Hal Formula: What Camera Does Daisuke Mitsuoka Use?

This weekend, as usual, I found myself reading thru all of Shonen Jump. And yet again, there is another manga with photobased cameras in it, so I just had to find out which one they used.

So this is a manga about racecars that go very fast. And it's a good enough first chapter¹ (yay he wins wahoo) but I am more interested in the side character that appears for 2 pages taking photos of the race, because he has a cool camera!!

Panel 1

← Back

Panel 2

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My goal for today is to find out exactly what gear he's using.

The Lens

From these photos, we observe the lens MUST have the following traits:

1. Is Very Long
2. Has the little thing that sticks out on the bottom for mounting
3. Outermost cone flares out a bit
4. Comes in a white-colored variant

(4) is obvious, and turns out the rest map cleanly to filters too:

1. We're looking for a "Telephoto"- or "SuperTelephoto"-class lens
2. We're looking for a lens with a "foot mount"
3. We're looking for a "Prime" lens; all "Zoom" lenses tend to be perfect cylinders to make the zoom optics easier

Browsing online stores like B&H Photo that sell All Lenses, we come across two likely candiates: the Canon RF 600mm F4 L IS USM² & the Sony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS Lens³:

	Front View	Side View
Canon	← Back	← Back
Sony	← Back	← Back

Given what we can observe, I claim the Canon lines up better:

1. The front is more uniformly conical.
2. Hard to see, but the side knob is behind the button group instead of in front.

Also, we should probably be sure this is actually the 600mm Canon; there are various other telephoto Canon lenses of varying sizes that it could be right? Well, let's take a look at the other 3:

	Short Cone	Long Cone
Short Mount	← Back 400mm	← Back 600mm
Long Mount	← Back 800mm	← Back 1200mm

Looking at all these, it seems the 400mm actually fits the observed button layout in the second panel the best: the "long mount" lenses (with those built-in zoom doublers) are much too long when compared to the second manga panel, and the 600mm also has an extra ring, so only the 400mm is short enough to include all the buttons that are shown. I guess the perspective in the first shot is fake, or there is some other non-straight hood I don't know about?

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Anyways all's well that ends well, the Canon RF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM is a near-exact match for what's shown in the manga.

...

"But wait!!!" I hear you yell, "Haven't you forgotten about the Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS III USM lens, which looks almost identical?" And yes, I have considered that, but in order to explain why, we'll need to look at the camera body too.

The Body

Given we almost certainly have a Canon lens, we're also very likely to have a Canon camera body. Compared to previous camera searches, this one is a lot easier because of one key feature on the camera: it is tall, much taller than an ordinary Canon camera, meaning it is top-of-line professional-grade stuff. (As expected of a press sports photographer lol.)

Of the available Canon bodies that exist, the following are potential matches:

	EOS R1	EOS R3	EOS-1D X Mark III
Front Profile	← Back	← Back	← Back
Side Profile	← Back	← Back	← Back

And of these, the EOS R1 side profile visually fits best, especially the dimensions of the viewfinder. This choice makes sense in-context too, because at the time of writing, the EOS R1 is the "best" Canon camera money can buy, for photography at least⁴.

So, because the camera is a Canon EOS R1, which is a mirrorless camera, we can be very confident he is using a mirrorless lens for it too, closing our earlier argument.

Bonus: The Camera On His Hip

You can hardly even see it, but in the first image Daisuke also has a camera strapped around his body lying on his hip. You can't make out much except the top panel, but I claim that's enough for us!!

The reasoning is, we can make out the following features:

1. Information display is rectangular
2. Dial is on the right (when looking at the lens)
3. (Assumption) It's another Canon, based on boot shape + being in the Canon ecosystem

Just these two features alone are enough to rule out all of Canon's mirrorless offerings. Those all have more square-ish information screens, and all the high-end ones have the dial on the left, taking the EOS R5 as an example:

← Back

Instead, I think this is a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, the last & best DSLR Canon made, whose top does match pretty well:

← Back

I think it's that one instead of another one because, given the rest of his gear, no way a press photography would settle for anything other than the best.

Double Bonus: Conspiracy Theory

Either Canon has a massive mindshare among the Japanese people (unlikely, I've seen plenty of Nikon & Sony at press conferences n such), or there is some sort of agreement with Canon that allows them to use their cameras in manga...