General economic theory would say that monopoly behaviour will have the highest prices but the R mount protocols are a proprietary system design and anti-competition regulatory bodies would never intervene. It is simple enough for Sigma/Tamron etc to release R mount lenses today using their reverse engineered EF protocols.Well, in all other market areas monopolies tend to drive prices up and increased competition tends to drive them down. But I understand you think the lens market is uniquely different in some way. I - for one - also hate the adapter even if you may like it.
Strangely enough, there is no lens in this list that I would want/need. I would be tempted by a 14mm/1.4 though if the coma was good.Sigma’s DG DN lenses designed for mirrorless and currently available for E and L mount.
14-24mm f2.8 Art
24-70mm f2.8 Art
28-70mm f2.8 Contemporary
150-600mm Sport
100-400 Contemporary
I-Series
24mm f2
24mm f3.5
35mm f2
45mm f2.8
65mm f2
90mm f2.8
35mm f1.4 Art
35mm f1.2 Art
85mm f1.4 Art
105mm f2.8 Macro Art
That above list excludes the DG HSM options that fit natively but are the older DSLR designs. That’s a lot of options that Canon shooters are missing out on.
If the past is any indication, it seems as though Canon has never been adamant about restricting 3rd parties. They aren't going to make it easy, but they are content to let them reverse engineer their mounts. To me, this makes perfect sense. An overly aggressive approach might alienate customers....If I was Canon and adamant about restricting 3rd parties then I would encrypt the communications end to end. Reverse engineering would be extremely difficult - if not impossible then.
Here in the UKAnother factor that people on this forum are conveniently ignoring is the risk of trying to compete with an immature product line. Third party lens makers survive by offering niche lenses not offered by the big guns. With a mature line like EF, it was much easier to identify the holes and try to fill them. But with RF, they don't yet know where those holes are.
Case in point: for years, the 600mm zooms have been cash cows for both Sigma and Tamron. They met a need that Canon didn't seem interested in filling.
Now, here comes the RF lineup and Canon nuked the market. A 100-500 zoom closes much of the gap between 400 and 600 plus it's lighter than the third party zooms and super responsive and sharp. Canon follows that up with low cost 600 and 800 mm primes and a super light, low-cost 100-400 zoom. It's hard to see where the 600mm zooms fit in and if I were Sigma or Tamron, I wouldn't be spending a penny adapting those lenses for RF.
Another example, the 16mm f2.8 lens that is finding its way into the bags of virtually every R system owner.
As long as Canon is willing to come out of left field with incredibly popular and unexpected lenses, the risks to Tamron, Sigma and Tokina are huge. Makes perfect sense for them to proceed with caution.
You missed the £699 pricing of the RF 100-400mm. It’s a tremendous little featherweight lens that I think is likely to be a major seller. Canon could well capture both the top end and the bottom end of the zoom market. (I have both of them.)Here in the UK
Sigma 150-600 DG DN Sport = £1199
Tamron 150-500 = £1379
Canon 100-500 RF = £2979
What risk is there to the 3rd parties when their options are less than half the price of Canon’s equivalent? I’d say it was the other way around. Not everyone can or is prepared to pay nearly £3K for a telephoto superzoom.
If someone wants to get to 500/600mm but for a reasonable price a 100-400 won’t cut it for a lot of people.You missed the £699 pricing of the RF 100-400mm. It’s a tremendous little featherweight lens that I think is likely to be a major seller. Canon could well capture both the top end and the bottom end of the zoom market. (I have both of them.)
Seeing that there is a 3rd party control ring R mount adapter then the protocols are probably not encrypted but that should be simple to reverse engineer vs combined IBIS/OIS. I would be surprised if Canon allowed IBIS/OIS to be independently switched off in the next firmware but it would be needed for the 3rd parties to get stabilisation working well.If the past is any indication, it seems as though Canon has never been adamant about restricting 3rd parties. They aren't going to make it easy, but they are content to let them reverse engineer their mounts. To me, this makes perfect sense. An overly aggressive approach might alienate customers.
There have been some cases (according to people on the internet) where in the past Canon changed lens protocols and some third party lenses quit working or quit working well. Some people claim that was a deliberate effort by Canon to undermine the competitors, but I believe the official explanation, which makes sense, is that Canon doesn't feel any obligation to make sure third party products work with their products when they need to make changes to improve the performance of their own products. Presumably, one reason why Sigma and Tamron have gone to consoles that enable user-updatable firmware has been to make sure their lenses stay compatible with manufacturer's products.
For those wanting to avoid the high RF prices, you can get the Sigma EF versions and get the adapter. Their Contemporary, Sports, and Art line of lenses are all compatible with the "R system" cameras, as far as I know. Not sure about Tamron. And, of course, most of the Canon EF lenses are available considerably cheaper. So for those who really want to get quality, but less expensive lenses for their R series cameras, the options are there and fairly obvious. For those who are unwilling to accept these options, there really is no reason to complain - other than just wanting to whine and complain on a forum, which seems to be a popular pastime.Here in the UK
Sigma 150-600 DG DN Sport = £1199
Tamron 150-500 = £1379
Canon 100-500 RF = £2979
What risk is there to the 3rd parties when their options are less than half the price of Canon’s equivalent? I’d say it was the other way around. Not everyone can or is prepared to pay nearly £3K for a telephoto superzoom.
it seems quite reasonable to expect Canon to do all they can to restrict 3rd party lenses.
