Canon 3-lens Camera

[milton-chris]

<p>At the Indy race in Toronto recently, I saw guy with a Canon camera with 3 lenses on it, clustered in a triangle. The identifier on the camera was Canon 3-d but that is all I could read and then got distracted then he was gone. Can anyone illuminate me on this beast?<br>

Thanks</p>

[daniel flather]

<p>Troll? Triangle cluster, really? I was the new ef 135/1.8 L USM IS.</p>

[milton-chris]

<p>no, not trolling. The lenses weren't clustered closely, like on a microscope head, probably an inch or so between each lens.</p>

[ed_v.]

<p>Panasonic just announced the development of a twin optical path lens that will capture 3D images:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.dpreview.com/news/1007/10072801panasonic3dlens.asp">http://www.dpreview.com/news/1007/10072801panasonic3dlens.asp</a></p>

<p>I don't think it too far fetched that Canon has something similar with 3 lenses. Especially if it was a professional network camera shooting 3D video for display on 3D TV's.</p>

[daniel flather]

<p>Chris, I though you were referring to a DSLR, not to a TV production camera.</p>

[milton-chris]

<p>Daniel - it was a DSLR</p>

[christer_medin1]

<p>Maybe Haber & Fink are back in business.</p>

[thomas_hardy1]

<p>How about a custom made lens turret? </p>

<h2 > </h2>

 

[peter_e]

<p>Like this?<br>

<a href="http://www.halfhill.com/shuchat6.html">http://www.halfhill.com/shuchat6.html</a></p>

[robin_sibson1]

<p>If you build a turret mechanism to fit between camera and lens(es), as with the not-quite-Leica version interestingly illustrated by Peter E, then it behaves like an extension tube, and unless in normal use your lenses can focus a long way past infinity, which most do not, then either you lose infinity focus with the device, or you have to do major surgery on camera or lenses or both. And that's before you start worrying about issues of camera-lens coupling, although these are probably much easier to overcome with the all-electric Canon EF mount that with any mechanical mount.</p>

<p>I would need what the lawyers call "further and better particulars" before believing that this was real, especially since it also represents a sighting of that mythical beast, the Canon 3D, now morphed, as Chris reports it, into the 3-d. You could have an optical unit to take stereo pairs – Panasonic have just announced that they are developing one for the micro-4/3 system, as Ed V points out – and such a unit could at the front end look like a pair of lenses (indeed, it could look like a pair of binoculars), but you would not need three lenses for that purpose.</p>

<p>Multi-lens turrets, with three or even four lenses, were commonplace on film and television cmaeras in days gone by, but that was before the development of effective zoom lenses – a more difficult optical task than for still cameras because of the need for them to be parfocal to allow zooming during shooting.</p>

[peter_e]

<p>I once had a Bolex 16 mm movie camera with a 3-lens turret. It worked really well. But keep in mind that these lenses are comparatively small relative to the size of the camera. I cannot image an EOS camera with 3 lenses attached. Maybe with a micro 4/3 camera?</p>

[milton-chris]

<p>There's not much point in this thread anymore, as I don't have a picture of the camera. It was about 2x the size of my 40D with the motordrive attached. The lenses were fairly small, smaller than a Canon 50/1.8. The 3 lenses were built right into the flat front panel of the camera, as any lens is, not protruding on a platform of some kind, and it just looked like an oversize Canon with 3 lenses, not one.</p>

<p>Thanks anyway.</p>