Canon Cine Primes vs L-Primes

[Mark K.]

Funny that they removed the most advanced technology from the primes -the USM and are charging triple the price.
Of course the economies of scale are a big factor here but the fact that they even tried says a lot about our industry perception of "PRO" gear....

When the C300 came out and the new lenses were announced I read in a couple of interviews (somewhere on the internet) that Canon approached something like 100+ ASC members and asked them what features the wanted in cine-lenses (and cameras), and every single one of them said they just want good fully-manual lenses.

That's not staying intentionally archaic, it's delivering what your target market is asking for.

[Steve Phillipps]

Cine-Lenses with AF would have been interesting, because we already have a (much better) camera that supports it. :)

RED doing AF on still lenses for a while and Canon not being able to support it on their pro-cameras, says lot.

I would guess, I'm pretty sure, that including AF in these lenses would have compromised their manual focussing abilities - you would need different mechanisms presumably - this is evidenced with simple MF stills lenses vs their AF counterparts, the focussing in the MF lenses is much nicer, and it's better again on the cine lenses.
As for the price, yes economies of scale, but they're definitely also charging what they know they can just about get away with - simple business I suppose but still not pretty!
Steve

[Mitch Gross]

The Canon Cine primes and zooms have 330 degrees of rotation in their rings. They are made for the design of standard professional cine use. If you want stills style glass, the L-series are an excellent option.

The Cine lenses are all a "ground-up" design. I have tested some prototypes of the primes and both the prototypes and production versions of the zooms. I won't comment on protos as that's unfair good or bad (that's why they are protos!), but I will say that the zooms are some of the finest optics I have ever seen in 35PL. Top notch stuff, and miles beyond a "re-purposed stills design."