I don't understand this industry.

[Derrel]

And would it kill either of the big two to put IS in the body?

From what I've read about in-lens versus in-body stabilization, it seems that in-lens stabilization can be optimized for each individual lens design and focal length range, whereas in-body is more generalist. For example, the new Tamron 160-600mm f/5~6.3 tele-zoom: I saw Matt Granger's video piece recently on his YouTube channel, and the in-lens stabilization system in the new Tamron was REALLY good, allowing slow speeds hand-held like 1/15 second at 600mm, which is a very good stabilization result.

I think the camera makers take a more profit-centered approach. If the stabilization system in built into each body, that elevates the cost of the body AND also prevents them from selling multiple stabilizer-equipped lenses, so for camera makers, in-lens systems probably have a huge profit advantage for them, while also allowing those who do NOT need IS to buy lower-cost lenses that have no stabilizer system, so all around for the "Big Two", in-lens stabilizing makes more financial sense for them.

THe smaller sales companies, like Pentax, are probably using in-body stabilization as a selling point. Pentax for example, can accept a wide range of lenses the company has made since the 1960's, via adapters, or just the K-bayonet, which has been around since 1975, so for a company that has fewer buyers, but many who have older legacy lenses, in-body stabilization seems like a strong selling point.

But back to the "I don;t understand this industry" issue, the camera business has become Canon and Nikon dominating sales, with everybody else fighting over slivers of the total sales, so really, there's little incentive for the two big players that are left to do anything that involves small-bit players or their system or lenses. There's NO NEED at the moment to legitimize the efforts of the small players by competing with them in low sales-unit segments. Nikon dominates what's left of the P&S digital business, and Canon is #1 in d-slr sales, with Nikon a close #2; overall, those two companies DOMINATE the entire small-format camera industry.

 

[JerryLove]

Why are lens adapters so poor? To my knowledge, there aren't any that allow full control from a camera of one type to a lens of another

There are a LOT of things about lenses I don't think you understand.

Probably; but not the things you think I don't. Many of the people who have responded have done so from a false sense of my ignorance.

The optics of a lens are built to work best when that lens is a set distance from the sensor. Adaptors change that distance. And because the electronics on the lens don't match up with the body you would need an even thicker adapter to adapt not only the electronic connections but the adapter would probably need some circuitry of its own to make the two talk to each other.

Yes. It's called "Flange length". It's why it's relatively easy to adapt Nikon optics to Canon but not the other way around. You can get around it by including optics in your adapter, but that introduces distortion and light loss.

But I was not discussing that aspect of adapters. I was discussing the fact that few to none of the adapters properly adapt controls. I can put a Canon lens on a m4/3 camera with an adapter, but I won't be able to get IS, AF and F all working from the camera controls. I'll need a manual control.

I can understand that is difficult (though not impossible) with, for example, older Nikon lenses which need a mechanical control; but for an EF lens, it's all electrical. One processor and some leads.

All that added thickness in an adapter would throw off the optimization of the lens optics.

I assume you mean "length".

If they can fir the control systems for a lens in a lens, then they can fit adapter controls in an an adapter (even if it makes it a bit thick)

 

[JerryLove]

Why put a second rate IS system into a first class system?

I could respond "ask Sony"; but I'm going to guess that the point was to reduce overall system costs.

By putting IS in the body, you buy it once, rather than for every lens.

I admit I am not familiar with disadvantages to the location of the IS.

 

[JerryLove]

The reason you don't understand is because you are looking at this as a consumer rather than a manufacturer. Why can't you directly bolt a Ford Motor to a Chevy transmission with them both dropped into a Dodge? Why don't Sunbeam Mixer blades fit a Kitchen-Aid Mixer etc. etc. etc. Proprietary = revenue.

Or a Sigma lens on a Canon. That ship has sailed hasn't it?

Again. I can see why Canon would want to lock us in (except that they haven't). What I cannot see is why Fujitsu would create its own doomed ecosystem rather than put superior optics (or bodies) into an ecosystem people are already in.

 

[Derrel]

One issue with lens adapters is that they can introduce pretty significant degradation of image quality, due to both precise spacing AND alignment issues. You can see some carefully detailed example data at Lensrentals.com. Adding two additional surfaces makes for less-precise alignment that hurts lens performance a bit.LensRentals.com - There Is No Free Lunch, Episode 763: Lens Adapters

A second issue is that "some" cameras, Sony and Canon for example, use electronically-controlled lens diaphragm control, while Nikon uses a mechanical diaphragm actuation system. I think Pentax also still uses a mechanical aperture control mechanism in its bodies, so...the "electronic" Canon cameras utterly lack the mechanical device to stop down some brands of lenses.

I've shot m42 and Nikon F and Leica thread mount lenses on my Canons...it's "fun"...but on many lenses for many situations, it is pretty much impractical...too slow to focus, too unreliable, automation is lacking, and so on. For really slow working, adapted lenses are often workable, but there are situations where adapted lenses are just a PITA.

 

[table1349]

The reason you don't understand is because you are looking at this as a consumer rather than a manufacturer. Why can't you directly bolt a Ford Motor to a Chevy transmission with them both dropped into a Dodge? Why don't Sunbeam Mixer blades fit a Kitchen-Aid Mixer etc. etc. etc. Proprietary = revenue.

Or a Sigma lens on a Canon. That ship has sailed hasn't it?

Again. I can see why Canon would want to lock us in (except that they haven't). What I cannot see is why Fujitsu would create its own doomed ecosystem rather than put superior optics (or bodies) into an ecosystem people are already in.

