Why do major manufacturers like Canon, Nikon, Sigma not make manual lenses?

[imagemaker46]

The manual world of photography has pretty much run it's course, technology changed to make it easier and faster for anyone with a camera to produce simple images without having to worry about really having to know much about photography. I believe it's safe to say 99% of the people using digital cameras right now couldn't focus a manual lens with any kind of consistency, if they had to use one on a moving object the delete rate would be close to 100%. It is a skill that requires a lot of practice to get really good at.

 

[Steve5D]

The manual world of photography has pretty much run it's course, technology changed to make it easier and faster for anyone with a camera to produce simple images without having to worry about really having to know much about photography. I believe it's safe to say 99% of the people using digital cameras right now couldn't focus a manual lens with any kind of consistency, if they had to use one on a moving object the delete rate would be close to 100%. It is a skill that requires a lot of practice to get really good at.

I would posit that it's a skill which one could easily get by without. I honestly can't remember the last time I used manual focus...

 

[gsgary]

The manual world of photography has pretty much run it's course, technology changed to make it easier and faster for anyone with a camera to produce simple images without having to worry about really having to know much about photography. I believe it's safe to say 99% of the people using digital cameras right now couldn't focus a manual lens with any kind of consistency, if they had to use one on a moving object the delete rate would be close to 100%. It is a skill that requires a lot of practice to get really good at.

I get more in focus with my manual M4 leicas than i got with Canon

 

[imagemaker46]

The manual world of photography has pretty much run it's course, technology changed to make it easier and faster for anyone with a camera to produce simple images without having to worry about really having to know much about photography. I believe it's safe to say 99% of the people using digital cameras right now couldn't focus a manual lens with any kind of consistency, if they had to use one on a moving object the delete rate would be close to 100%. It is a skill that requires a lot of practice to get really good at.

I would posit that it's a skill which one could easily get by without. I honestly can't remember the last time I used manual focus...

I agree to a point, but I still use manual focus all the time. For the new world of photography and the average camera owner, it is not something they will ever have to learn, for most there simply is not need.

 

[amolitor]

How do you manage to manual focus? Modern AF-based cameras give you truly miserable support..

Do you use the AF system to tell you when it's right? Or did you pony up for third party screens with proper focusing aids? Something else?

 

[slow231]

HA at comparing AF and aperture selection to IS. Even on a manual lens, focus + aperture selection must eventually be translated to just rotating a single dial. figuring out how to actuate that single mechanism isn't rocket science. can you conceive of a single dial that would handle IS? not only are there multiple directions/angles of motion (for potentially multiple elements), but incorporating this feature means that the lens must also be able to determine the appropriate directions to move! it's not at all as simple as just moving a single degree of freedom to known positions (or positions as determined by the body AF sensor).

and ROFL at the prototyping comment.

 

[imagemaker46]

How do you manage to manual focus? Modern AF-based cameras give you truly miserable support..

Do you use the AF system to tell you when it's right? Or did you pony up for third party screens with proper focusing aids? Something else?

On my 70-200 and my 300mm, I have no trouble switching off the auto focus. I have a manual 400 2.8 FD that I use to shoot some sports, it works just great. I like the challenge from time to time.

 

[Derrel]

Gavjenks, others: Not sure if ya'll read Rorger Cicala's columns over at the lensrentals.com site, but he and the crew there have some good articles recently showing pictures from teardowns of AF lenses. Modern autofocus lenses are JAM-PACKED with stuff,and are very complex machines! Last week they did their traditional post on lens failure rates, located at LensRentals.com - Lensrentals Repair Data: 2012-2013

I bring this up vis a vis the comments made earlier about the inexpensive manual focus lenses marketed under the Rokinon brand name in the USA. The four Rokinon models that Lensrentals.com stocks have in 2012-13, lead their list of "quickest to fail" lenses. Eight weeks, 11 weeks, and 19 weeks are the average failure times for their 35mm. 24mm, and 14mm manual focus lenses. If I am not mistaken, these Rokinon manual focus lenses are also marketed under the Bower brand, and the Samyang brand, depending on country of sale. I know Roger considerers these lenses to fall under what he has referred to on several occasions as the "SamyRokiBow" lenses; lenses which have good stats, good optics, but which are, for the folks at Lensrentals "disposable lenses" that they throw away instead of repair; Lensrentals does not have any factory repair connections with the makers of these lenses.



