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Alongside the brand new Canon EOS R100 mirrorless digital camera, Canon additionally introduced a brand new pancake-style prime lens for RF-mount, the RF 28mm f/2.8 STM. Whereas introduced concurrently with the APS-C R100 digital camera, the RF 28mm is a full-frame lens. Regardless of its compact type issue, the RF 28mm f/2.8 STM lens contains eight components organized throughout six teams, together with three aspherical lenses. The lens additionally has Canon’s Tremendous Spectra Coating (SSC), a multi-layered coating Canon developed to scale back ghosting and flare brought on by lens floor reflections. The Canon RF 28mm f/2.8 STM lens is simply an inch (24.7 millimeters) lengthy and weighs 4.2 ounces (120 grams). How do all these components match inside such a small lens? Gordon Laing of Digital camera Labs just lately had a uncommon alternative to go to Canon and see an engineer disassemble the brand new RF 28mm f/2.8 lens. Because the engineer takes the brand new pancake lens aside, he explains the key parts. “Should you’re occupied with how lenses work and fashionable optical design, you’ll get pleasure from this video even when you personal a special system,” Laing explains. Whereas digital camera and lens teardowns aren’t uncommon, they’re hardly ever performed in cooperation with digital camera corporations, who, as Laing factors out, are sometimes secretive and maintain their playing cards near the chest.
“All lenses begin with a design transient, setting out not simply the focal size and aperture, but additionally the goal high quality, the approximate dimension and weight, and naturally, the specified value level,” Laing explains. “For this mannequin, Canon needed to supply a compact and reasonably priced pancake lens for the EOS R mirrorless system, and 28mm was chosen as a result of it’s a versatile focal size for stills pictures and video on each full-frame and cropped APS-C programs.” As Laing observes, there are difficulties making wide-angle lenses for EOS R mirrorless cameras due to the shorter again focus distance of mirrorless cameras. If Canon tried to take the optical design of a lens like its EF 40mm f/2.8 STM lens and match it to the EOS R system with out changes, the lens could be affected by vignette and poor optical efficiency. Canon’s answer to this subject requires very uncommon lens components. Whereas Canon’s advertising and marketing supplies solely describe the RF 28mm f/2.8’s optical design as that includes a trio of aspherical lenses, because the optical diagram above demonstrates, the three aspherical components, proven in inexperienced, are extremely uncommon. The distinct wavy form of the weather permits the RF 28mm f/2.8 STM lens to copy the shorter incidence angle of the EF 40mm f/2.8 STM lens on EOS R mirrorless cameras. Probably the most distinguished aspherical aspect within the rear of the lens is simply doable because of the RF mount’s massive diameter. The plastic molding know-how Canon makes use of to form uncommon resin-based components, like these featured within the RF 28mm f/2.8 STM, are additionally included in different RF-mount lenses, such because the RF 24-105mm and RF 100-400mm, alongside many different RF and RF-S lenses.
Whereas traditionalists might scoff at using resin in photographic lenses, Canon’s lenses that make the most of plastic components ship glorious outcomes throughout the board. Plastic components have additionally been utilized in a few of Canon’s EF-mount lenses for DSLR cameras. As Laing explains, engineers and optical designers for all digital camera corporations should make the most of the most effective accessible know-how for lenses whereas sustaining the specified dimension, weight, efficiency, and value level. It isn’t doable to function all superior optical applied sciences in each lens. Nonetheless, corporations can design reasonably priced compact lenses that keep efficiency because of intelligent manufacturing strategies like Canon’s plastic molding know-how. In some circumstances, it might be prohibitively costly and difficult to fabricate glass components with comparable designs. Extra of Gordon Laing’s glorious work is out there on his YouTube channel and Digital camera Labs. Laing’s different YouTube channel, Dino Bytes, options Laing’s retro and classic movies, together with his Retro Opinions of a few of the most fascinating cameras from the Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s. Picture credit: Gordon Laing / Digital camera Labs
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