Sigma lenses have long had focus issues because Sigma has to reverse engineer their lenses. It used to be very common and is still pretty common to buy a Sigma lens for Canon and have to send it in to be re-calibrated. JC Whitney sells lots of car parts, but I have yet to see a JC Whitney automobile on the road.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Sig...la:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&channel=sb

 

[table1349]

Why put a second rate IS system into a first class system?

I could respond "ask Sony"; but I'm going to guess that the point was to reduce overall system costs.

By putting IS in the body, you buy it once, rather than for every lens.

I admit I am not familiar with disadvantages to the location of the IS.

If it were that great Canon & Nikon would not be the big 2 that they are. Build a better mouse trap and the world will indeed beat a path to your door.

 

[Railphotog]

I don't understand the assertion that Canon EF lenses don't work properly or fully on their EOS M camera with an adapter. I got an EOS M a few weeks ago, and the aftermarket adapter (at about a quarter the price of the Canon one) arrived this week. Seems to work fine with the several EF lenses I've tried. Am I missing something here? I also got an adapter for my FD lenses, the few I've tried worked to, of course in manual focus mode.

 

[robbins.photo]

Why put a second rate IS system into a first class system?

I could respond "ask Sony"; but I'm going to guess that the point was to reduce overall system costs.

By putting IS in the body, you buy it once, rather than for every lens.

I admit I am not familiar with disadvantages to the location of the IS.

If it were that great Canon & Nikon would not be the big 2 that they are. Build a better mouse trap and the world will indeed beat a path to your door.

Well except for the beggars, who apparently lack the horses necessary to make such a journey.

 

[JerryLove]

I don't understand the assertion that Canon EF lenses don't work properly or fully on their EOS M camera with an adapter. I got an EOS M a few weeks ago, and the aftermarket adapter (at about a quarter the price of the Canon one) arrived this week. Seems to work fine with the several EF lenses I've tried. Am I missing something here? I also got an adapter for my FD lenses, the few I've tried worked to, of course in manual focus mode.

That's been amended. I was wrong regrading that particular combination.

The only "problem" seems to be that the EOS M has an inferior phase autofocus to its SLR brethren; but that's not the fault of the adapter.

 

[JerryLove]

If it were that great Canon & Nikon would not be the big 2 that they are. Build a better mouse trap and the world will indeed beat a path to your door.

Which was better? Beta or VHS? Amiga or PC? ISA or EISA? Sometimes marketing, or market, or just momentum keep the better product from coming out. Sometimes the companies with them don't put them out because of "strategic cost".

 

[Derrel]

Good point on the Beta vs VHS issue. SONY refused to license its proprietary Betamax video tape recording and playback intellectual property, and as a result, the FREELY-LICENSED VHS format, with somewhat inferior technological performance, proliferated widely and smothered Betamax. One would have thought that SONY would learn from that, but they had several more catastrophic eff-ups over the years. Another catastrophic blunder was Memory Stick, their proprietary camera memory format which KILLED their early efforts at gaining an early foothold in the digital camera industry; once again, their corporate greed screwed them over, and their cameras were seen as "a breed apart" and as "not getting along with others".

Later, after Sony bought Konica/Minolta, they alienated potential "switchers" from other d-slr systems when they insisted on keeping the Minolta-ONLY hotshoe design in an industry utterly DOMINATED by the ISO-style flash hotshoe that ALL other camera, accessory, and flash manufacturers use. So, once again, a CRITICAL mistake at the start of an entry into the "serious" camera business made Sony-branded cameras "different" from Nikon and Canon and even Pentax. No sharing of PocketWizards or even cheap Poverty Wizard triggers...no sharing of flash brackets or umbrella swivel mounts, just as the "Strobist" movement exploded.

Sometimes, corporate stupidity and vain, Japanese pridefulness and insularity can torpedo a product, or an entire line of products. Sony is a great example of this.

 

[minicoop1985]

Later, after Sony bought Konica/Minolta, they alienated potential "switchers" from other d-slr systems when they insisted on keeping the Minolta-ONLY hotshoe design in an industry utterly DOMINATED by the ISO-style flash hotshoe that ALL other camera, accessory, and flash manufacturers use. So, once again, a CRITICAL mistake at the start of an entry into the "serious" camera business made Sony-branded cameras "different" from Nikon and Canon and even Pentax. No sharing of PocketWizards or even cheap Poverty Wizard triggers...no sharing of flash brackets or umbrella swivel mounts, just as the "Strobist" movement exploded.

Sometimes, corporate stupidity and vain, Japanese pridefulness and insularity can torpedo a product, or an entire line of products. Sony is a great example of this.

It could also be argued that they were in a crappy spot because of those Minolta flashes, and had to choose to alienate someone. Instead of alienate the Minolta diehards, they chose to alienate... well, everyone else, pretty much. No matter what, that shoe was an absolute failure in my opinion. It's about time they abandoned it, and as far as I'm aware, they have.

 

[Designer]

Sony is a great example of this.

You can add their proprietary battery designs as well.

 

[KmH]

Flange focal distance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Image stabilization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

One of the primary disadvantages of moving the image sensor itself is that the image projected to the viewfinder is not stabilized. However, this is not an issue on cameras that use an electronic viewfinder (EVF), since the image projected on that viewfinder is taken from the image sensor itself. Similarly, the image projected to a phase-detection autofocus system, if used, is not stabilized.
In-body image stabilization requires the lens to have a larger output image circle because the sensor is moved during exposure and thus uses a larger part of the image. Compared to lens movements in optical image stabilization systems the sensor movements are quite large, so the effectiveness is limited by the maximum range of sensor movement, where a typical modern optically stabilized lens has greater freedom. The required sensor movement (both speed and range) increase with the focal length of the lens being used, making sensor-shift technology less suited for very long telephoto lenses, especially when using slower shutter speeds because the available motion range of the sensor quickly becomes insufficient to cope with the increasing image displacement.