Anyway...I guess this shows another piece of the puzzle that is lens manufacturing. Rokinon lenses, 3 of the 4 Lensrentals.com has offered this past year, tend to break down at an astonishingly high rate. I mean, eight weeks to failure, on AVERAGE? And 11 weeks to failure? Wow...that seems like very shoddy manufacturing, or utterly craptastic engineering.

 

[Steve5D]

I agree to a point, but I still use manual focus all the time. For the new world of photography and the average camera owner, it is not something they will ever have to learn, for most there simply is not need.

There's really no need for pros, either.

For instance, when I use my 70-200mm f/2.8L, I use it in AF.

Exclusively.

I've not shot a single frame with that lens in which I used manual focus, and I've owned the lens for over seven years.

I'm having a difficult time coming up with a scenario in which I would want, or need, to manually focus...

 

[Gavjenks]

Manufacturers are in the business to sell stuff for a profit, not to make it more affordable for the 1% that might care.

The Canon technical R&D people are ALREADY working on exactly the sort of stuff I'm talking about: diffractive optics, aspherics, etc. This is not some wild goose chase side project that would distract them from their main profit makers. It's just capitalizing on whatever they are already researching with a few more iterations to capture a larger market share.

What I'm suggesting does not require any huge industrial research initiatives or other major up front costs compared to other lenses. It involves designing some already existing technology into a metal tube and then sending it to the factory. And there are no electronics, remember, so it really is pretty much a metal tube with a focuser (trivial to design when there aren't electronics in the way) and an iris aperture (similarly). This should be absolute child's play for companies like this and take almost no resources compared to the huge upfront costs already invested in factories and tech.

You're acting as if physical lens design is somehow the bottleneck at companies like Nikon or Canon. It's, um, not. They could probably roll out 50 new lenses next year if they felt like it.

And since lens design is such a tiny marginal cost to their whole business, they should be able to justify it even with tiny increases to profits. In other words, if redesigning a simimlar lens without the electronics only represents a 5% marginal increase in overall costs, then it can be justified with 5% of normal revenue increase. And if it snags a new customer to your brand (niche folks), then you can justify it for WAY WAY less, because they'll also be buying other things most likely.

If that weren't true, do you think Canon would be selling any $2500 tilt shift lenses? No, they wouldn't. These are vastly more complex to design than a standard fixed manual lens, and appeal to a probably even smaller market (I for one have a few friends who commonly shoot manual, and don't know anybody who owns a non-lensbaby tilt). Yet they sell multiple versions of them.

One additional note on the high price items or luxury items. Manufacturers usually want or need to maintain that status.

I quite understand and agree. But please note that I'm not suggesting they make cheap, terrible lenses. Just because it's manual doesn't mean it can't have world class near-perfect optics, weather sealing, magnesium body, whatever you want in a luxury lens. In fact, the whole point is that by not having electronics, all the rest of the stuff can be even MORE luxury than normal.

Just... different. Which doesn't hurt a company's high class reputation at all.

The answer is profoundly simple: They won't sell enough of them to make the investment, on their part, worthwhile.

It might be that, but like I was musing above, it's hard to imagine how the marginal R&D cost of such a type of lens would amount to much of anything at all to Canon or Nikon. I mean, without electronics, we're talking maybe a month's work for like one guy to design it, and then some testing and industrial optimization.

And the marginal production cost is less irrelevant, because if you make 10,000 units, you only pay for 10,000 lenses worth of materials in exchange for your 10,000 lenses of revenue. Setting up a factory would add overhead to this, but I'm imagining they have fairly flexible and automated assembly lines for a standard tube lens design.

it would make much more sense to me if they were choosing not to for marketing reasons of some sort. More similar to the quote above this one about "luxury name brand street cred" but not exactly from the luxury angle. Something similar perhaps, though, about how they want to present themselves or something. But I can't quite put my finger on it.

HA at comparing AF and aperture selection to IS. Even on a manual lens, focus + aperture selection must eventually be translated to just rotating a single dial. figuring out how to actuate that single mechanism isn't rocket science. can you conceive of a single dial that would handle IS?

