Opinion: Canon’s mounting woes

[David - Sydney]

and funny enough.. why I left apple years ago and won't go back.. but yep, it does work for them. In my case I didn't have an investment so I walked away.. same with the adobe ecosystem. Some things are harder than others, but not impossible.

Staying with Adobe/subscription was a no-brainer for me to include PS and LR for less than the cost of upgrading LR every 2 years.
Staying with Apple was also a non-brainer when we had 5 phones, iPods, iPads, MacBooks etc as I did not want to be a system admin for my home's IT (wifi router aside) with apple store advice for any issues. Using my previous MBP for 7 years seems inconceivable compared to Windows PCs now and only had an external power supply die over that period. Total cost of ownership is important to me.

DJI forcing Android users to side load an app just to register their Osmo Action which is mandatory before it works is a serious problem that cannot happen with Apple.

There are cheaper solutions to Adobe/Apple but certainly limitations as well. YMMV

 

[Richard CN]

To suggest that Canon is not changing strategy with the changing market conditions but that Sony and Nikon are is misleading. Clearly Canon has removed the EF-M line, discontinued most of the EF lenses and gone all in for R mount over a 5 year period.
After Magic Lantern showed what could actually be done on the 5Diii, the release of the R5 was quite revolutionary and similar to the 5Dii in that sense. Its capabilities redefined what a hybrid camera could do and surprised (annoyed) many.

To say that the industry is changing but not Canon because it hasn't allowed open access (or very limited licensed access) to 3rd party RF lenses is not looking at the bigger picture.

Apple is the market leader for phones in profit not volume. They aren't bleeding edge in many ways but they work together within their walled eco-system. Users accept that limitation for the benefits of compatibility and it has been a good strategy for them.

Canon has for the last 50 years been THE technology leader when it comes to cameras. It doesn't surprise me the smallest, that Canon managed to catch up to Sony et all in terms of sensor design / fab / AF / IBIS. While it surprised me that they skipped a generation between front side illuminated sensors and stacked sensors, it certainly didn't surprise me that Canon would do a stacked sensor eventually. Canon is now doing 90nm / 60nm fab, something if you talked to people would have been seen as nearly impossible 5 years ago.

From a technology perspective - of course, Canon has changed with the industry as well, and many times led the industry but this is, i suspect, a more cultural issue with Canon than a technology one.

And this is one area I would wish that Canon was a leader, not a follower.

Even if you assume that Canon is doing the right thing with respect to mount licensing (and I did list some valid points in favor of licensing) there's a lot that Canon is keeping pretty close to its chest and by the lack of people that want to talk about it in the third party arena, they are probably tucked behind NDA's as well.

As I mentioned, this was an area (third party) that Canon was unmatched in the EF space.

I was having yet another morning coffee (it's 11am!) and thinking about this a bit more. There's been a lot of "well if you don't like what Canon is doing .. then move". That's always the case, but how many would move right out of the industry altogether? the market leader does have an impact on the overall health of the market. Some food for thought.

 

[EricN]

fair, maybe I missed something reading the chat.

I don't mind having a chat here.. it was even in the article title .. OPINION... and yes it's ok to have one, with the various spectrums.

I have the OPINION that it's not productive to complain HERE. If you read the article, you would have noticed a RUMOR about Canon opening the mount to 3rd parties. It makes more sense to discuss which lenses we are interested in and why and what we feel the likely hood of it happening.

 

[snappy604]

I have the OPINION that it's not productive to complain HERE. If you read the article, you would have noticed a RUMOR about Canon opening the mount to 3rd parties. It makes more sense to discuss which lenses we are interested in and why and what we feel the likely hood of it happening.

enjoy that opinion.. I'll continue with mine

 

[Richard CN]

I have the OPINION that it's not productive to complain HERE. If you read the article, you would have noticed a RUMOR about Canon opening the mount to 3rd parties. It makes more sense to discuss which lenses we are interested in and why and what we feel the likely hood of it happening.

yes, but Craig wanted me to write these kinds of articles and my opinions so I listened to my boss

Personally - for APS-C the Sigma 18-50mm F2.8, 16 1.4, and 56mm, also the viltrox aps-c primes (16,23)

Full frame Sigma 17mm F4.0, Tamron 17-50, 28-75, 70-180mm - if I didn't loathe Sony so much, these lenses would have made me switch.

I also have another personal proviso. I shoot alot of infrared - so having just one manufacturer blows, because if that manufacturer's lenses don't play nice with IR, than you simply don't have another option. But that's a far out there edge case.

 

[David - Sydney]

From a technology perspective - of course, Canon has changed with the industry as well, and many times led the industry but this is, i suspect, a more cultural issue with Canon than a technology one.

