Hi, Carl here for ProAV, and today Canon have been kind enough to give me some hands on
time with their new 18-80mm video lens.
This lens is in high demand at the moment so I’ve only got it for one morning.
I’d love to go out and film with it but I just dont have time unfortunately.
But I am going to do some tests here in the showroom.
Have a look at the sharpness, breathing, the technical things like that.
But before we get to that lets have a closer look at the body of the lens itself.
Its a very nicely built lens which feels great in your hands.
One of my favourite things about it, which might be a bit strange to have as a favourite,
is that the lens is actually quite thin, like a canon stills lens is.
Most Cinema lenses and the competitors to this lens like sony’s offerings have a tapered
design with a large front element and a thiner end by the lens mount.
This thinner design means that manual focusing with it as a solo operator is just more comfortable
in my opinion.
Although it has gears on the focus ring, it does seem like a lens thats designed to be
used without a follow focus, either manually focusing by hand or using the fantastic autofocus
on canons cameras.
It is very comfortable to manually focus with and just sits right in my hands.
Although its not perfect unfortunately.
It doesn't have hard stops on the focus ring which I am a little disappointed with, Its
certainly not a deal breaker though, I imagine its a technical compromise on canons part
between a lens which focuses well manually and having fast accurate auto focus.
As I said before its not a lens designed to use with a follow focus and this just enforces
that further.
The autofocus is extremely quick on this lens though so it would be a great pairing for
one of canons autofocus cameras.
Although it weighs more than canons stills lenses it definitely is lighter than the cinema
lenses, particularly the zooms like the CN7 which can weigh a fair bit.
The grip on the side here is an optional and removable servo controller.
It gives you a nice zoom rocker, a one shot AF button and a record button which is nice.
As its detachable you can mount it on your tripod handle or shoulder rig if you want
to which is nice.
Without the handle you get some buttons on the side to control the servo zoom, plus a
dial at the bottom to change the zoom speed.
If you interested in using the servo zoom though the handle with the rocker is definitely
worth it as its much nicer to use.
However if your not that bothered about it, its great you can take it off and make your
lens smaller.
Although weight isn't really an issue as the handle itself weighs surprisingly little.
I didn't notice any breathing at all in my tests.
And the lens is also par focal so you can do the age old, zoom in to check focus trick.
Plus you can zoom in the middle of an interview for example and know that your focus wont
change.
You get optical stabilisation and 3 different modes to help fine tune the type of stabilisation
being used.
Overall I think this is going to be a very popular lens for owners of the c300, fs5,
fs7 or varicam lt.
Owner operators looking for an all purpose lens designed for video are going to love
this lens.
Its available to preorder on our site with the link below and should be released later
this month.
So what do you think of the lens?
Can you see yourself using it in your work?
Let me know in the comments below.
Make sure to like the video and subscribe to the channel as it really helps us out.
Thanks for watching and i’ll see you in the next video.