Pretty simple, this one. EOS R released in 2018, and we still have no Sigma or Tamron lenses. Sigma obviously worked with Panasonic to release their entire lineup with L-mount. Once the Sony FE mount had market penetration (building to the a7III, really), they developed lenses for that."The biggest roadblock for SIGMA is apparently manufacturing capabilities beyond just the issues from the pandemic."
But the experts on this forum keep telling us that it is Canon's fault that Sigma has not yet released any RF lenses. Don't tell me they are wrong!
Add a 1.4x extender (about £500?) and you'll get to that range, at a comparable or lower price, with decent results (although nowhere near the RF 100-500 L).If someone wants to get to 500/600mm but for a reasonable price a 100-400 won’t cut it for a lot of people.
I suspect there are more than a few enthusiasts who bought both the Canon 100-400 and one of the 600mm zooms. I bought the Sigma Contemporary because I wanted the extra reach of the 600 zoom. I could have used a 1.4 extender with the 100-400, but with a DSLR that meant you were restricted to only the f8 autofocus points, which in the case of the 7DII, meant having only one center point.Here in the UK
Sigma 150-600 DG DN Sport = £1199
Tamron 150-500 = £1379
Canon 100-500 RF = £2979
What risk is there to the 3rd parties when their options are less than half the price of Canon’s equivalent? I’d say it was the other way around. Not everyone can or is prepared to pay nearly £3K for a telephoto superzoom.
At some point Sigma will have to start making RF lenses, and at the moment there are huge holes across the RF range, begging to be filled. I'm surprised that Sigma is not not dipping a toe in the RF market with a single lens just as a discovery activity to understand the issues. Sigma already has excellent EF lens designs for many of those gaps therefore the engineering effort to convert them to RF is relatively small (in comparison).If your production facilities are already running short of needed parts and materials while trying to meet current demand, adding a new product line that will increase demand and further strain your available resources isn't a good business decision. If that new product line also requires changes in design and modifications in your production lines, it might not be a good idea to make those changes in the middle of a supply shortage. If you are making those changes to meet potential demand for a relatively new product, exercising some caution and not diverting resources from already successful products also makes sense.
In case you haven't noticed, getting product to market is the single biggest challenge facing manufacturers today. Thus, what @Canon Rumors Guy 's sources have told him makes sense. He has a lot more experience and a lot better sources than random people on this forum. I have no reason to doubt him. Why do you think you know more about the situation than his sources do?
I don't know about "creepy cult", but yes, Canon is trying to force customers to buy Canon lenses for their Canon cameras. Annoying to those of us interested in third party lenses, but not that surprising given Canon's history. Their primary goal is making money, and they seem to believe (perhaps correctly) that this will make them more money.Canon seems to be trying to turn their mount into some sort of creepy cult isolated from the rest of the photographic world. That's the way it feels sometimes. If you buy into the Canon system you become forced to use their and only their optical designs and get cut off from the outside world and all the innovations that are taking place elsewhere from lens makers such as Zeiss, Sigma, and Tamron.
The manager of my local camera shop was told something very similar by a Sigma UK rep. He also mentioned that that Sigma had an agreement with Canon to NOT produce RF lenses for the 1st 3 years of the RF mount.
Also I recently watched a YT video by Grays of Westminster who are a Nikon store exclusively. They mentioned being told by a Sigma UK rep that Sigma won’t reverse engineer any lenses for mirrorless. If they don’t get the AF protocols for a mount they won’t support it.
Its been rumoured that Sigma refuse to reverse engineer for mirrorless and that they’ll only produce glass on mounts for which they have protocols provided to them by the OEM. I would guess that Sigma don’t want a situation where their emount glass has licensed support and the AF has near/matching native level performance but RF is reverse engineered and the AF is noticeably inferior compared to native RF glass.
Remember Tamron, Zeiss, Tokina and Voigtländer haven’t supported the RF mount yet either.
I suppose everyone is different, but what you mention is fully a non-issue for me. Once the lens is on, you don't even notice the adapter is there. If you are changing between EF lenses, you just push a different button for the lens release. Its almost fully transparent. The weight is negligible, and while you can measure than an RF equivalent would be an inch or two shorter and a couple of ounces lighter, in practice what you are using is not any larger or heavier than it was on a DSLR. I sometimes feel that people who say things like this about the adapter just haven't really tried it. Of course I'm sure there are people who shoot differently than I do, and maybe they are changing multiple lenses very often.It's the extra size and weight + have to carry the adapter too. When you have a small lens, the adapter adds significant extra size.