Canon Cinema EOS 50-1000mm telephoto servo zoom lens announced

[Mark Watson]

Utsunomiya... I've driven past that Canon facility a few times and asked some bi-lingual Japanese friends if Canon gives tours. Nobody seems to know for sure, but doesn't think so.

BTW - I was talking "street" price.

[Jim Martin]

Originally Posted by Chris Hurd

I can almost guarantee that it isn't -- none of their other lenses have interchangeable mounts.

Chris, as you know, Canon Service will change the mounts on the existing zooms for $1200...so I suspect they'll have that available for these beauties.....

Jim Martin
EVSonline.com

[Barry Goyette]

To me the big question is why is Canon continuing to solely focus it's video zoom lens efforts on the high end and rental market. They've sold countless C100s and C300s to small producers like most of us here, people who were shooting with XL series cameras just a few short years ago. Servo zooms on these cameras were relatively cheap and ubiquitous in the market.

Sure it's harder to make a good zoom for larger sensors (actually though, canon has been doing it in the stills market for a long time relatively cheaply...so I'm not sure that's even an an argument.)..and obviously at 14 pounds this thing is a serious lens...but why have we not seen something focused on the indie, wedding, docu market...something that would sell in the tens of thousands of units...not in the hundreds.

With its $2500 full frame servo zoom coming out (on top of the "we're looking at you Canon" FS7), Sony is starting to look the "disrupter" in the market.

[Mat Thompson]

'$78,000' - Sweet jesus :/

Even the rental rates on this will rule it out for all but big budget production for at least a few years to come!

[Chris Hurd]

Look at it this way: it''s less expensive than an Angenieux 24-290mm cinema lens, and it includes a servo motor (while the Angie doesn't). It's important to consider these things in relative terms.

[Mat Thompson]

Hhhmmmm....not sure. More important to consider what the productions you work on will say when you want a lens that costs £500+ a day to hire!

I'm sure its a great lens and I'm sure I'll use it somewhere but just not very often!

[Shaun Roemich]

When you consider the primary application of television production, it seems natural to compare this lens with a broadcast zoom. Canon 2/3" zoom lenses in the 20x zoom range are priced between $30-50k.

$78k isn't so far fetched for a parfocal power zoom resolving in excess of 4k covering S35 sensor.

It isn't aimed at dSLR or C100 shooters.

[Steve Phillipps]

My thoughts exactly Shaun. I think the market has changed so much and that users today are so used to prices for gear in the hundreds or low thousands. That's why when Panasonic announced their initial Varicam 35 pricing at $60,000 there was utter disbelief (though not by me!). Even back in Digibeta days a standard or wide zoom was around $20,000 when they first came out, same for HD when they were used day in day out, an HJ22 or HJ14 was around the same price, and the cameras around $50,000 - it's what we've always paid, what we've expected.
I expect this 50-1000 will be massively popular and go out on a huge amount of wildlife shoots and with sports broadcasters - I really do think Canon will struggle to keep up with demand and it will be back-logged with orders unless they've already stock-piled a load of them before announcing it!
Steve

[Shaun Roemich]

And regarding daily rental rates, percentage of purchase price decreases with increasing initial cost in most markets of any larger size.

3 - 5% of cost for items like midlevel cameras, microphones and the like is common. Light kits may go higher than that due to consumable items and higher maintenance costs whereas I remember paying $600 a day for a Betacam D600 DigiBeta camera and lens worth around $100k (or more) back in the early 2000s. That's less than 1% of cost per day.

Lifecycle comes into play with assets that will hold their value longer than a couple of months.

[Mark Koha]

If you are going through the effort of putting a zoom rocker on it shouldn't you probably stick a thumb record trigger on there as well?

[Steve Phillipps]

It's not meant to be used on the shoulder, don't think it has a grip - the servo box is just there to contain all the servos and the connectors I think.
Steve