Friday rant: The future of Canon RF and 3rd party lenses

There are some very bold pronouncements being made here that are very very very likely to be wrong.

Canon execs said in an interview just a few days ago:

Q. Many photographers are waiting impatiently for the RF mount to be opened up. At present, Canon is the only brand to maintain exclusive control of its mount. Are we going to see RF lenses from other manufacturers in the near future?

Tetsuji Kiyomi. It is true that we have been approached by numerous third-party manufacturers. We are listening to their requests. However, we do not have any particular strategy or policy on the subject of third-party lenses per se. Naturally, I can't share any more details with you, but what I can say is that we will approach things on a case-by-case basis according to how they align with our strategy. I can't tell you more.

Go Tokura. One example of this is the launch of an RF lens by Cosina [the Voigtländer 50mm f/1 is the first [authorized] "third-party" lens to communicate with the camera body via the RF mount – ed.]. We are currently in negotiation with other lens manufacturers. That is the situation at the present time.

You cannot reconcile these statements made by Canon execs with the notion that Canon WILL ABSOLUTELY NEVER ALLOW THIRD-PARTY LENSES, and so on. Not only have they given their blessing to electronic RF lenses (though MF) from Cosina, they say they are in active contact with other lens manufacturers. It is obvious that those manufacturers are along the lines of Sigma, which has publicly expressed interest. Negotiations, however, are not generally done in the open, so they won't comment on any details. But you can be sure that they wouldn't say they're currently in negotiations without the idea that these discussions would lead to actual licensed third-party lenses.

As to which lenses will come next, that's not certain. But these statements make it clear that something will.