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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Why (formerly not) Canon EOS lenses?

Evin Grant

Evin Grant

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(The Birger EF lens mount has now changed this.)
I have had countless Canon EOS system owners posting here and asking if there will be an EOS mount for the Red One. The answer is no for the forseeable future. This is not because the Red team are Nikon super fanboys, (although I am) in fact Jim is an avid Canon 1DsMII shooter and would like nothing more than to mount his 1200mm L lens to Spike. Unfortunately the all electronic nature of Canon's EOS mount means that no aperture/iris control can be achieved without their proprietary data connection. It is just too impractical for the Red team to both reverse engineer the conection and get the proper licencing from Canon to include a fully functional EOS mount. That being said there are some third party companies working on this problem. And we may yet see a viable fully electronic control system for EOS, Nikon G and Olympus 4/3 lenses.

Hope this helps clear some confusion.:confused:
E.
 
Sigma has some lenses that look promising on the surface. Very wide angle primes, like 14mm and 18mm, with apertures nice and wide, 2.8 or even 1.8. Does anyone have any experience with them on a DSLR?

I own a 17-35mm sigma and i have to say im not impressed...not very sharp images, and some funky distortion at the edges at 17mm.

I'd like to hear what other people have to say.
 
In my experience, Sigma lenses tend to be soft. But I don't have any experience with their wide angle lenses. Only a couple longer zooms and their 50mm prime. Their 50mm prime is OK, but the Nikkor ones are way better and don't cost much more.
 
I love Canon. Have you guys talked to them? It sounds like an opportunity, even if a small one, for them to sell more high-end lenses and gain a little footing in the HD cinema market with the baddest new camera around.
 
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They would never allow another company to use their intellectual property without licencing it. As impressive as 1500 Red reservations is it's nowhere near the tens of thousands of lenses Sigma, Tamron and Tokina sell to justify paying a few bucks of every lens back to Canon. I doubt Jim would give a % or every Red one to Canon just to have an EOS mount available.
BTW the patents on Nikons mount are long gone, thus Zeiss can make MF ZF primes without paying a dime.
 
The Guys at Birger Engineering are looking into this. They have an intelligent adapter which allows control of EF mount lenses, but it currently requires a computer to be connected to it for communication with the lens. http://www.birger.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=ef232_home

There has been an amount of discussion about repurposing this technology to make a RedOne mount for EF lenses which would have a separate hardware controller, could be wired or wireless. This would allow for focus as well as iris control and it could be configured to act as a very effective follow focus. The mechanical action of the focus ring on the lens could be remapped to allow for much more effective manual control than could be executed with the focus ring. Parts of the focus range could be expanded, preset focus points could be assigned to buttons... lots of potentiol.

This is all exciting stuff, but still vapourware at the moment, however Birger have suggested that there may be an announcement coming up to NAB. I have attached a quote from a post by Erik at Birger which comes from the "Spike Black... First Prototype photos" sticky on the Red One forum.

Martin


birgerEngineer said:
So the story goes... Foveon (the manufacturer of the sensor in the Sigma SLR camera) sold its development kit with a Canon EF lens mount on it. They supplied a cheap film camera body with that kit for setting the iris on the lens. The instructions were to mount the lens, take a bulb exposure with aperture setting that you want, and remove the battery from the camera to keep the iris at that setting.

The other way that I have been told works is to use a camera with an aperture preview button, and while pushing down that preview button quickly remove the lens, and pray that iris doesn't reset. Repeat procedure until successful.

My company, Birger Engineering, does sell such a device for Canon EF lenses. We have Sigma SA, FourThirds, and Nikon F (D or G for iris, AF-S for focus) devices in the works. We are talking to a number of people in the community to understand how to best purpose the device for this market, particularly the RED camera.

The current configuration is as a replaceable lens mount, where an external device, such as a PDA, or computer can act as the source/sink of the data. Many of our industrial customers have integrated this in such a way that the sensor is involved in the control loop, and the camera is the source/sink for the data.

We have set an internal deadline of NAB2007 for an announcement, but just as soon as we have a concrete plan we will let everyone know.

Our controller is already used by at least one customer on a P+S Technik Pro35. But given the high cost of this device, it is primarily available through rental houses, and it has not proven to be a big market. The RedRock on the other hand is targetted at such a cost conscious user that we have yet to see anything more than fleeting interest.

RED changes things in a big way, or so we think. Particularly interesting is the way it will enable owner/operators, and our belief that owner operators are going to want to own affordable lenses as well. With a "smart" lens mount we can provide the data that would be needed in post to remove artifacts of lens breathing, for example. And with the short focus throw of these lenses, using the internal motors, rather than an external gear and knob, should provide a very good quality of result for focus pulling.

It is not so much an if, as it is a how / what / when, question right now.


Regards,
Erik.
Click to expand...
 
There are literally hundreds of user reviews of Sigma (and Canon) lenses on DSLR forums. As with all such reviews, some are useful and neutral, others are the opposite.

The bottom line with Sigma lenses (at least the EX line) seems to be that good copies can be as good as their Canon L series counterparts, but they have serious QC issues on some of their lines.

The only Sigma lens I currently own and use is the 120-300mm f2.8, which is a little soft wide open but sharp when stopped down half a stop. I would love to use this lens on Red, but mine's EOS-fit...
 
Evin Grant said:
They would never allow another company to use their intellectual property without licencing it. As impressive as 1500 Red reservations is it's nowhere near the tens of thousands of lenses Sigma, Tamron and Tokina sell to justify paying a few bucks of every lens back to Canon.
Click to expand...

An interesting point. Canon haven't licensed their EF mount technology. All the 3rd party companies which produce EF mount lenses have reverse engineered the interface.

Martin
 
Would Canon ever consider designing lenses specifically for the RED ONE? A non EOS lens for the RED ONE? Just a thought.
 
I very much doubt they would consider the market big enough in the short term, but long term... who knows. One of the aspects about RedOne and the SI camera I find interesting is that their price point makes it possible that they may define a new market.

M
 
Patents suck... talk about a loss of freedom and a hindrance to mankind's progress...

But anyway, Canon has a U.S. utility patent on their EF mount, and I could easily be wrong but it looks like it's patent #4841327.

Filed on January 11, 1988, so it should be legal for anyone to reproduce the mount as of January 12, 2008. But I'm not a lawyer and I could be wrong about that, so talk to a lawyer before you tool up to make a bunch of EF mounts.
 
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