First authorized 3rd party lens on RF mount? Cosina Voigtländer Nokton 50mm F1 Aspherical RF

Flagging this for anyone who missed this. I missed the news myself. I think this is great news and shows that Canon will not disregard the market and its customers in giving them choice. Hopefully other brands will follow sooner rather than later.

My previous experience with an EF mount voigtlander was great with R and R5, EXIF, IBIS, and use of Canon's manual focus assist tools, all worked great making the lens a joy to use.

From Cosina's CP+2023 [Google translated]:

"Voigtlander's first Canon RF mount lens. Manual focus standard lens that achieves the brightest F1 among Voigtlander full-frame interchangeable lenses by adopting in-house manufactured GA (ground aspherical) lens. Equipped with electronic contacts to enable information communication with the body. A mechanical interlocking mechanism is used for aperture interlocking, and an aperture click switching mechanism for moving images is installed."

It is not the first 3rd party RF lens. There are couple on the market already:

https://alikgriffin.com/list-of-canon-rf-lenses/

nail33 wrote:

Canon has no issues with 3rd party lens makers using the RF mount, as long as they are not auto focus. For example:

https://www.amazon.com/Venus-Laowa-100mm-Ultra-Macro/dp/B0851QX7X5/ref=asc_df_B0851QX7X5/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=459520431986&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=12831240384456788797&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9010332&hvtargid=pla-909495837553&psc=1

The 3rd parties are just "dumb" lenses without any electronics. The key difference with the Cosina is the electronic functionality of the lens. The new Cosina lens may be manual, but has full electronic functionality, meaning, EXIF data, in camera auto corrections and IBIS, probably aperture control (EF Cosinas have this), and use of Canon manual focus assist features.

I know Samyang and maybe another manufacturer had electronic lenses before, but were probably using the old EF protocol or reverse engineering not quite compliant with patents/intelectual property of Canon.

Canon_Guy wrote:

It is not the first 3rd party RF lens. There are couple on the market already:

https://alikgriffin.com/list-of-canon-rf-lenses/

Key word here is authorized, as in legally using RF mount protocol electronic features to communicate with the camera. This enables features such as automatic in-camera corrections and IBIS, EXIF data for images, and capacity to use Canon's manual focus assist feature.

nail33 wrote:

Claude Ganter wrote:

The picture shows what seems to be an EF mount

Perhaps the picture is wrong, but Laowa does make the lens with a RF mount as stated on their website..........click on mount options:

https://www.venuslens.net/product/laowa-100mm-f-2-8-2x-macro-apo/

You are correct! There is a bit of nuance here, though. The EF version has an electronically controlled aperture, the RF version is fully manual.

And earlier batches of the EF version would identify as being a crop lens, so the R5/R6/R3 would not allow FF pictures. To fix this you'll need to get the electronics replaced or the lens exchanged for a more recent batch.

I hope Laowa goes back to using electronically controlled apertures in their RF lenses, it makes doing macro a lot easier.

It would be nice if we can pair Canon focus assist - including it's eye recognition - to a 365g RF Voigtlander APO-Lanthar 50mm f/2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2abJj3d6K-M

thunder storm wrote:

It would be nice if we can pair Canon focus assist - including it's eye recognition - to a 365g RF Voigtlander APO-Lanthar 50mm f/2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2abJj3d6K-M

Yes, certainly. I love all those APO lenses. IQ seems great, though price is high. Hopefully we'll have them available in RF mount in the future.