Professional Cinema Lenses

Cinema lenses have been designed and constructed for the rigours, work-flow and quality required ‘on set’ in a cinema environment. The standard features of a cinema lens include: manual focus and aperture rings, T-stops (rather than F-stops on stills lenses), consistent gear placement, uniform dimensions, amongst others. Cinema lenses come in a variety of lens mounts (EF and PL for example) and are most commonly manual focus lenses.

Extending the range of compatible lenses while maintaining their original field of view, the Canon Mount Adapter EF-EOS R 0.71x permits attaching EF-mount lenses to RF-mount cine and mirrorless cameras. Intended for cameras featuring a Super 35 sensor size, this adapter also incorporates an optical system to increase the effective angle of view by 0.71x, reducing the effects of a full-frame to Super 35 crop factor and increasing the maximum aperture performance by one stop. Electric contacts are also incorporated into the adapter's design and maintain full communication between the camera and lens, as well as support metadata transmission and use of Dual Pixel AF with select Canon EF lenses. Also, the adapter has been specifically designed for the EOS C70 cinema camera and features four screws and a split locking collar to ensure a secure attachment.

The majority of Canon’s Cinema Lenses are manual focus lenses. Canon’s cinema lenses with autofocus functionality are: CN8 x 15 IAS S/E1 & CN8 x 15 IAS S/P1 CN10 x 25 CINE-SERVO CN-E 18-80mm T4.4 L IS KAS S CN-E 70-200mm T4.4 L IS KAS S CN7 X 17 KAS S

Selecting the right lens for a job can be overwhelming with all of the options. It is often a choice cinematographers take a lot of care with. To help guide you we recommend asking a few key questions before making a choice… 1. Am I on location shooting a wide variety of shots quickly? If so, consider a zoom lens such as the CN-E 20-50mm and CN-E45-135mm Flex Zoom . 2. Am I on set in a studio or an indoor location prioritising image quality? Consider a set of cinema primes that offer a beautiful look and shallow depth of field such as the CN-R Cinema Prime Lenses. 3. What is my subject, what shots do I need to get? Will you require portrait style focal lengths such as 85mm or 135mm or wide focal lengths such as 14mm or 20mm. Canon’s wide range of cinema lenses has you covered.

Cinema lenses will typically have manual focus and aperture rings (with markings and gears), T-stops rather than F-stops, minimal focus breathing, consistence housings so they can easily be swapped on set. Canon cinema lenses also feature a 11-blade iris for beautiful bokeh.

Yes, you can but they won’t be ideal. While a cinema lens will still give you a beautiful cinematic look, they will typically be bigger, heavier and often manual focus only. On the other hand, Canon stills lenses offer exceptional quality images and they also prioritise fast autofocus.