For nearly two decades, broadcast television lived in the 1080i era. But by mid-2015, the industry was at a tipping point. 4K Ultra HD was no longer a futuristic concept for nature documentaries; major broadcasters and live production houses were demanding a pipeline to future-proof their electronic news gathering (ENG) and field production workflows.
If you see an ENG camera at a football game or a news crew on a street corner shooting in 4K today, the lineage of the glass on the front almost certainly traces back to the Canon UHDgc announcement of late summer 2015.
August 27, 2015 (Public announcement by Canon U.S.A. and Canon Inc.) For nearly two decades, broadcast television lived in
While 4K studio box lenses had begun to emerge, the workhorse of mobile production—the 2/3-inch portable zoom lens—lagged behind. Existing HD lenses, even high-end ones, revealed chromatic aberration, softness at the edges, and resolution falloff when paired with the new generation of 4K broadcast cameras hitting the market (such as the Sony PXW-FS7 and the soon-to-be-released Grass Valley LDX 4K series).
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The problem? The optics.
Enter Canon.
On August 27, 2015, Canon officially unveiled the (Ultra-High Definition, G (premium) Class), a completely new family of 2/3-inch portable zoom lenses engineered specifically for 4K UHD broadcast cameras. The launch was not a quiet spec-sheet update; it was a declaration that the age of broadcast 4K had officially arrived.