American Cinematographer - April 2014 - 94

New Products & Services

Canon Embraces Hi-Res Future
By Stephen Pizzello
Canon hosted a press tour in Japan last fall for a select group
of journalists from various trade publications and websites, including
American Cinematographer. The eight-day excursion included business briefings and interviews with the company's top executives at
Canon headquarters in Tokyo, a comprehensive tour of Canon's
lens-manufacturing factory in Utsonomiya, a visit to the Inter BEE
trade show, and a series of dinners where top brass could discuss the
company's future in relaxed settings.
The company also provided a spotlight demonstration of its
new DP-V3010 4K Reference Display monitor, designed to provide
"exceptional detail, color and gradation accuracy" for color-grading
and postproduction professionals as motion picture, television and
commercial production continues its transition to higher-resolution
digital video and CGI formats. Hinting at Canon's future plans to
produce more hi-res production and post tools, Yuichi Ishizuka, exec-

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April 2014

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utive vice president and general manager of Canon USA's Imaging
Technologies & Communications Group, noted, "These displays are
the result of the enthusiastic response we received to the Canon
Cinema EOS System of cameras and lenses, and we look forward to
continuing to demonstrate our commitment to these markets with
outstanding technology, quality and reliability to help creative professionals deliver and tell the stories as they envision them."
On Nov. 11, Canon executives outlined the company's history
and technical achievements in a series of briefings. In his presentation on the Cinema EOS System, Ken-Ichi Shimbori, a group executive of Canon's Image Communication Products Operations (ICPO),
identified the 2008 unveiling of Reverie, a demonstration video shot
with the EOS 5D Mark II DSLR (co-directed by Yoni Brook and cinematographer Vincent Laforet), as a key moment in the development
of EOS technology. Shimbori identified high image quality, high ISO
speed, compact design and low production cost as some of the
primary reasons Canon was encouraged to develop higher-end EOS
cameras (specifically, the C300 and C500) for professional users. In
their separate presentation on the company's lens products, Shimbori's colleagues Naoya Kaneda and Yasunori Imaoka added that
EOS users could also exploit the company's extensive arsenal of highquality lenses (87 models in all, including 73 in the EF Series and 14
in the EF Cinema Series), a competitive advantage Canon enjoys
over some of its rival camera manufacturers.
The following day, to underscore the company's in-house lens
production, Canon hosted a rare tour of its Utsunomiya facility,
which provides mass production of the company's optical instruments, as well as technical support. Canon began producing EOS
SLR cameras with interchangeable EF-mount lenses in 1987; since
then, the company has built more than 90 million EF lenses. The
growth of the company's lens production has been exponential. By
1995, 10 million EF lenses had been produced, but that number
doubled to 20 million in 2001, reached 30 million in 2006 and hit
40 million in 2008. Those numbers ramped up dramatically as digital EOS SLRs became predominant: 50 million lenses in 2009, 60
million by Jan. 2011, 70 million by Oct. 2011 and 80 million by Aug.
2012.
During the facility tour, the press visitors met the company's
"lens meisters," observed the various stages of lens manufacturing
and quality control, and received an overview of Canon's humanresources development program for students pursuing a career in
optics craftsmanship - a 9-month-long mentorship program that
has produced 3,064 skilled workers since 1959.
Although Canon executives did not announce any new EOS
cameras during the press tour, they did detail a series of new technical developments. Hiroo Edakubo, another group executive from
Canon's ICPO, reviewed some of the company's recent undertak-

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