Uh yes, actually. IS is not nearly as complicated as you seem to be making it out to be. The core concept is like a high school science fair project level of complexity. It's basically a lens with some magnets and then another ring of magnets around it, and they turn on the magnets in the opposite direction that is detected by angle sensors, in 2 dimensions. The end, pretty much.

It is in a very real sense, a sort of electronic single "ring" that is spun to whatever the opposite of the resultant vector of motion is at any given time. Pretty much a 1-dimensional actuation if you think in polar coordinates, very similar to aperture or focus.

There's really no need for pros, either [to manually focus].

The idea of the thread isn't that MF is better. It's pretty clearly not, on average. It's that it's cheaper, and not usually strictly necessary. It's nice to have the option to not pay for unnecessary creature comforts sometimes, and choose performance instead.

 

[Steve5D]

It might be that, but like I was musing above, it's hard to imagine how the marginal R&D cost of such a type of lens would amount to much of anything at all to Canon or Nikon. I mean, without electronics, we're talking maybe a month's work for like one guy to design it, and then some testing and industrial optimization.

There's no "might" about it.

That's the reason.

You've grossly oversimplified the question about R&D. Any significant change (and this would be one) is going to be met with a need to do R&D. It's not as simple as putting optics into a metal tube. Since all of the AF stuff is taken out, what will now fill the physical space once occupied by the AF stuff? That has to happen, and it's going to happen through R&D.

Everything affects everything else, regardless of how slight that impact might be. And, above all else, there has to be a significant enough market for something for a manufacturer to put something into production.

A manual focus only lens? I just don't see a significant enough customer base for such a thing to entice a manufacturer to change things up, especially when all someone has to do, if they want manual focus bad enough, is to switch AF off on an already available lens...

 

[table1349]

There is a simple solution to your dilemma. Contact Canon tell them what you want, send them a check to cover the costs and they will make it for you. Hold on to our wallet thoght cause it is going to make the cost of Leica lenses look like the average lens you can pick up in any quicky mart along with you cigaretts, beer and porn.

Do you really think the Canon 5200mm f14 was a production lens. It was a speciality lens that was made to order. The 1200mm f5.6 is no longer in production either. It was another speciality lens that died from Lack of Demand.

If you want some off beat speciality lens then you pay the price to have it made. R&D costs money, Re-tooling also costs money as well as time. In the manufacturing world, time IS money.

If you are confident enough that there is a market for what you suggested, I am sure that Canon will gladly produce all you want and you can be the supplier of this revolutionalry new lens. Remeber anything can be done if you have the money.

 

[amolitor]

Gavjenks has demonstrated repeatedly that he's a smart dude without a shred of understanding about manufacturing and the R&D machinery that goes behind it.

 

[Gavjenks]

The Canon 1200mm f/5.6 L sold maybe a couple of dozen copies ever, at $80,000 each. And it wasn't a failing proposition for Canon, because they continued to manufacture more over the course of years. They wouldn't do that if they were losing money.

So that means that the 1200 5.6L only ever grossed a revenue of a couple of million dollars over the whole production run, and this was enough to justify it to Canon. Considering that 10% of the revenue of a product being R&D is really high even for a high tech camera company, this especially weird lens might have required let's say 15% R&D, or $300,000.

Even if a normal consumer run of the mill lens cost as much to design and prototype as that ridiculous thing (unlikely), and if it sold for about a normal $300, then you would only have to sell 10,000 units for R&D to be down to 10% of the revenue. Niche market is just fine at those amounts.




Plus, we already know that there are companies who DO sell brand new manufactured fully manual lenses. Like the aforementioned Rokinon. So there's obviously a market for them. And if Rokinon lenses fall apart in less than a year, then not only is there a market, but there's a market that could be serviced much better / taken over mostly by a more competent manufacturer for just a tad more money.

 

[imagemaker46]

I agree to a point, but I still use manual focus all the time. For the new world of photography and the average camera owner, it is not something they will ever have to learn, for most there simply is not need.

There's really no need for pros, either.

For instance, when I use my 70-200mm f/2.8L, I use it in AF.

Exclusively.

I've not shot a single frame with that lens in which I used manual focus, and I've owned the lens for over seven years.

I'm having a difficult time coming up with a scenario in which I would want, or need, to manually focus...

Like I said I do focus manually quite often. It all depends on the situations. Bottom line is "whatever works for the individual" Some people have enough trouble using AF.