I don't understand this industry.

[rexbobcat]

Infinity focus isn't a problem when adapting classic Canon FD lenses to mirrorless - no additional optics required. I absolutely love my Canon FD lens. I can put it on any mirrorless body with a ~$20 adapter (e.g., NEX, MFT, Samsung NX, Fuji X, EF-M or Nikon 1).

Most Canon users own a Canon DSLR since the Canon mirrorless is lackluster unless they buy into a different mirrorless system. I was referring to the use of DSLRs (specifically EOS), which require extra glass

 

[JerryLove]

Well part of it is the cost of reverse engineering - it's a lot more expensive for Nikon to make lenses that will work on Canon than it is for them to make lenses on Nikon.

I'm not sure about "a lot". Once the engineering is done, the information is relevant for all lenses (see Sigma, Tamron, etc). Also: inventing your own format is a lot of work and money.

Also: if Nikon could get 50% of Canon's lens market, they would double their sales. That would seem compelling.

The smaller a market share a company has, the more compelling that becomes.

But an even bigger part of that would be the marketing nightmare it would create. Imagine if Toyota started manufacturing add ons for Chevy. It would be like Toyota admitting that Chevy is a superior product, and that you might as well buy a Chevy - when you do you can still get all the cool Toyota add ons.

Toyota does use industry-standard wheel mounts. They use almost-standard radio mounts (less so these days). They use bluetooth, not requiring proprietary phones. Indeed: while not designed specifically for it, there a many parts that could be exchanged between the right Chevy and Toyota. Toyota has even built entire cars for GM (Geo Prizm, for example, was a Corolla).

But by-and-large, cars are not IC camera because they are not designed to have interchangeable parts. Toyota isn't really interested in selling you radios one way or another, so why worry where their radios can be installed? Indeed: Toyota parts aren't interchangeable between Toyotas (generally).

Note, however, that Toyota does not require toyota-only roads to run on. They do not use radically abnormal control layouts.

Fuji, Sony, and Samsung *do* want to sell you lenses. Why limit where you can use them?

Also making software run on multiple platforms is not for the most part an easy task, it generally tends to make it a lot more complex and a lot harder to maintain.

Depends on a great deal, but not really my point. My point was: you'd write for a popular OS rather than invent your own, not just because it's easier, but because you want an audience for your photo-editor, and few are likely to switch OS's to get it.

As to why Canon or anyone else makes multiple lens formats, well if my 70-200 mm F/2.8 lens that I use pretty regularly would work on both the camera body I currently have and the newer mirroless system, I wouldn't need to buy new lenses for it. Since Canon, Nikon et al do their market research they realize that a lot of people who are buying the newer mirrorless systems already own a DSLR.

That wasn't really my question. I understand why there are multiple formats. The difference from EF to EFS to 4/3 is pretty clear.

The question is: Why is Sony using NX rather than 4/3? Same sensor size. Same flange (or close enough). Why is Canon using EF-M rather than 4/3? Why is Pentax using K rather than EF?

Plus there are some other engineering issues to boot, including the distance the lens is designed to be from the focal plane - which is a deal breaker for lenses. They have to be at that specific distance, and there isn't a big margin for error there - so as a result in some cases you can't really make some lenses work on other mounts without additional glass to resolve this issue, and of course a host of other issues such as how the lens communicates with the camera, etc. Throw in how the various companies differ on autofocus systems and controls - well, frankly it just wouldn't be very cost effective to try and make your proprietary lenses work with someone elses camera body.

Yes. That's why, having invented and built the NX format and cameras they aren't ret-con'd; but why invent NX at all when 4/3 was already there and already had an audience.

If it were, they would have started doing it already.

I'm doubtful there... Though Panasonic and Olympus did exactly that.

If you want to sell bodies: having more lenses available is an advantage; so use a connector with a large lens base.
If you want to sell lenses: having a large number of users of your connector is an advantage; so use a connector with a large number of body-owners.

Put another way: If I were to make "Jerry's uber body" tomorrow, because I wanted to sell bodies. I could put a lot of money into developing a connector, and then make a bunch of lenses, and then I'd have to convince people to abandon their entire existing collection for a format that might be dead next month.

