Imaging Resource interview digest: Laurence J. Thorpe, Canon

Canon's Cinema EOS C300 and C300 PL digital cinema cameras take the EOS camera series in an entirely new direction. We had the opportunity to interview Larry Thorpe, to get the inside story on these interesting cameras, and how they fit into the company's future plans.

While attending tonight's launch event for the new cameras--held on the glamorous Hollywood movie lot of Paramount Pictures--IR Senior Editor Shawn Barnett filed an exclusive interview with Laurence J. Thorpe, Canon's Senior Director Professional Engineering and Solutions, Imaging Technologies and Communications Group. We're still working on finalizing transcription of the full interview with Mr. Thorpe, but in the meantime, here are a few key points:

• Mr. Thorpe sees little impact from the new camera on 5D Mark II sales: This new camera will be the "A" camera on a shoot, while the 5D Mark IIs will continue to fill in as "B" and "C" cameras.

• The new PL and EF cine lenses were developed on an entirely new optical platform, derived from Canon's work on lenses for 8K motion picture recording. While the new cameras are basically 2K resolution, the lenses themselves are designed for 4K-level resolution, and will thus produce crisper images even when used on 2K platforms.

• The new sensor is actually a 4K device, but is outputting a 2K signal. This has some dramatic benefits in terms of reducing artifacts and aliasing normally caused by the de-mosaicing process. (We'll have some more specific technical details on this; they're pretty fascinating.)

• We can expect to see more cine lenses coming from Canon over the next year and a half or so, including some less expensive models.

• Canon will be developing these lenses on both EF and PL mounts simultaneously.

There's a lot more in the full text of the interview, which we hope to have posted sometime in the next few days. Stay tuned for many interesting tidbits, as well as a possible clue regarding Canon's future still-camera plans. ;-)