Rumor: Herd of Unicorn Lenses Coming To Trample Precedent

CanonRumors.com has been sitting on a “roadmap” of a list of lenses purportedly to come out or be announced in 2021. It’s a doozy of a list, so complete that even forum dwellers had some difficulty complaining about items left off. But to believe this is an official plan would be to believe that Canon plans to triple the frequency with which it announces lenses at a time it’s having difficulty getting its already-fulsome full frame mirrorless lineup manufactured.

The list includes:

• RF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM
• RF 50mm f/1.8 STM
• TS-R 14mm f/4L
• TS-R 24mm f/3.5L
• RF 10-24mm f/4L USM
• RF 14-35mm f/4L IS USM
• RF 24mm f/1.8 IS STM Macro
• RF 35mm f/1.2L USM
• RF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM
• RF 135mm f/1.4L USM
• RF 100-400mm f/5.6-7.1 IS USM
• RF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM
• RF 500mm f/4L IS USM
• RF 600mm f/4L IS USM
• RF 800mm f/5.6L IS USM
• RF 1200mm f/8L IS USM

Especially notable among the above are the 1200mm f/8 and the TS-R 14 tilt-shift lens. The 1200mm offering would imply that it would have superior image quality than a new the newly-designed 800mm with a 1/4x teleconverter, which – if true – would change things up on the wildlife side of things. The tilt-shift lenses are rumored to be autofocus lenses – a first – and may even include elements of patents seen in recent years, such as servo-controlled tilting and shifting motors.

Stepping back, the release these lenses and the R5, even without the theoretical release of an R1, would effectively move Canon forward in the continuum of camera and lens development the better part of a decade in only a couple years. Yes, a non-fanboy might say that they could have used a few years of catching up. But if producing the 8th lens on this list requires the creation of an entirely new production line, it seems optimistic Canon would do so versus letting only a few lumps at a time make their way down the guts of the existing manufacturing snake.