more to the magnification factor of an object more than the focal length. FWIW, that's also true for depth of field. We often think of long lenses having a shallower DOF, but push a wide lens close enough to an object to get the same magnification factor and the DOF will be similar.

I remember the first time we did a super close video shot with a 21mm on full frame. We figured that it was such a wide lens that handheld would be fine. We were wrong! The shot was a shaky fail. :)

[John Vincent]

Originally Posted by Evan Donn

Don't forget that Canon's largest market for lenses is still photographers, not videographers, probably by a pretty wide margin. I don't find it all surprising that they'd cater to that market with features on new products.

I dig that, but IS won't save bad hand held footage either. It works reasonably well on extreme tele-lenses, where you're likely to get shake even when mounted to solid tripods - but with shaky, vomit-cam level hand held, not so much. For me, it's just a strange lens that seems to be fairly pricey for what it does. Perhaps it will work wonders, but it's a feature that most shooters would rather see in the new 24-70mm zoom lens, not a wide, relatively slow, prime.

The timing of the announcement is perhaps even stranger - Canon certainly knew that Nikon was going to announce the D800 today/yesterday. The announcement of these lenses (plus some powershot point & shoots) does little to dim the luster of Nikon's big day. Given the lack of any new DSLR under $7,000 (and one w/o a headphone jack to boot), one has to question the wisdom of announcing of ANY new lenses until there's a new, somewhat affordable camera to strap the new glass onto.

Perhaps if EOS glass fit on a Nikon bodies, I'd understand the announcement a bit more (sadly, it can't). As it is - and this is coming from a long time Canon user/fan - today's news was more of a, "Oh, that's nice... now let's looks for more D800 footage" moment then a "Holy moly, I have to have this!"

More options are always nice, but that's some very steep pricing for products that more or less already exist in cheaper form from the same company - announced on a day when all eyes were on their main competitor's new wundercam.

[Brian David Melnyk]

disappointed!
judging from the abundant forum wish lists of both photographers and videographers, i thought it was a foregone conclusion the new 24-70 would have IS... i guess Canon doesn't want all that money?
as both a photographer and videographer, i certainly would have bought it. i do, however, appreciate the IS on the wide lenses for both fields. i find when using my 35 f2.0 on a 5D for video that the image is less smooth than using my 70-200 2.8 with IS! maybe i drink too much coffee...
CANON: still waiting for the 16-105 f2.8 IS UMS... combined with the 5D iii with the ability to film 3x zoom, that would be quite the one-lens video rig.

[Jon Fairhurst]

A 24-105/2.8 IS would be pretty killer too. f/4 just isn't quite enough. And for non-macro primes, f/2.8 isn't quite enough.

Regarding disappointment, this is #3 for the 5D2 crowd. First, we got the 1DX announcement, which is still not available, is out of budget, and lacks clean HDMI. Next we had the game changing announcement regarding Canon's Cinema division and C300. Again, this was out of reach for the 5D2 buyer. Now we have the three lens announcement where the lens we wanted didn't have IS and two lenses that we didn't want have it.

In the meantime, Nikon announced two cameras that include clean HDMI outputs, three windowing options, and headphone jacks.

You can feel the pressure building...

[John Vincent]

"First, we got the 1DX announcement, which is still not available, is out of budget, and lacks clean HDMI. "

Don't forget no headphone jack either!

[Tim Polster]

I am hoping for some engineering magic with a result in the 1Dx having clean HDMI output by the time of release (and 5D MKIII). You know Canon knows they will lose customers to Nikon just on this one spec.