...because doing the sweet spot in the middle where we all probably live today won't be very successful financially. Consider: just rebuilding EF portfolio of lenses in RF will not:
- Bring all the EF faithful over to RF (they'll just adapt EF)
- Bring new users to the RF platform
- Allow Canon to build new price points
- Make much hay over what Sony and Nikon are doing
So Canon has to be a spray hitter here and play to all fields:
- Some crazy fast / industry first stuff
- Some crazy tiny lenses for the 'mirrorless is all about being small' crowd
- The odd staple f/2.8 zooms to bring in the pros
- Clever innovations to show that the company isn't resting on its laurels (adaptors with control rings / filter slots, collapsible superteles, 1:2 macro as a standard feature in affordable primes, etc.)
It's a very wise strategy, IMHO. Take any other approach -- all in on fast, all in on small, all in on cheap -- and too much of the future market would go begging. Canon's a huge company and needs to build an army that can fight on all fronts.
- A
100%, it's a great strategy. As someone who already had all the EF glass I've ever needed, one of my #1 priorities for getting the R5 is to use unique new RF glass I can't get on EF mount. The 28-70 F/2 is a huge reason I'm excited to pre-order the R5, that adds a whole stop of light to nighttime news work and is invaluable. If they pull off a 70-135 f/2 or 14-24 f/2, that will also be under heavy consideration for me.
And then on the other end of the spectrum, in my free time I've found myself feeling less inclined to lug 20 pounds of kit with me when spending time with family. That has given me a huge incentive to get a smaller, lighter kit than my 1DX2. This is a spot where the super compact RF 70-200 shines, too. I went to NYC in February and left my long glass at home since the 1DX2 was heavy enough already, just bringing the 24-70 and 50 1.8. In an ideal RF world, I'd have been able to bring the R5, 35 1.8, 24-70, 70-200 2.8, and probably still would have been less weight and taken up less space than the 1dx2 kit I had with me. I did really miss a lot of shots from leaving the 70-200 at home, but it just takes up so much space.
This is also an area where the 600mm f/11 definitely has its place. A 70-200 was already pushing it for me, but absolutely no chance I'd ever bring any current supertelephoto in that situation of walking around all day. But a compact collapsible 600 that weighs less than the tiny RF 70-200? That's a lens that would totally be worth the slight increase in weight on a vacation if you knew there were opportunities for long shots. Like in NYC, I saw the statue of liberty at a huge distance in broad daylight and probably couldn't have even gotten a shot at 200mm, but 600mm would have definitely given a unique, awesome landscape view of it. Most vacation activities are during the day anyway, so why worry about F/11.
I'm much more fascinated by these new, unique lenses than I am any standard replacement to my EF glass. Until the R1 comes out, I'm going to need my EF glass on my 1dx2 as a secondary camera anyway.