Will Canon allow EF lenses to work on future RF bodies?

sportyaccordy wrote:

Steve Balcombe wrote:

Sittatunga wrote:

And Canon don't need to degrade the performance of the RF mount to make that happen.

I agree, but this is not so much about what will happen, as about what people fear could happen due to a lack of trust in Canon.

This hits on a pet peeve of mine, which is people panicking over everything possible without accounting for what's actually possible. Canon could decide it no longer wants to be in business and decide to shut down operations tomorrow. Canon could decide 3rd party glass will help RF more than hurt it and open the mount up.

What is Canon most likely to do? This is where the ability to think critically and analyze history, incentives and general logic come into play, and where people seem to get out of their depth.

Or maybe, just maybe, some people are using history as a gauge for future actions. I think it’s pretty disrespectful to treat more fearful users in this way. If you think they’re wrong, lay out your arguments, but don’t start putting people down because they’re being “illogical”, “uncritical”, or “out of their depth”.

Parsing out the probability of Canon locking out EF lenses just comes down to a cost benefit analysis. What could they gain? Potentially more RF lens sales- IF suitable replacements for the bricked EF glass exists.

If suitable replacements don’t exist, people will make do. This has happened time and time again in the photography world. When all brands switched to digital, suitable UWAs were almost nonexistent… and yet, many photographers worked around these limitations,  by stitching or using converters. If you put users between a rock and a hard place, a sizable chunk of them will find a way to squirm through. Is that Canon’s optimal path right now? Not at all. Will it be three years from now? 🤷‍♂️ No one can say for certain, not even Canon’s board. They haven’t come out and said “don’t worry, we have your backs, EF compatibility is guaranteed into the future”. No one ever has… Olympus limited full Four Thirds lens compatibility to their E-M1 range. Nikon dropped in-camera AF motors in their consumer lineup, and then completely forgot about them for Z-mount. Sony gimped adapted A-mount lenses from the get go. Canon have now orphaned yet another mount without recourse, have hamstrung speedlight compatibility in their cheaper bodies, and have abandoned a number of projects along the way. There’s no guarantee. Except for one maker, Pentax, who really seem to care about backwards compatibility, camera makers will mercilessly cut off any obstacles to more profits.

What could they lose? Far, far more.... I sincerely doubt customers with thousands of dollars in EF glass will be happy to spend thousands more with a company that turned their lenses into fancy paperweights.

Problem is, there’s a cutoff point at which this becomes a tempting proposition. This might be reached a few years from now, or in decades. Just ask Nikon - people with AF-D lenses were left by the wayside in the transition to mirrorless, and the rest of the F-mount catalog could well be discarded a few years from now. And of course, this won’t happen all across the range at once - if you invest in an R3/Z9 successor, it’s very likely that you’ll see continued support for many, many years to come. But if you only get an R8/Z5 successor, who knows when they’ll hang you to dry? Thing is, people with broad lens catalogs tend to own and value more expensive bodies, whereas newcomers usually settle for the economy models, and they’ll be especially tempted to adapt cheaper lenses. This should be seen as a net positive, but modern capitalism doesn’t reward long-term loyalty and attachment, it just pushes for more short-term profits relentlessly. I.e. “force new users to purchase new lenses”.

There are still people angry about the transition from FD to EF nearly 40 years ago.....

Yeah, which is why Canon rewarded them with an official FD adapter for RF /sarcasm.

They don’t give a damn. They’re going to drop EF as well, and if they can earn 0.1% more profit by excluding most future bodies from access to it, they’ll do it in an instant.

That this is even a conversation speaks to the bigger issue of the RF lineup not filling in quickly or comprehensively enough........ but that's a whole other conversation. Ultimately I do agree that Canon has not done enough to engender confidence in their developmental direction for the RF system. But there are enough actual issues to not need to create and be concerned over unlikely ones like bricking EF glass.......

We've just seen the announcement of three nice-looking APS-C primes for Z mount from Sigma - lenses which R7/R10/R50 owners are unable to access. All we have from Canon is a tough attitude from their legal people.