Canon: We are in talks with other [lens-]manufacturers

thunder storm wrote:

here_and_there wrote:

To me the big news from this article is that 3rd party lenses are coming to RF (with Cosina's). There's been a lot of noise about the ban on 3rd parties, which as gotten to me as well sometimes, I must admit. But Canon, despite being a conservative company, understands market forces and must know that a complete lockdown will hurt them eventually, especially in the age of social media information wildfires.

I scanned the web and found that the Cosina Voiglander 50mm f1 for RF mount seems legit! This excites me greatly. I used to own a Voigtlander 20mm for EF mount, and worked great in my Canon R, later R5 bodies. All electronics, EXIF, auto-configured IBIS and the focus assist feature made focusing easy and the lens a joy to use.

Focus Assist is nice. Makes MF lenses very usable. It's never as fast tracking as AF though.

These are big differences compared with the flood of manual focus, no electronics lenses available. Not to mention that Cosina quality is top notch, it being the manufacturer of (most?) Zeiss lenses and a viable alternative to Leica glass for their rangefinders.

Last year I wrote to Sigma asking about their APS-C trio (16/30/56) and they wrote back somewhat complaining about Canon and Nikon being closed. But last week, I saw that the trio is now announced for Z mount. I'm sure we'll see them mounted on Canons at some point, just be patient.

Nikon has a small market share, so Nikon is more dependent on third party offerings.

Yes, MF can't compare to the speed of AF. But I think Cosina found its niche here, with modern electronic high IQ MF lenses. I see this product for people just enjoying a slower paced photo shooting.

I really enjoyed using my old EF mount 20mm Voigtlander. I sold it because it was an old lens and the IQ just wasn't there on an R5, but handling of the lens and enjoyment of the experience were very high. I also used to own the more modern Sony E mount version of the 20mm, and the experience was similar, except for the lack of the cool Canon focus assist feature, which is superior than just focus peaking to MF on the Sonys.

This new 50mm F1 is causing me to see myself strolling doing street photography or landscapes, etc. It's causing me GAS already, tbh. Hopefully Cosina will soon port more of their great newer lenses to the RF mount.