Or.

I could build my uber-body for Canon, spend a little money figuring out an EF connector, and then already have hundreds of great lenses and convince people that my body is the best one. Even if I never made another, they'd lose nothing for the investment.

Same thing with Jerry's uber lenses.

I'd be stupid to make up my own connector and be proprietary.

 

[robbins.photo]

Also: if Nikon could get 50% of Canon's lens market, they would double their sales. That would seem compelling.

The smaller a market share a company has, the more compelling that becomes.

Ok, well first the notion that Nikon is some sort of tiny company with very little market share is just wrong. Their annual profits are staggering.

Fuji, Sony, and Samsung *do* want to sell you lenses. Why limit where you can use them?

Because Canon and Nikon don't want you to buy Tamron or Sigma, etc, etc.

Depends on a great deal, but not really my point. My point was: you'd write for a popular OS rather than invent your own, not just because it's easier, but because you want an audience for your photo-editor, and few are likely to switch OS's to get it.

Guess you'd have to ask the guys that spent millions of man hours developing all of the various flavors of Linux, instead of just writing programs for windows.

The question is: Why is Sony using NX rather than 4/3? Same sensor size. Same flange (or close enough). Why is Canon using EF-M rather than 4/3? Why is Pentax using K rather than EF?

Not being involved in the engineering process for any of these, it's not really a question I'm qualified to answer. And well, to be honest, not something I'm losing any sleep over either.

If you want to sell bodies: having more lenses available is an advantage; so use a connector with a large lens base.
If you want to sell lenses: having a large number of users of your connector is an advantage; so use a connector with a large number of body-owners.

Put another way: If I were to make "Jerry's uber body" tomorrow, because I wanted to sell bodies. I could put a lot of money into developing a connector, and then make a bunch of lenses, and then I'd have to convince people to abandon their entire existing collection for a format that might be dead next month.

Or.

I could build my uber-body for Canon, spend a little money figuring out an EF connector, and then already have hundreds of great lenses and convince people that my body is the best one. Even if I never made another, they'd lose nothing for the investment.

Same thing with Jerry's uber lenses.

I'd be stupid to make up my own connector and be proprietary.

And this is where the problem arises. "If I were to make Jerry's Uber Body Tommorow"... see, it's the tommorow thing were the breakdown occurs. When your dealing with any of the big camera makers they have been making cameras and lenses for decades. They already have a user base in place, they already have established mounts, etc, etc. They've already got a ton of money invested in their own proprietary formats, and really not a lot of incentive to change or to make it easier for 3rd parties to be able to take part of their market share.

 

[JerryLove]

Ok, well first the notion that Nikon is some sort of tiny company with very little market share is just wrong. Their annual profits are staggering.

Nikon's market share of the SLR lens market is signifigantly lower than Canons. Being able to sell to Canon customers (and succeeding well with them) would be a very significant boost.

Samsung is a bigger company than Nikon, but would have even more to gain.

Because Canon and Nikon don't want you to buy Tamron or Sigma, etc, etc.

Then it's surprising that they have done so little to stop you. A patent on the EF connector would not have expired till nearly 2007.

But that's rather far from my point. All of these companies *do* want to sell you lenses... and with the possible exception of the market leader, they aren't doing the apparently optimal things to make that happen.

(the one spot proprietary mounts make sense is if you believe you can take over the market based on one half of the bod-lens combo, but cannot compete on the other... but even then you can doom yourself by lack of adoption).

Guess you'd have to ask the guys that spent millions of man hours developing all of the various flavors of Linux, instead of just writing programs for windows.

Apples and oranges (several of your analogies have been). What a Linux developers *goal* is, is to make an OS.

Adobe has not made an OS for Photoshop to run in, nor have they excluded it from running in other people's OS's.

Linux developers are not making Linux run only on hardware they are developing just for Linux either.

