Canon has officially unveiled its cheapest and smallest local VR lens, the $450 RF-S7.8mm F4 STM Dual. It’s the size of a regular camera lens but designed to let creators capture 3D VR content on headsets like the Meta Quest 3 or Apple Vision Pro. In fact, it was first teased in June at WWDC 2024 alongside Apple’s latest Vision Pro OS.
There is one catch, though, in that the lens is designed for APS-C (not full-frame cameras) and only works with Canon’s 32.5-megapixel (MP) EOS R7 for now. That camera costs $1,300 for the body only, so a full shooting solution would be $1,750.
The company has used stereoscopic VR lenses before, most recently with the RF5.2mm F2.8 L Dual Fisheye. However, that product is bulky and unwieldy, costs more than $2,000 and only supports manual focus. Its main advantage is a nearly 180-degree field of view that is close to human vision and enhanced 3D thanks to a wide 2.36-inch gap between objects.
In comparison, the new 7.8mm crop sensor lens has a narrower 63-degree field of view. The fact that the two elements are very close (.46 inches) also reduces the 3D effect, especially if you are far from the subject (to get the best results, you need to be 6 to 20 inches away, which is not good for content creators). Autofocus support is a big plus, however, and comes with a button and control wheel that allows for separate manual focus on the left and right sides.
Photos and videos captured with the EOS R7 and new lenses must be processed using Canon’s EOS VR Utility app or Adobe’s Premiere Pro plugin, both paid apps. After that, they can be viewed on Meta Quest 3, Vision Pro and other headsets in various formats including 180-degree 3D VR, 3D Theater and spatial video. The RF-S7.8mm F4 STM Dual lens is now on pre-order for $449 and will arrive sometime in November.
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