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

[480sparky]

That is not possible. I want the Cliff Notes with an automatic page turner, and automated voice reading them to me using Zoe Deschanel's voice. If that is not possible I want to know Why....why....why.....why.....why!!!

Oh, well..... then you want the hellogiggles version as well as the APT upgrade option. Those two are bundled in the IWIA Package, available for a mere $18,750.00 US.

 

[Derrel]

Well, back to the original question. As I posted early on, Nikon currently makes 11 different manual focus lenses. Until about five years ago, Nikon made I think it was 23 different manual focusing lenses in 35mm. Nikon QUIT making ALL large-format lenses during the decade of the 2000's. Just not enough market share to bother pursuing for Nikon to even want to compete for its tiny slice of the pie. Sooo...Nikon still makes and sells 11 manual focus lenses, three of which are tilt/shift models. In this, the second decade of the 21st century, manually focusing lenses are quite simply, less-desirable than autofocusing lenses, in almost all product categories. History is filled with examples other obsolete items, which were at ONE TIME, considered mass-market items. Straight razors once ruled; now "safety razor" blades dominate. Hand-cranked cars once dominated; now cars are started by electric motors. At one time, radios and TV sets used vacuum tubes, but today solid-state components dominate. At one time, there was a pretty good trade in slide rules, but electronic calculators took over. At one time, pagers were all the rage, but today the cool kids all have smart phones. At one time, cribs filled with corn cobs had value; the year 1865 or so marked the year of the first toilet paper. At one time, salted pork and salted codfish were the sailor's food supply; today sailor's world-wide eat freeze-dried or vacuum-packaged foods of ALL types. See how this works?

How about some hand-cranked cars, some salt pork snacks, some corn-cob TP, and an old tube-fired radio? You could borrow my 1974 Pickett slide rule to figure out the costs, and the per-unit expected return on investment, and so on. Working of course, by a nice whale-oil lamp.

 

[table1349]

That is not possible. I want the Cliff Notes with an automatic page turner, and automated voice reading them to me using Zoe Deschanel's voice. If that is not possible I want to know Why....why....why.....why.....why!!!

Oh, well..... then you want the hellogiggles version as well as the APT upgrade option. Those two are bundled in the IWIA Package, available for a mere $18,750.00 US.

I am quite excited to see that you are willing to step outside of your usual business model and manufacture something to my requested specifications. Considering the amount of work your R&D people will have to do, the cost of retooling and the special materials required I feel that your price is quite fair. In fact, I would like to order 2 at $18,750.00. The check is in the mail.

 

[480sparky]

Go out and try to buy an icepick.

Or a buggy whip.


Heck, even NASA admits they no longer have the technology on the shelf to go back to the moon right now.

 

[jake337]

I thought you could still buy a Nikkor 50mm f1.2 ais new.

 

[runnah]

I thought you could still buy a Nikkor 50mm f1.2 ais new.

Oh man you just divided by zero!

 

[Derrel]

I thought you could still buy a Nikkor 50mm f1.2 ais new.

Yes, you CAN; it is still in the lineup. Official Nikon price from their website this week is $724.95 for the 50mm f/1.2 Ai-S.

 

[amolitor]

It's possible that Nikon is selling the MF lenses from existing inventory, I can't imagine they're flying off the shelves. Or, they may still be building them. Surely they are still building the PC lenses. Regardless, unlike Canon, Nikon's manual focus lens designs from the 1970s are still perfectly functional on their current model cameras. The R&D and tooling costs are probably all off the books at this point, so anything they can sell is, well, it's not pure profit but it's a lot more like it.

If they're sharing lens elements with the AF lenses, it gets even cheaper. Not sure that's the case though. The 50/1.4 designs, for instance, seem to be different.

 

[Gavjenks]

Yes, I understand that buggy whips and ice picks and whale oil lamps are obsolete.

The point is though that there is a company that is currently manufacturing manual only lenses and seemingly selling quite a few of them. I'm not aware of any companies that publish specific lens sales amounts, but a look at Amazon, for instance, shows 104 reviews for the manual Rokinon 14mm f/2.8, and 22 reviews for the ultrasonic fully autofocus, etc. Canon 14mm f/2.8.

(Also, incidentally, only ONE of the reviews mentioned the lens breaking after purchase. So I'm a little less convinced now after looking that up that these are in fact slap-shod lenses. Quality control seems lower than Canon, but not terrible in terms of number of people sending their first copy back and then being happy with the second).



If I went to Walmart and saw 4x as many whale oil lamps being sold as GE 60 watt lightbulbs, then i wouldn't be so quick to say that whale oil lamps were in fact obsolete.

 

[Gavjenks]

Bayesian models require SOME actual measured input.

No they don't. I have been studying Bayesian models for about 4 years, and wrote my comps exam on the topic (equivalent of a master's thesis), and I assure you, Bayesian modelers use flat prior distributions and flat likelihood distributions all the time, in published works too. Not just that by itself, usually more like as a starting point for a discussion to compare other more informed models to. But the only reason it's not done by itself is because it's boring in and of itself. Not because it's invalid. If you have no information at all, in fact, a flat distribution is just as valid as any other.

In other situations, people will sometimes publish models where the ONLY distribution they are ever given is just some generic normal distribution or something, which was not measured for that particular case, but is merely guesstimated from an armchair based on a general understanding that biological things often tend to be normally distributed, or similar.

Some Bayesians play it pretty fast and loose. Others are more careful and empirical. But the Bayesian theory itself doesn't really apply more to one or the other or anything. It's just a statistical formula that can take anything as input, and only guarantees outputs as good as what you gave it.

Kudos on picking up on the (unstated) Bayesian vibe there, by the way.



