Depth of Field numbers in the viewfinder?

[AEForber]

I hope someone at Canon can help with this.

I have an R5 and an R6 as my working cameras and a 90D as an emergency backup, and five L-Series lenses. Particulary with the 24-105 and the 70-200 f2.8 it would be really useful to have a digital display in the viewfinder saying what the depth of field is. The camera has all the data: stop, focal length, focus distance and of course the camera's CoC. Why can't it give me a number saying that the current DoF is 6 inches, or 15cm, or whatever, and update it as I change parameters? It sounds like a trivial thing to do, and much more solid than depending  on a mental guess or the DoF button. Why should I have to whip out PhotoPills when the camera can do the work? Sometimes I just want to know for certain that my subject's ears are going to be in focus once I lock onto their eyes.

Also, why can't the coloured MF focus peaking happen in AF mode? That would be almost equally helpful.

End of rant/suggestion. 🙂

Andrew Forber

[kvbarkley]

Lenses used to have this on the distance focus scale. Zooms sometimes had fancy colored lines on the barrel to show you the dof at different focal lengths. 
i would like one of the options on the lcd display on the 70-300 ii to be dof. 

[Waddizzle]

“ Lenses used to have this on the distance focus scale. Zooms sometimes had fancy colored lines on the barrel to show you the dof at different focal lengths. 
i would like one of the options on the lcd display on the 70-300 ii to be dof. “

Correct.  Nearly all the film lenses had distance scales.  Better lenses had DOF scales associated with the distance scale.

Today, you can still see a distance scale on the Canon L Series of lenses.  But the info had displayed in the viewfinder.

[johnrmoyer]

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@Waddizzle wrote:

“ Lenses used to have this on the distance focus scale. Zooms sometimes had fancy colored lines on the barrel to show you the dof at different focal lengths. 
i would like one of the options on the lcd display on the 70-300 ii to be dof. “

Correct.  Nearly all the film lenses had distance scales.  Better lenses had DOF scales associated with the distance scale.

Today, you can still see a distance scale on the Canon L Series of lenses.  But the info had displayed in the viewfinder.

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Here is a Minolta lens which was used on a Minolta film camera nearly 50 years ago. It works well on my EOS R5 with the Urth adapter.

Minolta Lens made in Japan MC ROKKOR-X PG 1:1.4 f=50mm, with Urth adapter for use on Canon, depth composite made on July 6, 2023

The Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II USM has a digital display on the lens.