And this is where the problem arises. "If I were to make Jerry's Uber Body Tommorow"... see, it's the tommorow thing were the breakdown occurs. When your dealing with any of the big camera makers they have been making cameras and lenses for decades. They already have a user base in place, they already have established mounts, etc, etc. They've already got a ton of money invested in their own proprietary formats, and really not a lot of incentive to change or to make it easier for 3rd parties to be able to take part of their market share.

For Canon and Nikon themselves, but not most of anyone else.

The Nikon mount goes back (in AI form at least) to 1976, and the EF mount to 1987. I forget the age on 4/3, but I think about 2003.

When did the Sony mirrorless (NX?) mount get started? How bout Samsung's (NEX?)? How about fujitsu's? How about EF-M? How about whatever the Nikon 1 is using? Even Pentax's K-mount is, I think, pretty new (could be wrong on that last one).

There was no user base in place for these new mounts. They were not established. They were invented whole-cloth for new camera when established bases already existed for other mounts.

 

[Gavjenks]

Exactly... so why don't Canon and Nikon make lenses for other formats? For that matter, each others?

Because it would be crazy. So you have Nikon lenses made by Canon for the same price as native Nikon lenses? Why would ANYBODY ever buy that versus the OEM version that is obviously less likely to have issues?

They can't price them lower, because then you alienate your own shooters by proving that you're overcharging them for the same quality. So you're just paying the same amount for a higher risk of malfunctions and incompatibilities, for no apparent reason...

Let alone the fact that the average market share of the companies would not increase (everybody designing lenses for everybody else doesn't increase lens demand overall) and yet would cost more in R&D, for a net loss all around. And that's even if people DID buy the lenses indiscriminately between brands. STILL wouldn't make any sense.

Except that Sigma, Tamron, Tonkya, Zeiss, etc seem to have no problem making connectors that understand all the signals from Nikon and Canon. How is an adapter more difficult than a lens?

They have ALL KINDS of problems. Old third party lenses frequently don't work in various ways on newer bodies. Yes, they get it right for current models, but presumably, Canon for example has planned out a certain number of future changes to the mount, and they make all their lenses compatible with those future changes. But the competitors don't know what they will be, and start having issues over time.

Clone body

The clone body idea just seems dumb to me in every way, honestly. Sorry.

You expect Tokina or somebody to sit there and pour all the huge R&D into making a body, dodge all the more recent body patents (as opposed to expired mount patents if any), spending probably MORE than Canon would (basic design + all the reverse engineering), and at the end of the day, all they have is a parasitic product that relies on another company's whims to know that it will sell well, AND cannot be marketed effectively at all? What are they gonna say "Hey buy this approximately equally expensive camera that is sort of like Canon but isn't and that offers no guarantees of future compatibility and that doesn't have any original ideas in it!" ? Yeah no thanks.

And again, even if it did work, the average market share is not increasing, and the R&D costs are increasing, so the mutual competition of clone bodies would still lower everybody's profits.

 

[robbins.photo]

Ok, well first the notion that Nikon is some sort of tiny company with very little market share is just wrong. Their annual profits are staggering.

Nikon's market share of the SLR lens market is signifigantly lower than Canons. Being able to sell to Canon customers (and succeeding well with them) would be a very significant boost.

Samsung is a bigger company than Nikon, but would have even more to gain.

Because Canon and Nikon don't want you to buy Tamron or Sigma, etc, etc.

Then it's surprising that they have done so little to stop you. A patent on the EF connector would not have expired till nearly 2007.

But that's rather far from my point. All of these companies *do* want to sell you lenses... and with the possible exception of the market leader, they aren't doing the apparently optimal things to make that happen.

(the one spot proprietary mounts make sense is if you believe you can take over the market based on one half of the bod-lens combo, but cannot compete on the other... but even then you can doom yourself by lack of adoption).

Guess you'd have to ask the guys that spent millions of man hours developing all of the various flavors of Linux, instead of just writing programs for windows.

Apples and oranges (several of your analogies have been). What a Linux developers *goal* is, is to make an OS.

Adobe has not made an OS for Photoshop to run in, nor have they excluded it from running in other people's OS's.