Edit: real human beings do the equivalent of no-input Bayesian models too, by the way, "in the field." Any time you've ever had no idea what an answer was and flipped a coin or just randomly chosen a multiple choice answer, that's what you were effectively doing, from a Bayesian perspective.

 

[480sparky]

Yes, I understand that buggy whips and ice picks and whale oil lamps are obsolete............

Seems you DON'T 'understand'. They AREN'T obsolete. They CAN be purchased, even here in the US of A. The reason YOU don't see them for sale in the stores is the stores you shop at don't carry them because the vast majority of their customers aren't wanting to buy them.

But if you go to a tack shop, I'll bet you can buy buggy whips to your heart's content. Ice picks? Go to one of the old-time Mom & Pop one-of hardware stores. Oil lamps? Heck, even I own two of 'em!


Now if you'll excuse me, I have Zooey Deschanel's agent on the line.....

 

[slow231]

I had a whole big notepad file with responses to various things, but it got too long and cumbersome. So I will address only three overarching points:

1) Some people thinking I'm annoying in how I discuss things

My goal is not to just fight without any care as to learning anything. Quite the contrary, if I didn't push people about things, indeed often outside my experience, then I wouldn't learn as much! It's quite effective at finding and understanding answers to questions, actually. I have found this much more effective than just asking and then politely nodding your head. Because if you just ask and then walk away or don't push at all, the only thing you get an answer to is whatever you asked, which is usually not the right question if you didn't know what was going on to begin with. Devil's advocacy steers a conversation several steps in the right direction beyond that.

it's not really devils advocacy to just turn a deaf ear and make incorrect statements and baseless arguments. best case i chalk it up to ignorance, but the manner and absolution in which you make incorrect statements is annoying and undermining to the pursuit of actual knowledge.

This is why, for example, scientific journals are much more likely to print your articles if you say "This theory is the best thing since sliced bread, and these other 3 are totally wrong" even if you only actually give about a page of explanation why for each one and only disprove 30% of their theory with data. That sort of rivalry and effectively devil's advocacy advances science more rapidly, by lighting fires under people's butts and making them engaged in firing back with more experiments conducted at fever pitch about precisely the weakest parts of their theory, thus everybody strengthens their understanding.

here's a damn good example. i'm a phd engineer and have my share of journal papers under my belt. your statement is clearly from someone who has never published in an academic journal or even anything remotely close. you do realize that journal papers are peer reviewed don't you? meaning that upon submission the editor or associate editor will ask several other researchers in the field to review your paper and make recommendations for acceptance, rejection, or revision. the reviews carry a lot of weight and the revision process can be quite detailed and can last a while (even > 1 year). Needless to say making bold unjustified statements (aside from making you sound like an idiot) is an almost surefire way to get your paper nixed off the break. there is absolutely no point or need for sensationalism, and some statement about objectiveness is included in basically all journal guidelines. the point is to document and communicate your research to the field in order help steer future research in the pursuit of deeper understanding. false claims or sensationalized impact are never in line with this. the idea or need to "light a fire under people's butts" is a laughable, ignorant, and pedestrian. again you're just talking out your a$$. you have to be aware of the fact that you don't know what you're talking about, but it's like you make these statements in the hopes that no one else knows what you're talking about to call you out on it.

This is how I have been trained to learn things. It does however piss some people off. Others not as much. I'm old enough now to have learned that in a recreational setting like this, there's no reason to please everyone though, and instead I should just focus on the people that the core nature of my being does not piss off (overly much). If you (or anyone else this applies to) are not one of those people, by all means avoid my threads.

I will not be insulted or anything!

this part i'm going to have to agree with. you are free to think and say what you want. and i don't normally respond to someone not interested in hearing feedback. but this is getting pretty annoying. Perhaps not voicing that viewpoint is why you are so comfortable with continuing. and although i might be the only one openly annoyed in this thread, i know for a fact that there are others that see through your bs as well.

 

[Overread]

Image is part of the factor as well as streamlining ones market range. Yes you could sell everything, but sometimes you have to cut back and simplify your line up for new users. You also have to consider that the combination of DSLR and lens is designed to be a single operating unit; if you then throw in a wildcard of a manual focusing lens line up you'd have to then also throw in additions to your DSLRs to support that intended use.

In the end Canon and Nikon don't want to make these lenses in the current market; they'd much rather focus their production toward a different market. Yes that means they are leaving a market segment out, but they are not trying to chase every market segment

 

[amolitor]

In other situations, people will sometimes publish models where the ONLY distribution they are ever given is just some generic normal distribution or something, which was not measured for that particular case, but is merely guesstimated from an armchair based on a general understanding that biological things often tend to be normally distributed, or similar.

Some Bayesians play it pretty fast and loose. Others are more careful and empirical. But the Bayesian theory itself doesn't really more to one or the other. It's just a statistical formula that can take anything as input, and only guarantees outputs as good as what you gave it.

Kudos on picking up on the (unstated) Bayesian vibe there, by the way.

The key is in the guesstimating. It's an extremely powerful way of looking at the world, but it cannot produce information from nothing. It's a good way of thinking that can extract the good stuff a lot of the time, but there has to BE some good stuff.

My favorite example is the guy who was trying to figure out where the submarine that had been lost actually WAS. He asked a bunch of experts what they thought. The answers clustered around two areas. So he looked exactly in between those two areas, where exactly zero experts has guessed. The wrecked sub was right there within some absurdly tiny radius of the dot he put on the chart. The point, though, is that the experts were providing masses of actually really great data. They just were not averaging away their personal sources of error very well. The Bayesian way of thinking about it did.

If the guy had asked 1000 randomly selected 5th graders where they thought the sub was, it wouldn't have gone nearly as well.

 

[Derrel]

OMG, this thread makes me wanna just...just...just...

End it all! End the madness!