Kowa to make three manual focus lenses for Micro Four Thirds

This is now corrected; thanks for bringing it to our attention.

(We actually like to add in small errors occasionally, to give our more-vocal commenters something to talk about.)

And your logic is?

FT is not the same mount as MFT and also the focus & aperture controls look very different to me. So obviously more than just "putting on a MFT" was needed for producing these.

Especially those wide angle versions would be very promising if the lenses actually deliver high resolution and low distortion as promised.

Kowa is a huge name in lenses for industrial uses (along with companies like Rodenstock and Melles Griot). For example, I have Kowa 42mm f/0.75 and 55mm f/1.0 lenses that were designed for photographing X-Ray phosphor displays.

Kowa has occasionally dabbled in consumer lenses and even made a few cameras, but I suspect this announcement recognizes that folks are now buying micro4/3 cameras for industrial uses. It is shocking how far behind a lot of the sensors in "cheap" industrial cameras are... until you realize that they have a limited market, so it is hard to recover development costs and thus those cameras often have what were good (and expensive) sensors 5+ years ago.

Kowa have been making spotting scopes and binoculars for decades.

http://kowa-prominar.com

This video is shot with Kowa anamorphic lenses - Cinema Grade - PL Mount.

http://vimeo.com/floridavideoproduction

The set you can hire out is: 40mm - 50mm - 75mm - 100mm

http://www.mu2pro.com/#!rent-anamorphic-lenses/c78f

So they make a little bit more than just high precision industrial and CCTV lenses...

But these lenses do not seem to cover anything larger than a 4/3 sensor. They cannot just change the mount and sell them as Sony E mount lenses.

Why doesnt 4/3 have a future? They already make a lot of machine vision and industrial lenses in 4/3, might as well house them in m43.

Seems logical to me. Kowa is a Japanese company and m43 is by far the biggest mirrorless system over there. It would be sillier to support the other mirrorless with only tiny fractions of the market, some of which with questionable commitments for the future (Sony, Canon, Nikon).

I would only question some of the focal range these lenses cover.

There isnt many FL that arent already covered in m4/3. Theres duplication everywhere, but at leaset their are choices. Thats a good problem to have in a system.. too many lenses.

I would compare these to the Voigtlander 0.95 lenses. 17,25,42

The only one that is moderatley new is the 8.5 lense.

"m4/3" is a place that low performance makers can survive so it's quite natural Kowa starts from there. this is only the start."

How do you do this? Come here everyday non-stop to troll DPR?

You gotta admire his persistence. If canon or nikon is not paying this guy they should!

Those Kowa seTr cameras were reliability nightmares.

Dirt cheap to make? Not if the lens is highly corrected and is made to high mechanical standards. Look at the diagram of the 25/1.8 - that is not a simple clone of double-gaus design. And look also at the distortion numbers. Very low.

Frankly I have no idea what is the target for Kowa with these lenses, but I would expect high quality (which will came with high price I would guess).

The target market is folks who think that buying expensive MF lenses that look as though they were built in the 1950s will immediately transform their snaps into "art".
The 8.5 is the only one of these that might actually fill a partial hole in the range of lenses that are already available for M4/3. Big, ugly lumps by the look of them.

The target market is Blackmagic portable CC users and GH3/GH4 users.

I remember the original slr and 66, and think you two have rose-colored glasses on ;)

why some makers think they have a chance is because m4/3" lenses have low performance and bad cost performance, an invitation for easy competitions.

There is little need to focus such a lens such as the 8.5. Set it to the hyper focal distance and everything from less than 3ft to infinity is in focus.

IF SOME M43 CAMERAS DON'T HAVE EVF'S, THEN YOU SHOULD JUST GET ONE THAT HAS. THERE ARE OTHERS WHO DON'T NEED ONE. ALSO, WHY ARE WE SHOUTING?

What is with the all-capitals? New to the net?

It's obviously a cine lens (see the geared focus ring..) so:
- it will be oversized and built like a tank
- it will be sharp and will have exact T-stop given
- it will be probably color matched with the other 2 shown here (as in rendition)
- it wont be chipped
- it will have very good mechanical
- it will certainly have a hood a maybe a solution for filters (maybe rear drop-in ?) since these are useful for movie shooting

Dont expect a lens aimed at photographers.

Other mirrorless mounts are not interesting for cinema lenses Yabokkie. So there will be no mirrorless APS-C versions of these lenses.

There is a small difference in IQ if you compare the best APS-C and the best m4/3 sensors. The difference is so small that most people don't see it. So go ahead and jerk off on the superiority of the APS-C sensor, I don't care for real world use.

m4/3 is the closest thing we have to an open source lens mount.

It's easy to underestimate what a competitive advantage that can be — but when you consider that Nikon is actively sabotaging the lenses made by (arguably) the most forward-thinking lens maker out there (Sigma) and ignoring the lens needs of its most numerous customers (DX) — m4/3 is starting to look like a very safe long-term bet.

Add to that the fact that 2 companies are building a variety of cameras with fairly well-differentiated high-end target users (pro photographers for Olympus, video for Panasonic).

m4/3 is increasingly looking like the Linux/Android of camera mounts.

"Great to see some more makers enter the market. . . ."

I'm glad also. I just hope having more M43 lens makers in the market will at some point yield competition that moderates prices. Seems as though anything wider than the ubiquitous kit zoom comes with an arm-and-leg price tag.

Sigma and Samyang's MFT lenses are cheap and have great IQ.