Linux developers are not making Linux run only on hardware they are developing just for Linux either.

And this is where the problem arises. "If I were to make Jerry's Uber Body Tommorow"... see, it's the tommorow thing were the breakdown occurs. When your dealing with any of the big camera makers they have been making cameras and lenses for decades. They already have a user base in place, they already have established mounts, etc, etc. They've already got a ton of money invested in their own proprietary formats, and really not a lot of incentive to change or to make it easier for 3rd parties to be able to take part of their market share.

For Canon and Nikon themselves, but not most of anyone else.

The Nikon mount goes back (in AI form at least) to 1976, and the EF mount to 1987. I forget the age on 4/3, but I think about 2003.

When did the Sony mirrorless (NX?) mount get started? How bout Samsung's (NEX?)? How about fujitsu's? How about EF-M? How about whatever the Nikon 1 is using? Even Pentax's K-mount is, I think, pretty new (could be wrong on that last one).

There was no user base in place for these new mounts. They were not established. They were invented whole-cloth for new camera when established bases already existed for other mounts.

Well I guess the folks at Nikon and Samsung have it all wrong then. Might want to call them up and let them know so they can get it straightened out.

I will wish you well in that endeavor.

Sent from my LG-LG730 using Tapatalk

 

[Gavjenks]

Toyota does use industry-standard wheel mounts.

Industry standardization is a completely different concept than making products for another company's proprietary system.

Standardization would be great. Not likely, just due to momentum and how things happen to unfold in this industry versus others. But great if it happened. Totally different than cross mount lenses, though. I DO want standardization. I DON'T in a million years want hordes of cross mount lenses that raise prices and don't help anyone.

 

[JerryLove]

Exactly... so why don't Canon and Nikon make lenses for other formats? For that matter, each others?

Because it would be crazy. So you have Nikon lenses made by Canon for the same price as native Nikon lenses? Why would ANYBODY ever buy that versus the OEM version that is obviously less likely to have issues?

One presumes because the lenses were better lenses.

It was a mistake to use Nikon and Canon as my examples of companies that would change, as they are the market leaders.

How is Pentax doing? Think they might sell more bodies if they took Nikon lenses? I know I'd strongly consider a Pentax like the K3 that took my Canon glass collection. I really liked what Samsung's mirrorless is doing, but I'm honestly worried that Samsung will either leave the market or change connectors and I'll obsolete. Of course, if they took 4/3 lenses, that wouldn't be a problem.

They can't price them lower, because then you alienate your own shooters by proving that you're overcharging them for the same quality. So you're just paying the same amount for a higher risk of malfunctions and incompatibilities, for no apparent reason...

So "they cannot compete on lens quality"?

Let alone the fact that the average market share of the companies would not increase (everybody designing lenses for everybody else doesn't increase lens demand overall) and yet would cost more in R&D, for a net loss all around. And that's even if people DID buy the lenses indiscriminately between brands. STILL wouldn't make any sense.

If you are the market leader, and if also you don't have the best quality-value lenses, then yes: it works in your favor.

If you have the best of whatever you are making, you want nothing like format to limit your sales... and you don't have the best, how are you selling anything at all in a proprietary market?

Clone body

The clone body idea just seems dumb to me in every way, honestly. Sorry.[/quote] What's the difference between me making a compatible body for EF and Olympus making a compatible body for 4/3?

You expect Tokina or somebody to sit there and pour all the huge R&D into making a body, dodge all the more recent body patents (as opposed to expired mount patents if any), spending probably MORE than Canon would (basic design + all the reverse engineering), and at the end of the day, all they have is a parasitic product that relies on another company's whims to know that it will sell well, AND cannot be marketed effectively at all? What are they gonna say "Hey buy this approximately equally expensive camera that is sort of like Canon but isn't and that offers no guarantees of future compatibility and that doesn't have any original ideas in it!" ? Yeah no thanks.

Not at all. They would make a body all their own (like Fujitsu, Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Panasonic, Sony, Pentax, Licea, Hassalbad, Intel, Poloroid, and scores of others already do in multiple formats), but this body would have the flange length, connector, and electrical protocols of canon.

