Earlier this week I was made aware that Samyang had removed all RF lenses from their website. The responses from Samyang representatives on social media were ambiguous at best.
However, a more direct response was given to a DPReview forum member on the matter.
The reasons behind this are not yet known, but it should be noted that RF mount lenses still appear on the Rokinon website. Rokinon is a brand owned by Samyang Optics. This could just be a shift in branding and cost reduction, or it could be something else.
I hope we see an official statement from Samyang in the near future.
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*Just a silly aside... for the U.S. market the branding should be Hemi, Thunderbird, or Biscuit. :p To my ear, neither Rokinon nor Samyang sound nice.
Hmmmm.... Thunderbird RF 85mm f/1.4
*I'm comfortable that as long as Canon has Nikon, Sony, and Fuji competing, they can make arguably bad decisions and the market will show them whether being more open source vs. proprietary makes more sense for them.
Very likely the same reason we still don't have Sigma/Tamron RF mount lenses several years after its launch.
Can firmware updates block third party EF protocol on an RF mount?
I definitely see them being able to block third party RF lenses trying to use the RF protocol.
If Canon sold an SDK, then yes, it would be partly Canon's responsibility to troubleshoot issues. There is zero real financial benefits for Canon in this situation and all of the third-party lenses that purchased and licensed Canon's tech would cost significantly more.
On the other hand, the EF mount is second in popularity in cinema and ENG to PL. If Canon wants to replicate that with RF then they can't go it completely alone. They seem to be assisting RED with the Komodo but neither company has said anything publicly. There are a few cinema cameras that support Sony E-mount but those are complete dumb mounts.
Car companies rely on third parties to make compatible parts.
The way camera companies work is by constantly upgrading firmware and the only car company that works like that is Tesla.
Not surprisingly, replacing certain parts with on a Tesla with third party parts is risky.
More car companies are following the over-the-air update model of Tesla but I imagine Ford will be more accomodating to parts suppliers.
At the end of the day, if you want your gear to operate as intended.... buy the Canon. It's really simple. If I want a high horsepower engine with no real issues, I'm free to buy the $20,000 crate engine from the automaker, instead of trying to pay half as much with third-party products.
As the cliche goes, you get what you pay for.