Some of you are asking why I keep writing about the biggest industry shake up since digital sensors. And this one could involve thousands of dollars lenses becoming obsolete within a few years.
I suppose ostriches with their heads in the sand aren't taking too many photos anyway.
But you are operating under the assumption that with the introduction of a Canon mirrorless FF camera, that ALL EF lenses will suddenly become obsolete. That assumption is flawed.
First, If Canon did suddenly announce that all new mirrorless FF cameras would be using a new and completely incompatible mount to the existing EF mount, there are still 95 MILLION cameras out in the field that use the EF mount. All of these people are still in the market for lenses, EF lenses....
Second, It is not a given that there will be a new mount. There may be, there may not be..... there may even be a FF mirrorless mount for lower end cameras and high end cameras may continue with the existing EF mount.... kind of like rebels and M cameras. Remember, there is a market for tiny cameras, and there is a market for large cameras with better ergonomics and more controls. Canon does not have to choose one or the other, they can ( and almost undoubtedly will) choose both....
Third, a lot of people are heavily invested in the EF system. To suddenly end it is to set those people free to start from scratch. A great deal of them would be royally pissed off, pissed off to the point of buying Nikon or Sony. There is no freaking way that Canon is going to deliberately drive their customers away.
Now, before someone brings up the FD to EF transition, EF gave the users AF capabilities. Even if Canon came up with some magic way to AF FD mount lenses, the users were going to have to buy a new body and new AF-FD lenses anyway. They chose to make a clean break and introduced digital communications, which added a lot more than just AF to lenses.... Going from EF to a new mount brings absolutely ZERO new capacities to the new camera system. Huge risk for no gain? I don't think so!
Fourth, Canon has just introduced a whole slew of new Big Whites.... there is the 100-400, the pair OF 70-200'S, and now a 400F2.8 (and another unspecified lens) are on the way. These lenses are expensive to design and it takes many years to recoup the development and production change costs. These are not the actions of a company getting ready to drop a product line!
Fifth, XD sized camera bodies sell well. This is a very lucrative market. There is no way that Canon will abandon it!!!!!!!
Sixth, People go FF for image quality. At the same time, they tend to gravitate towards large and fast lenses. The lenses make any size savings in the body moot.... If you want a small FF
SYSTEM then you need small lenses, and that means slow lenses, and that runs counter to the desire for image quality.
Give the choice between A) alienating their customer base and driving them to the competition, abandoning a lucrative market, throwing out lots of new research and tooling, and making all their production stock worthless in order to chase after Sony in about 1 percent of the camera market, or B) adding a new model like they did with the M, what do you think is going to happen?
My bet is that the EF mirrored lines will continue for many years into the future, and that eventually there will some mirrorless EF models introduced (both crop and FF). Parallel to this, there will be a more compact FF mirrorless camera with a few lenses, similar to the M series, but with a few L quality SLOW (F5.6 or 6.3) lenses.