How much work is that for them? Well, they already do it with their lenses.

And again, even if it did work, the average market share is not increasing, and the R&D costs are increasing, so the mutual competition of clone bodies would still lower everybody's profits.

In what world is it less work to create new communications protocols, establish new standards of flange length, and design a new connector than it is to build one that you already have specs for (from your lenses)?

And since Tokina's current body share is 0%: the question is "would their new body sell better if there were hundreds of lenses already out there for it, or if you had to buy from a small set of entirely new lenses"?

Industry standardization is a completely different concept than making products for another company's proprietary system.

If it isn't in patent, it isn't proprietary.

Standardization would be great. Not likely, just due to momentum and how things happen to unfold in this industry versus others. But great if it happened. Totally different than cross mount lenses, though. I DO want standardization. I DON'T in a million years want hordes of cross mount lenses that raise prices and don't help anyone.

How does competition raise prices? How does having to design for only one mount rather than several raise prices.

 

[JerryLove]

Well I guess the folks at Nikon and Samsung have it all wrong then. Might want to call them up and let them know so they can get it straightened out.

I will wish you well in that endeavor.

Certainly a fools errand. Much like telling MS that Windows 8 sucks, or to put some historical perspective.

Hey Sony: if you ignore popular industries (like porn), Betamax ain't gonna work no matter if it's technologically better.
Hey Microsoft: You know, if you don't offer a way to get a reduced data-plan on the Kin, it's going to get eaten alive by smartphones... esp if you don't make software.
Hey Sony: Making cameras use proprietary parts (memory sticks), when there's a huge market in competing formats is likely gonna cost you.

Big companies do obviously dumb things all the time.

 

[Gavjenks]

I know I'd strongly consider a Pentax like the K3 that took my Canon glass collection. I really liked what Samsung's mirrorless is doing, but I'm honestly worried that Samsung will either leave the market or change connectors and I'll obsolete.

You're pretty much contradicting yourself across these two sentences. If you are concerned about obsolescence, then buying a body and a lens collection from two different manufacturers is pretty much the worst thing you can do in terms of guarantees against obsolescence and market change. Because not only do they not generally cooperate with one another, but they are actively motivated to try and pull the rug out from one another...

So "they cannot compete on lens quality"?

No. If you believe that one company makes truly legitimately higher quality gear, then you would simply buy ALL that brand everything. And if they make equally quality gear, then there's no point in each other duplicating everything multiple times.

In what world is it less work to create new communications protocols, establish new standards of flange length, and design a new connector than it is to build one that you already have specs for (from your lenses)?

They DON'T have full specs, I'm sure. You're still making the mistake of assuming that because Sigma can make a lens that works today, that they necessarily know everything about what Canon might change in the next years, etc. in order to guarantee compatibility. Thus, they can't guarantee that. See point #1 in this post.

If it isn't in patent, it isn't proprietary.

Unless it's a secret.

How does competition raise prices? How does having to design for only one mount rather than several raise prices

.
By cross mount I mean your other suggestion: that Canon make both Canon lenses and Nikon lenses, etc.

 

[JerryLove]

You're pretty much contradicting yourself across these two sentences. If you are concerned about obsolescence, then buying a body and a lens collection from two different manufacturers is pretty much the worst thing you can do in terms of guarantees against obsolescence and market change. Because not only do they not generally cooperate with one another, but they are actively motivated to try and pull the rug out from one another...

So, since Tamron is making lenses for Nikon's mount, Nikon's mount is more likely to go away?

The 4/3 format is more likely to go obsolete than whatever Fujitsu is using?

Got any data to back that up? USB seems to still be around (having outlived firewire).

ISA, the proprietary computer bus standard that everyone else baught into seems to have outlived all of it's quasi contemporary competitors (having finally been replaced by an open-standard PCI). How is MCB doing? How about Apple's custom bus?

No. If you believe that one company makes truly legitimately higher quality gear, then you would simply buy ALL that brand everything. And if they make equally quality gear, then there's no point in each other duplicating everything multiple times.

