Fisheye lenses are known for being both heavily distorted and literally heavy, but a recent patent application suggests that Canon is brainstorming ways to make a better fisheye. The patent details a process of “adding another optical system” to another in order to reduce distortion in a fisheye lens, without increasing the size of the lens system as a whole.
The patent, JP2025-12993, which was published in Japan on January 24, demonstrates the concept of taking one optical system and adding a secondary optical system that can be inserted and removed as needed. When inserted, the patent says, distortion is reduced by as much as 10% than when the second optical system isn’t used.
But if distortion is reduced with the second set of optics, why even make it removable at all? Here’s where it starts to get interesting. While the patent lists a number of examples of different lenses, one of the examples suggests that the lens would be a fisheye without the second set of optics and a normal ultra-wide lens without the characteristic fisheye distortion with the added set. Essentially, you could have both a fisheye and an ultra-wide without buying – or carrying – two separate lenses.
The patent doesn’t use the word modular, but adding one system to another sounds exactly like what a modular lens is. But another way of looking at it is like a teleconverter. The latter may make more sense, as the examples in the patent show an increased focal length when the second system is added.
While the patent illustrates that Canon is at least brainstorming such an idea, it’s unclear how the design would actually be executed. Would the lens work like Samyang’s modular lens, the Remaster Slim? Or would the design feel more like adding a teleconverter to a lens? Having a second set of optics would also make the lens harder to seal against dust and rain, so such a design wouldn’t be without its potential downsides.
While Canon’s patents hint at what the company is considering behind the scenes, many of the patents are ideas that never become an actual consumer product. Last year Canon filed 2,329 patents in the US alone, so the company’s patent filings number far higher than the number of products launched in one year. The modular fisheye or teleconverter fisheye may never make it beyond the patent application – but of course, some of those patents eventually become actual products.
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The lens in the patent doesn't exist (yet), so you may want to browse the best Canon wide angle lenses or the best fisheye lenses.
