Canon Rewrites the Rules of ENG: The 2015 Arrival of the UHDgc Series 4K Portable Zooms

"It's not just about pixel count," said Larry Thorpe, then National Marketing Director for Canon's Broadcast & Communications division, at the launch press event. "A 4K camera without a 4K lens is a sports car on flat tires. The UHDgc series ensures that every photon that hits the sensor is worthy of the UHD transmission path."

The problem? The optics.

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).

August 27, 2015 (Public announcement by Canon U.S.A. and Canon Inc.)

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.

Burbank, CA / Tokyo, Japan

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.