Canon bans Viltrox lens

Igor Sotelo wrote:

bodeswell wrote:

Igor Sotelo wrote

Sigma with their Art series made Canon lose a lot of revenue in their EF system. They aren’t probably worried about Viltrox, but about Zeiss, Sigma, Tamron and Voigtlander, that can significantly hurt the sales of Canon RF lenses.

I think this will reduce Canon body sales, for people that could afford the body, but not also the exorbitant price of high quality Canon RF lenses

Canon has always made a range of bodies as well as a range of lenses, and with RF the are making affordable high quality lenses at price points they previously didn’t occupy. In short, they are competing. Seems to be working so far, even if some folks get all teary eyed about Sigma primes.

Sony opted to open their FE system to third party manufacturers, so those manufacturers AF works at the same level as native lenses. It doesn’t seem to have significantly hurt Sony’s sales, the company is confident they can make better lenses to justify the premium. And it helped Sony gain momentum when their lens catalog was reduced.

Looks to some like Sony has lost momentum.

Nikon already has Voigtlander making lenses for the Z-system. Not sure if reverse engineering will be required for AF lenses, potentially reducing their performance.

I’ll bet Sigma and Tamron are pretty protective of their own intellectual property.

But it’s Canon whining and not competing, about Viltrox making lenses for the RF mount.

They aren't "whining". Whining would be complaining but not doing anything about the infringement. Canon is taking legal action to stop the alleged infringement. That is a matter of ensuring that competition is fair. I'll bet Viltrox would protect its own intellectual property.

Canon is also competing by producing what I am sure they think is a better but still moderately priced RF 85mm f/1.8 half macro lens that works perfectly on all RF mount cameras.

It depends much what you call quality. L lenses yes are quality, you have admit Art lenses are quality too, non-L lenses aren’t in the same league, optically and how are they built.

That doesn't mean they aren't quality lenses. By the way, some might even suggest that the differences between L and non-L lenses are easily exaggerated.

One weakness that I see in Canon’s line up, is that if you want IBIS and full frame 4K, Canon will ask for that at least $2.5K (R6 with slight 4K crop) which is a bit steep. Personally couldn’t care less about video, however IBIS is important. But many do also shot video. On the other hand, you can get IBIS and full frame 4K from Sony and Nikon for much less.

Native lenses are equally expensive, but with Sony you have more options, like let’s say the Tamron 70-180mm 2.8, the Sigma Art 40mm 1.4, the Zeiss Batís APO Sonnar 2.8/135 or the Voigtlander Macro APO Lanthar 110mm 2.5.

Not sure what sales figures show, though.

I think the laws in Japan allow a Japanese company to reverse engineer for designing AF lenses, but that isn’t allowed for foreign companies.

Reverse engineering is generally legal so long as it does not infringe by, say, copying or directly using someone else's intellectual property. Perhaps Canon has, inadvertently of course, made it hard to reverse engineer the RF protocol be adding so many new things to it (IBIS, fancy AF modes). But end users benefit from those new features.

Sony’s FE-system is open, unlike Canon or Nikon systems that have to be reverse engineered, which affects AF performance.

People may need to decide what they really want.