I can think of many examples where I thought that a company made a better something and didn't buy it.

I think Pentax makes a better camera body than Canon (at a given price), but I'm not willing to move over there because the market for lenses is not as good and because I don't know what will happen with the next generation. Heck: I think Sony is making the most interesting DSLR in my price range right now, but I won't move there either because I already have Canon glass and I don't know what will happen in the future to Sony.

I didn't get some of the old Sony P&S, even though I tended to think they had the best quality images, because the cost of Memory Stick investment when I already had SD cards. The Amiga was a far better computer than the PC I bought in the 80s, but they didn't have the ecosystem. (heck: I can think of a dozen electronic things that way).

You statement is not universal (it doesn't match my behavior). Do you have any data to assert that it's even the norm? You are making an awful lot of assertions without support.

They DON'T have full specs, I'm sure. You're still making the mistake of assuming that because Sigma can make a lens that works today, that they necessarily know everything about what Canon might change in the next years, etc. in order to guarantee compatibility. Thus, they can't guarantee that. See point #1 in this post.

Let's treat that as a hypothesis and make a falsifying test, shall we?

Because of the above: Sigma won't make lenses for the EF mount.

But they do. What's the difference?

Unless it's a secret.

Oh if only there was some way to measure electrical signals.

By cross mount I mean your other suggestion: that Canon make both Canon lenses and Nikon lenses, etc.

Canon is the market leader. A better question is "why did a company entering the market make a new connector instead of copy Canon's".

BTW: I did some research. You were closer to right than I was on EF to EFM adapters. The sole problem seems to be that the AF is touchy; but that seems to be, not a problem with the adapter, but a problem with the limited phase-detection of the EOS M camera.

I'm actually considering picking up an EOS M as an extra camera. There are others that I think are better cameras, but they don't take my lenses (with full functionality); and while I'll likely buy an EF-M lens, I'd like to be able to use some of my existing ones too.

 

[astroNikon]

No one's even mentioned Sigma's foray into dSLRs ..
Cameras | Sigma

What? Really? yup, haven't you seen all the expensive advertising campaigns out there that relie on profitable body sales?

ISA, the proprietary computer bus standard that everyone else baught into seems to have outlived all of it's quasi contemporary competitors (having finally been replaced by an open-standard PCI). How is MCB doing? How about Apple's custom bus?

IBM's MCA will live forever, but not on my table top LOL

 

[robbins.photo]

No one's even mentioned Sigma's foray into dSLRs ..
Cameras | Sigma

What? Really? yup, haven't you seen all the expensive advertising campaigns out there that relie on profitable body sales?

ISA, the proprietary computer bus standard that everyone else baught into seems to have outlived all of it's quasi contemporary competitors (having finally been replaced by an open-standard PCI). How is MCB doing? How about Apple's custom bus?

IBM's MCA will live forever, but not on my table top LOL

Lol.. looked over the specs for the SD15.. looks like they charge about twice as much as I paid for my D5200 for about half the camera.

 

[vimwiz]

btw, ISA lives on, nearly all motherboards use embedded ISA internally for sensors and legacy IO. Also still widely used in science + indistry,

 

[astroNikon]

No one's even mentioned Sigma's foray into dSLRs ..
Cameras | Sigma

What? Really? yup, haven't you seen all the expensive advertising campaigns out there that relie on profitable body sales?

ISA, the proprietary computer bus standard that everyone else baught into seems to have outlived all of it's quasi contemporary competitors (having finally been replaced by an open-standard PCI). How is MCB doing? How about Apple's custom bus?

IBM's MCA will live forever, but not on my table top LOL

Lol.. looked over the specs for the SD15.. looks like they charge about twice as much as I paid for my D5200 for about half the camera.

that's called trying to recover the cost of R&D based on lower production output. Lower sales require higher price to recover costs. I'm curious if their 3-5 projections actuall materialize to be profitable .. we'll never know. I wonder if they have a warehouse somewhere full of 'em. They are having a nice "sale" from retail though.

though, you could say there's more competition in the marketplace against Nikon & Canon & Sony, et all