Canon’s budget-friendly 3D lens will be available in November

Canon has officially announced its caller RF-S7.8mm F4 STM Dual lens, which features stereoscopic elements that person been squeezed into a assemblage nary larger than a accepted 2D camera lens. It was originally teased during the Apple WWDC 2024 keynote past June and is designed to enactment with a Canon EOS R7 arsenic a much affordable instrumentality for creators making 3D VR contented for headsets similar the Meta Quest 3 oregon spatial videos for the Apple Vision Pro.

The institution hasn’t acceptable a circumstantial day for erstwhile the caller 3D lens volition beryllium available, but it says it volition beryllium sometime successful November 2024, with an “estimated retail price” of $449.99. That’s considerably cheaper than Canon’s existing dual-fisheye lenses designed to seizure 3D video content, including the $1,999 RF5.2mm F2.8 L Dual and the $1,099 RF-S3.9mm F3.5 STM Dual.

Pairing Canon’s caller 3D lens with the company’s 32.5MP EOS R7 integer camera — which itself starts astatine $1,299 — pushes the full terms tag of the kit to implicit $1,700. However, that’s inactive cheaper than Canon’s higher-end 3D solutions, which commencement astatine $2,498 (and tin spell arsenic precocious arsenic $6,298) erstwhile paired with their requisite camera gear.

Canon’s caller 3D lens has an aperture scope of f/4.0 to f/16, supports autofocus, and features a fastener and a power instrumentality for making abstracted manual absorption adjustments to the near and close sides. What makes it truthful overmuch cheaper than Canon’s existing 3D lenses is its constricted tract of view. Canon’s pricier lenses are susceptible of capturing 180-degree video and images — adjacent to what the quality oculus is susceptible of seeing — portion the caller RF-S7.8mm F4 STM Dual lens lone takes successful astir a 3rd of that astatine 63 degrees.

Using a modular Canon RF mount, the caller lens has stereoscopic elements aligned successful a consecutive optical path, resulting successful its beforehand lenses being positioned conscionable 11.8mm isolated compared to the 60mm spread betwixt the dual-fisheye lenses connected Canon’s existing 3D lenses. As a result, Canon says the strongest 3D effect volition beryllium experienced erstwhile capturing subjects oregon objects that are conscionable 6 to 20 inches from the lens. When utilizing it to seizure thing that’s farther away, the 3D effect volition beryllium little pronounced.

Images and videos captured utilizing this lens request to beryllium processed earlier they tin beryllium viewed utilizing VR oregon AR headsets, either done the EOS VR plugin that’s disposable for Adobe Premiere Pro, oregon Canon’s ain EOS VR Utility software, disposable for Macs and PCs. Both tools necessitate a paid subscription but tin make 180-degree 3D, VR, oregon spatial video content.