Canon Lays BATCH of ‘Big White’ Patent Designs

Northlight Images found a new Canon patent involving an entire range of big white super telephoto lenses. Included are all previously-released focal lengths ranging from 300mm to 800mm. Before wildlife and sports shooters get too excited, Canon releases a full range of big white patents each year in late January or early February, like this one from 2019 and this one from 2020.

Notably, the patent released just recently shows a set of designs with more astigmatism anticipated in the longer focal lengths than the previous design patents tolerated. The new one also has a shorter back-focus distance, indicating that more of the elements (and weight) is being pulled toward the camera body, which may involve some very small optical compromises.

The EF 600mm f/4 III released most recently was the first “big white” lens released by Canon that had slightly inferior image quality relative to its predecessor. But that new lens received very high marks for its vastly improved handling due to decreased weight and improved balance, with the image quality differences being almost entirely unnoticeable. This precedent could indicate that Canon is looking to make similar compromises in the other big white ranges.