Maybe culture, maybe hard nosed business... I guess we won't know for sure. An overall decline by Canon in favour of Sony/Nikon doesn't necessarily help the industry but would sharpen Canon's offerings. Nikon's Z9/8 are a very assertive move from them from a technology and pricing perspective and will hopefully improve their financial situation as well.

And this is one area I would wish that Canon was a leader, not a follower.

Leader or follower, we still like their stuff I plan on keeping it for a long time so if they keep their support/service at the same level then I am a happy camper.

Remember that Sony had no option but to open their mount to 3rd parties. Canon has a choice and we see the current situation but it isn't dire for either customers or Canon. A lot of column inches but anything could happen in the next 6 months... Canon could announce all our dream RF lenses or allow Sigma etc RF lens licensing and all this would go away....

 

[David - Sydney]

yes, but Craig wanted me to write these kinds of articles and my opinions so I listened to my boss

Does it seem to be a bit of clickbait though?? 9 pages so far

 

[Richard CN]

Does it seem to be a bit of clickbait though?? 9 pages so far

Technically almost every article on the internet is clickbait

To be fair Canon does do a lot of things right. I just fired off an article to Craig that was complaining about the lack of Sony upgrading their firmware with new features, when Canon and Nikon are doing that every other month it seems.

Wasn't too long ago that you could count on one hand how many rich feature set expansion firmware updates Canon did.

 

[HMC11]

In danger of reviving something that has already been discussed ad nauseum, does anyone know how the current development pathway for the RF compares to that of the EF mount before the latter becomes the success that it was/is? For instance, how was the growth rate of third-party lenses for EF compared to RF? Are we just getting less patient (within the social media world) with developments and so feel that things are not moving? Thus far, I am pretty happy with the range of RF lenses plus the full range of EF lenses that can be adapted to the RF mount, adopting a strategy of going for the cheaper EF for less frequently used focal lengths and the RF for the frequently used ones.

 

[Richard CN]

In danger of reviving something that has already been discussed ad nauseum, does anyone know how the current development pathway for the RF compares to that of the EF mount before the latter becomes the success that it was/is? For instance, how was the growth rate of third-party lenses for EF compared to RF? Are we just getting less patient (within the social media world) with developments and so feel that things are not moving? Thus far, I am pretty happy with the range of RF lenses plus the full range of EF lenses that can be adapted to the RF mount, adopting a strategy of going for the cheaper EF for less frequently used focal lengths and the RF for the frequently used ones.

I know that Sigma was before 1992, but not quite sure when. hard to find information back that far. the reason it was pre-1992 was in 1992 the SA mount came out for Sigma, and that used EF protocol. (shows you how much Canon cared about that... )

But everything was different back then. Minolta was first out the gate with AF, but we were still talking the mid 80's .. EF mount was later in the decade.

So really no one had the ability to do AF lenses easily at the time.

 

[AlanF]

I know that Sigma was before 1992, but not quite sure when. hard to find information back that far. the reason it was pre-1992 was in 1992 the SA mount came out for Sigma, and that used EF protocol. (shows you how much Canon cared about that... )

Did Canon provide the protocol to Sigma? It's perfectly legal to reverse engineer such protocols and write you own protocol that does the same thing, and there is nothing Canon do to prevent that happening using patent law unless the 3rd party illegally got hold of Canon's own protocols.

 

[Walrus]

No one in this thread can explain why Canon's decisions are good for us, the photographers. All they are doing is explaining why they believe it makes sense for Canon. Why should any of us care about what makes sense for Canon?

This.

End of it.

 

[Bonich]

When reading the Canon Annual report sometime close to the roll out of the R series, it noted that lenses made up a large part of the profit. Apparently, the camera bodies had a slim profit. I don't know if that's true any longer as far as profits on bodies, but the profits on lenses are likely still pretty large. I think it's a matter of Canon doing whatever they can to protect those profits. If someone is making a lens that does not compete and is willing to pay a fee for each one sold, then it's a boost in profits because sales are not affected.

Microsoft was once fined €731M for not allowing browser choice on Windows. The law fights against monopolies despite what some here mistakenly seem to think is reasonable.

My R5 and R run behind RF glass, Canon EF glass, Zeiss EF glass, Canon FD glass, Angenieux FD glass, Leica M glass, Voigtländer M glass. Pentax K-mount adapter & glass is also available, but it just offers redundancy.

I can't see any monopoly.

 

[AlanF]

My R5 and R run behind RF glass, Canon EF glass, Zeiss EF glass, Canon FD glass, Angenieux FD glass, Leica M glass, Voigtländer M glass. Pentax K-mount adapter & glass is also available, but it just offers redundancy.

I can't see any monopoly.

Canon does not have a high enough share of the market to fall foul of regulation. If it did, then powers would be taken against it. What I am getting at is that the law steers a course of allowing on the one hand for inventors to safeguard and profit from their work and on the other to prevent monopolies from exploiting patents or market dominance and having too much power.

