New Canon Cine Servo Zoom CN7X17 KAS S announced

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Canon has announced CN7X17 KAS S - a new cine servo zoom for Super 35mm sensor size cameras.

The world of TV production had always depended on a small 2/3 rd sensor size. With the popularity of Canon C300 with its broadcast ready codec, as well as C500 with 4K resolution and the C100 at the entry level of the cinema camera series being popular, Canon has specially created a servo zoom for this segment.

With a best-in-class focal length of 17-120mm, the lens is tailor-made for camera operators in traditional broadcast environments, whilst retaining the benefits of Canon’s renowned cine lenses for movie productions where a more fluid shooting style is required.

This new cine-servo zoom lens has been designed to impart a distinctive "cinematic look" to the videos created with this super 35 mm sensor cameras while providing the traditional functionalities of pulling focus as well as iris changes in fast paced situations.

This lens will come in EF mount (CN7x17 KAS S /E1) as well as PL-mount (CN7x17 KAS S /P1).

This lens is designed to provide 4K quality. The 7x zoom range of 17-120mm gives the shooter ability to immediately pull from a wide 17mm to a medium 120mm focal length.

The maximum T- number is T2.95 so that one can shoot in low light.

There are modes for high speed as well as low speed zooms to choose from depending upon the situation and the effect needed. So during run-n-gun situations one can quickly shift from one end of the zoom to the other by engaging the high speed zoom. On other times one can use the low speed zoom to slowly either zoom in or zoom out imparting that nice cinematic feel which we so often struggle to get in manual zoom lenses.

The servo drive unit is compatible with industry standard protocols for control from a number of lens controllers including Canon's standard broadcast lens controllers (ZSD-300D/FPD-400D) and multiple industry standard cinema lens controllers.

One good thing is the drive can be removed if needed and used in cinema style configurations. The lens has the focus markings in the barrel as well as gearing for focus pulls. It also enables 16-bit metadata output so that there can be connection to virtual studio systems.

As is expected this is meant for high end professional application and the price is $31,500 USD. Love to have this in the kit.