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Since the story broke last week that Viltrox was told by Canon to cease making any autofocus lens for the RF mount, there has been a lot of chatter for obvious reasons. The lack of RF native autofocus third party lenses has become a growing concern amongst shooters.
One of the good things to come from multiple folks covering this issue, is people begin to talk a bit more candidly about the topic at hand.
I have spoken to two quality sources on the topic, from completely different geographical locations and they both have said very similar things.
The big one being, Canon has no plans to give permission to third party manufacturers to utilize their RF mount patents as they pertain to electronics and autofocus anytime in the near future.
We have been told that there are a few reasons for this, and please don't shoot the messenger.
- Canon doesn't feel the RF lineup is anywhere near maturity, and they want the lineup filled out with their own lenses first. Canon still has lots of work to do in both the non-L and L lineups.
- Canon believes the “more affordable” options are already covered by the hundred and whatever million EF lenses out there that work extremely well on the RF mount with Canon's line of adapters.
- Canon isn't done with tweaks and improvements to the RF mount.
One of the sources said not to expect anything from the third-party manufacturers until late 2024 at the earliest, and that not every manufacturer is going to be given the opportunity to make RF lenses.
Until Canon releases an official statement, please take the above report accordingly. We're hoping that this run of stories will push Canon to be more transparent on the topic in the near future.
