Canon Eyes Nikon’s Popular Compact Telephoto Lenses With New Patents

[West Coast Birder]

Confusing article title…. Basically, Canon had filed patents for RF 400mm f/4, RF 500mm f/5.6, RF 600mm f/5.6, RF 600mm f/6.3, and RF 800mm f/6.3 lenses. These are like Nikon’s wildly popular 500/5.6, compact and affordable for most people rather than the big white lenses that cost a fortune.

This has basically been a big hole in Canon’s lens lineup which hopefully they will fill. While Canon had relatively inexpensive 600mm and 800mm lenses with small apertures, having light lenses at F/5.6 in the 500-600mm range will be huge. Of course, there’s no guarantee that a patent will turn into a real lens but one can hope!

Article here:

Canon Eyes Nikon's Popular Compact Telephoto Lenses With New Patents

Striking a balance between size, weight, cost, and performance.

petapixel.com

 

[Joeseph]

what's the bet none of them are compatible with a teleconverter.....

 

[ShipleyNW]

Canon had their legendary EF 300/4L and 400/5.6L lenses. I used the 400 a lot. It was the backbone of my reach kit. Small, light, sharp, and point-and-shoot simple. But even by EF standards, it was getting old. They never came out with a MkII version of either lens, I don't think.

I used the 400 on mirrorless bodies for a little while, but finally bit the bullet and got an RF 100-500. I got nothing bad to say about the new lens, but it is big and heavy and I have to think about it a little bit more when I use it than I did with the 400.

 

[Mr Chodes]

Not a new thread but just saw it.
Interesting. Of course Canon files many patents that never result in a product.

I'm sure that they have a very good idea how many of those Nikons are selling.
It's not just PF either.

The Nikon 400 4.5, without PF elements, is impressively light. Maybe the price reflects that achievement.
Sigma 500 f5.6 is lighter than the older Nikon 500 5.6 PF with, IMHO a very reasonable price.
Only available in L or Sony E mounts and in the case of E mount, Sony prevents TC use.
Sony also limits max fps to 15.
With regards to the Sony, AF speed and accuracy is reported to be very good.

Sony's recent 300 2.8, is very light and also seems to have set a new level of performance with TCs, both optically and regarding AF performance. Cost is about the same as an EF 300 2.8 L II was 8 or so yeara ago.

Maybe Canon is making 'just in case' patents so they can compete in this segment, regarding size at least, maybe not price.