Each to their own I guess.

For me one stop is a point of difference that pales in comparison to the lighter, smaller lens that outperforms and reaches wider over that one stop.

The grain going from 6400 to 12,800 doesn't bother me.
Some of the best photos ever have tonnes of noise in them.

>The grain going from 6400 to 12,800 doesn’t bother me.

OK, now let’s try going from 12,800 to 25,600.

Same, it's one stop.

Stack if you have to.
By your logic I'd argue you need the Sigma 14mm f1.8 do it's a stop brighter again. Where does it end?

@DamianFl,

You can't stack a timelapse. And the grain going from 6400 to 12800 DOES bother me, so I avoid it at all costs. Most of the best astro-landscape timelapses have very little noise in them. Each genre of photography is different. Just ask any astrophotographer, and they'll tell you. Sensor SNR and sheer light-gathering apertures are absolutely king.

But hey, I get it. Most casual shooters can shoot the night sky with an f/2.8 or even f/4 lens, they don't need an f/1.4 prime or an f/2-2.8 zoom. But you can also take a car on the Autobahn and /not/ put the pedal to the floor. ;-)

Yes, that would be.

Laowa 15 f2 is not very good for what concerns me, it's not bad for interior shots but for landscape there are better options, Laowa 10-18 FE was nice, on chart, but low sharpness and light leak from the mount of my A7RIII was a killer, the Laowa 12 f2.8 adapted is better and distortion well controlled, sure it's heavier but I prefer to lose something in the "weight/dimensions" department and have better IQ, it's nice to have options but not all are good. Zeiss Batis 18 is much much better than any of those lenses and Sigma also I guess, but it is not as wide.

Canon:

"Hold my beer!"

*patents 14-21mm f/1.4*
*patents 16-28mm f/2*
*announces 15-35mm f/2.8 with filter threads*

Sony:

"Uhhh, we might have been a bit premature with our mount specs..."

Not necessarily; the 16-28 f/2 sounds like it will actually happen. Considering the massive size of the 28-70 f/2 and 85 1.2, I don't think size is at all a concern for Canon when it comes to making exotic unicorn lenses.

My point is, Sony may have a whole lot of diversity thanks to the maturity of their mount, but thanks to the larger diameter, Canon and Nikon may eventually be the wide-angle mount of choice. We'll see what happens in the next 1-3 years, of course. Nikon already has a 14-30mm f/4 that accepts standard 82mm filters; that's one wide-angle lens we might never see from Sony. Although judging by the size of the 12-24 f/4 G, it might be possible if they compromise a little bit on vignetting and corner sharpness.

16-28 f2 sounds cool. But how big would it be? And price?

I’m trying to understand how canon becomes the “mount of choice” because of the larger diameter. Would an apples-to-apples Canon 16-35 f2.8 R (theoretical) automatically have better performance than the GM because of wider mount?

Are you saying that, in the future, the Unicorn lenses of the R-mount will make Canon the “mount of choice” because they offer that tiny bit of extra image quality despite all other factors?

Again, considering the size and price of the 28-70mm f/2, I'd say a 16-28 f/2 will be massive.

Then again, an EOS RP is about 1lb lighter than a 5DIV, so that's a pound you can put towards glass. (Although I wouldn't mount any of those lenses on an EOS RP without a special Arca plate system that also supported the lens, eesh!)

You're right, Canon or Nikon may only become the mount choice for a select few who really want to push the boundaries of which apertures are possible at certain focal lengths or ranges. Most photographers won't have the need (or the budget) for such lenses, and Sony's "modest" f/1.4 primes and f/2.8 zooms are already very, very good.

However, for those who want them, f/2 zooms or f/1.2 primes can open up new shooting potential, depending on what you shoot.

Then again, there may be potential for Canon's regular f/2.8 zooms to be more portable, too. It's a 15-35 2.8, for example, not a 16-35 2.8. Also, the sneak-peek'd 70-200 2.8 RF is rather compact looking.

I see the point you might be trying to make, though, in addition to the out-of-reach status of such exotic unicorn lenses:

Canon really must step up their mirrorless body tech and feature offerings if they want to truly compete with Sony. No lens is worth it to a working wedding photographer if the camera itself doesn't have dual card slots, or reliable AF.

Personally though, I've been observing the leap-frog effect in camera tech competition for long enough that I'm just assuming Canon will deliver the goods within the next 1-2 camera body generations. A Sony A9 mk2 might stay one step ahead, sure, but by the time Canon gets a flagship sports mirrorless camera out, it'll probably only be a very small difference in performance betwen the two.

Just my thoughts as someone who has observed all of the competition since the days when Kodak was the first to make a full-frame DSLR lol... ;-)

@Matthew Saville

//Canon: "Hold my beer!"
announces 15-35mm f/2.8 with filter threads*//

There is already a 15-30/2.9 lens in e-mount. It's a Zeiss cine lens:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1023801-REG/zeiss_2075_921_15_to_30mm_cz_2.html

Sony's the only one drinking beer, Canon and Nikon are still in the toolshed, working.

Oh, a $25,000 lens that weighs close to 6 lbs means Sony has the advantage? That's laughable, even in the face of Canon's "ridiculous" f/2 zooms and f/1.2 primes that are already enormous and expensive.

Sony may be sitting pretty sipping their lager for now, but Canon and Nikon's mounts will absolutely be stealing the show in the next few years. You don't have to believe me today, just sit back and watch...

I'd love to see Sony make a trio of f/2 zooms and f/1.2 primes too, don't get me wrong. Competition is always good. I just don't think it can happen.

Well, theoretically ANY range or aperture is possible on almost any mount, but as that $25K lens proves, at a certain point it becomes obscene and cost-prohibitive. We've all seen the posts about "theoretical" possibilities for f/0.x primes on Sony and Nikon mounts.

Again, I'd love to be wrong. No "truther" here, just an engineer who understands a little bit about light angle of incidence on a sensor, and who has pixel-peeped more extreme corners of more lenses than most armchair fanboys and naysayers. I was really happy when Sony was able to shave a whole pound off their 12-24 f/4 compared to the Sigma/Canon equivalents, and do it with decent corner sharpness. But the fact remains that we haven't seen any Sony f/2 zooms yet, nor any Sony f/1.2 primes, and this Sigma 35 1.2 is both massive and apparently pretty bad for coma in the corners.

All we can do is wait to see what lenses come out for all three mounts in the coming years.

As far as relevance is concerned, I think that's another underestimation of Canon and Nikon's mount protocols. Canon's RF mount is already my favorite as far as mount protocols are concerned, because their additional "command ring" is awesome and more customizable than either Sony or Nikon. I actually find Sony's aperture ring design to be a little annoying since I sometimes bump it away from "A" to f/16, and I can't re-program it to do something useful like ISO or EV comp.

Either way, it's hard to call two brand-new mounts "already irrelevant" when they're the two mounts that could offer more future-proof protocols than the competition.

The only major downside is the locked-down nature of those protocols; and I'm sure hoping that Sigma/Tamron/Tokina etc. are all working hard to reverse-engineer them.

I dont see a 35mm 1.2 gallery?

Cheers. I actually dont expect it to be the ultimate in bokeh. Theres a fine balance between sharpness and bokeh. The best bokeh tends not to be the sharpest and vice versa. I had the 40mm for a while and that held true (give or take). I still enjoyed it so I am certainly intrigues by the 35mm