 

[David - Sydney]

ReflexVE said:
No one in this thread can explain why Canon's decisions are good for us, the photographers. All they are doing is explaining why they believe it makes sense for Canon. Why should any of us care about what makes sense for Canon?

This.

End of it.

You could say the same thing about Canon employees. Ultimately, Canon have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders... not by customers or other non-government parties.
The assumption is that good corporate governance and financial performance will enable R&D spend into new competitive products that customers will buy. They don't have to be happy but it helps

 

[SNJ Ops]

I am amazed how big and heavy the Sigma 20/1.4 is and is still front heavy on my R5... Except for maybe the Z9/R3, how would be more balanced especially as Sony bodies are smaller/lighter in general? The adaptor doesn't make that much of a difference for these big/heavy Sigma lenses.

On emout Sigma have redesigned a nunber of their Art lenses for mirrorless cameras. In most cases the mirrorless version is smaller and lighter and in some instances significantly so. In the case of the 20mm f1.4 Art the EF HSM version weighs 950g whereas the E mount DG DN one is 635g.

 

[EricN]

enjoy that opinion.. I'll continue with mine

I'm sure you will continue as well as congratulate yourself for your well used time that you will believe had substantial impact on all of Canon's choices in the future.

 

[ReflexVE]

That's hilarious considering you claimed you had outgrown the M50, and are upset that you couldn't use the EF-M lenses on an RF body enough to waste all this time here on your posting crusade. We all know that EF lenses are accepted to work best on an RF body and the quality of a lens is more important than the body. Then again, you literarily have never noticed how many Fuji X lenses are back ordered or require special ordering. I'm not sure if it's ignorance from someone that claims that financial data is an unimportant strawman's arguments and doesn't seem to know about Sony's abandoned products or his own strawman argument.

I don't even know what you mean here. I owned (and own again) a M50, none of my lenses were able to be used on RF mount or any other mount. So to change to RF would be starting from scratch for me. The situation is only marginally better for a EF mount shooter, yes they can change to RF but are forced to use adapters. But the problem there is that once you accept adapters you have little reason to stay with Canon unless you *really* like their bodies (which is fine, they have some great ones, I think the R5 is probably the greatest camera release of the past five or so years). People can disparage Metabones or whatever, but I've used just a Viltrox and did not notice any difference in performance when adapting to Fuji than I did adapting them to EF-M, which is native EF performance. Granted that may not carry over to ever single lens, but the ones I tried just worked at least as good as they did on my M50 (I have friends with lots of EF glass).

They may have worked marginally better on a RF body, but would it be enough to put up with the drawbacks of that system? Up to every user but IMO once you are talking adapters you may as well consider all your options. I know for Fuji shooters using Metabones with Canon or Nikon glass has long been the 'solution' for long lens shooters since it's not a market Fuji has pursued, and it works very well. One of the huge advantages of mirrorless has been the ability to adapt DSLR glass to MILC bodies with relative ease. For someone like me, being able to get a ton of very high quality glass designed for my crop sensor, but still have the option of more exotic glass should I need it via adapter is an advantage. And gives a result better than going to RF-S where the crop lenses are extremely limited.

 

[ReflexVE]

Not sure what you mean by "crop sensor shooting"... are you only talking about high pixel density ie pixels on duck for telephoto?
The R7 has you covered plus plenty of big whites (or the RF100-400 or RF600/11 or RF800/11 on the cheaper side + TCs).
Canon doesn't have a good mid-priced telephoto range (yet!) but there is time.
Macro working distance?
What else is "crop sensor shooting"?

Shooting a crop sensor camera with appropriate crop sensor designed lenses. Canon does not do this. You end up having to put FF lenses on your crop bodies, adding cost and weight, as well as some visual quality loss for higher MP crop sensors as they can exceed resolving power of certain lenses (especially older ones).

 

[ReflexVE]

Some people simply prefer APS-C sensors. In some cases, it’s because the whole kit can be smaller/lighter. Personally, that’s why I have the M6II and M lenses. In other cases, it’s because they think APS-C offers advantages other than smaller size and/or lower system cost (which means that unless they’re focal length limited, they don’t understand the impact of sensor size). Although to be fair, if you’re shooting mainly in bright light, the IQ advantages of FF aren’t huge.

This. I find APS-C to be the best balance of weight/size/cost for a daily carry. I also prefer it's DoF as I can use fast apertures without severely limiting my FoV so only a single eye is in focus. It's a style choice on the latter but it's what I prefer.

I also happen to own a GFX 100S + GF110mm f/2 for special situations (usually portraits) where I want high resolution and ultimate image quality. But I don't break that body out as often as I should due to the size/weight and it's not a daily carry.

Looks like we do agree on some things.