wdross wrote:
When Canon and Nikon came out with their mirrorless cameras, I thought they would come out with a common mount. I was wrong; they didn't use a common mount for their format like Panasonic and Olympus did in 4/3rds. Nothing in common even with the Sony FF mount. But now it looks like Leica, Panasonic, and Sigma are going to truly give the full frame market a run for their money. They will use the Leica SL mount. That means when one makes a new body or new lens, the SL systems will get a new body and lens. This is going to make much harder for Canon, Nikon, and Sony to compete against them. I could buy a Panasonic body, a Leica lens, and a Sigma lens and have it all work for and as a system. And maybe the rumors are true for Olympus FF - especially if they would go with an SL mount. This would not spell "good times" for Canon, Nikon, and Sony in the FF market: three or four companies acting similar to one big company against their individual mount systems. Only the future will tell.
When Canon and Nikon came out with their mirrorles... (
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Actually, I don't see how Panny, Siggy and Leica have much choice but to combine their efforts.
And I'd never heard a rumor of Canon and Nikon developing a common mount (would have been extremely surprised had they done so).
I doubt that Canon, Nikon and Sony are very worried.
- Canon has approx. 50% of the interchangeable lens camera (ILC) market worldwide.
- Nikon has approx. 25% of the ILC market
- Sony has approx. 13% of the ILC market.
- The remaining approx. 12% of ILCs sold worlwide is divided up among Fuji, Olympus, Panasonic, Leica, Sigma and one or two others.
And, as of right now, there are exactly six SL-mount lenses.... the cheapest of which cost $4750 (75mm f/2) and $4950 (50mm f/1.4).
While Canon's EOS R is introducing with four lenses and Nikon's two Z models with three lenses.... both plan to add a lot more native lenses for their cameras and both can immediately utilize their respective full frame DSLR lenses via adapters. This increases the number of available lenses for each to more than 60 lenses. And that's not counting all the third party lenses made for them, which probably increases it to over 100 lenses to choose among.
To be fair.... There are some lens adapters for the SL system too.
- There's an adapter ($1300!) for Leica S-system lenses. There are 13 lenses for that medium format system... costing between $4400 and $11,000 (for a 30-90mm zoom!)
- There's an adapter ($750) to allow vintage, manual focus Leica R-system (35mm SLR) lenses to be used. Those are no longer manufactured, but might be found used.
- 3rd party adapter is available to allow Nikon F-mount full frame (FX) lenses to be used on SL mount (Novoflex, $830).
- 3rd party adapter is available to allow Canon EOS/EF mount full frame lenses to be used on SL mount (Novovlex, $655).
- 3rd party adapter to allow Sony/Minolta A series lenses (manual aperture control only) to be used on SL mount (Novoflex, $293).
On the other hand, there aren't yet but you can be certain there will be a ton of different adapters allowing use of many different mounts on both the Nikon Z and Canon R cameras (there already are a bunch available for the Canon M-series APS-C mirrorless and for the Sony full frame & APS-C mirrorless).
I doubt Nikon and Canon are very worried. Not having full frame mirrorless until now, they can only see brighter days ahead.
And I actually think it's a great idea for Panny, Siggy and Leica to team up. The competition will be welcome and can only help urge Canon, Nikon and Sony to do better.
If anyone should be worried, I'd say it should be Sony. They've been almost the only manufacturer offering full frame mirrorless for several years now (Leica SL system is hardly a blip, cannot possibly sell all that many, it's so high priced). Suddenly Sony has competition from the two largest camera manufacturers! And this latest announcement about an SL-mount coop can't be good news for Sony!
Remains to be seen what Olympus will do... they only offer micro Four/Thirds now and haven't made any full frame capable lenses in some time, AFAIK.
Pentax/Ricoh... too. No real mirrorless in any format at this point in time (nothing new in the Q-system in 3 or 4 years). But they have both APS-C and full frame DSLRs, might have their eye on new mirrorless products, too.
Fujifilm is the other major mirrorless player... I would guess will stay their course with their APS-C format and medium format mirrorless systems. They probably don't feel the need to join the crowd in the full frame mirrorless smack down.
We'll know more next week, when rumors are that Panasonic will be announcing at least one and maybe two full frame mirrorless. Sigma is best known for producing lenses for other manufacturers cameras, and that will probably be their primary role with the SL system mirrorless, too. But Sigma has also been manufacturing and offering their own DSLRs and lenses to fit them, for quite a few years. It's just not a big seller (maybe it will be in the future).
I'm waiting for the next announcement from Canon... I suspect it will be a mirrorless replacement for the 50MP 5DS/5DS-R, which are the oldest full frame models in their line-up now, dating from way back in 2015! (The APS-C 7D Mark II is the only EOS that's slightly older. But I think will it probably be replaced by another DSLR, not a mirrorless.... at least not in this round of updates.)