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First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Fe...

rscheffler
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

What may be the first third-party lens brand to be licensed by Canon to release products in the RF mount, will be revealed on Feb. 23rd at CP+ in Japan.

The brand with this honor is Voigtlander, manufactured by Cosina. This suggests that whatever Cosina/Voigtlander releases will be manual focus only, given that all Voigtlander lenses produced by Cosina to date have been manual focus. This includes their recent releases for Nikon Z mount, Fuji X mount and going back to all their releases for Sony FE mount.

While I'm sure many will be disappointed by manual focus only, it's a good sign that indeed Canon is willing to authorize third party manufacturers and isn't simply shutting everyone down to lock out access to the system. Given that Cosina made a point with their Nikon Z mount lens releases to state that it was done through licensing with Nikon, would imply a similar situation with Canon. I would be highly skeptical that Cosina would do this without permission and potentially risk a legal challenge by Canon. It also appears to confirm what Canon has previously suggested about permitting third party manual focus releases (IIRC), with AF releases possibly following at a later time.

Here's a facebook video post by Cosina:

https://www.facebook.com/100032994926115/videos/870459390700605/

The teaser states the RF mount offering(s) will have electronic contacts.

Whatever the case, it will be interesting to see how this unfolds!!

For those who don't know Cosina's Voigtlander lenses, the recent releases (past 5-8 years) have rivaled and/or exceeded Leica quality in their M-mount offerings, while maintaining attractive price points. Same goes for their Sony mirrorless-specific releases, etc. It'll be great to see some of these now natively available for Canon RF.

Credit to Fred for first posting this over in the Alt forum.

Feb 18, 2023 at 03:48 PM

EB-1
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

Do they need a license for manual focus lenses? At a glance the Voigtlander lenses look quite retro like mid-20th century designs. Maybe it is not really competition for Canon RF autofocusing and zooming lenses, but more of a complement to attract Sony users?

EBH

Feb 18, 2023 at 04:04 PM

rscheffler
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

I don't know, but it's apparent Cosina doesn't operate the way all the Chinese brands do with regard to Canon RF (and other mirrorless mount) lens releases. With their Nikon Z mount releases, which have been only very recently, they specifically made a point to state it was with Nikon's cooperation.

The thing about Voigtlander design is that Cosina intentionally uses some retro/vintage aesthetics. However, unless the word "classic" is in the product description, the optical performance is very much modern and can compete with any other brand in respect to sharpness, contrast, etc. For reference, please see Fred's reviews of their 35/2 and 50/2 APO lenses in Sony FE and Leica M mount (can be found in their respective boards).

I think the reason you're seeing Voigtlander coming in RF now in addition to Nikon Z and Fuji X, is that it's an untapped opportunity for Cosina. They've already pretty much saturated the market for manual focus mirrorless lenses in Sony FE mount, especially given how Sony has filled out their own lens line up a lot in the last few years. Just makes sense to also release some lenses for the other 'up and coming' mirrorless brands too. Also, Canon's share of mirrorless should quickly rival Sony's, and may eventually overtake it. Even more reason for Cosina to offer RF mount options.

Feb 18, 2023 at 04:12 PM

jcolwell
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

Beauty!

Next, Zeiss.

Feb 18, 2023 at 04:20 PM

burningheart
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

This is exciting. If it comes fruition then I anticipate that the same lenses licensed for the Nikon Z would be offered.

The 35 and 50 APO would be a great addition to add to my Voigtlander EF's but this time an RF mount.

Jim you read my mind.

Feb 18, 2023 at 04:23 PM

rscheffler
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

Zeiss lenses - made by Cosina (at least the ZE/ZF and Otus manual focus lenses).

I wonder if Zeiss even cares any more about their still photography products? They haven't released anything new in years....

For Cosina, by offering manual focus lenses with electronic RF mount, it will be a huge step up compared to all the non-electronic RF mount manual focus competition. This means the Voigtlander lens(es) will support Canon's excellent manual focus assist feature, which is effectively as precise as AF because it's reading focus information right off the sensor. Therefore no need to use magnification or peaking and will be a lot faster and more confidence inspiring to manually focus than the other options. And also it means the camera's IBIS will automatically know the correct focal length.

burningheart wrote:
This is exciting.

100%!!

Feb 18, 2023 at 04:23 PM

rscheffler
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

I'm hoping there will also eventually be a VM-RF close focusing helicoid adapter. If it can be chipped to bring up Canon's manual focus assist, all the better!

A downside is it will make it difficult to decide whether to buy certain lenses in VM (Voigtlander lenses in Leica M-mount) to use on Leica and adapt to Canon, or in RF mount to gain all the electronic mount benefits.

Feb 18, 2023 at 04:28 PM

jcolwell
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

I'm not dissing Voigtlander. This is exciting, in its own right. I still shoot the Voiglander Color-Heliar 75/2.5 SL and APO-Lanthar 180/4 CF ED (both in OM mount). I find they play very well with Zeiss Classic and Canon L lenses.

Also, I have the SW Heliar 15/4.5 ASPH LTM and Snapshot-Skopar 25/4 MC LTM. I'd love to pick up a CV 21mm LTM lens, if my little SMC Pentax-M 20/4 looks too out of place, on a big RF adapter. At longer focal lengths, I get into Canon RF lenses; all for my super-fine Canon 7 rangefinder.

Feb 18, 2023 at 04:35 PM

burningheart
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

rscheffler wrote:
A downside is it will make it difficult to decide whether to buy certain lenses in VM (Voigtlander lenses in Leica M-mount) to use on Leica and adapt to Canon, or in RF mount to gain all the electronic mount benefits.

I've gone down that thought process many times and each time I decided that I like having the confirmation assist on my RF. As to VM lenses the 35 and 50 interested me but given I like the 50 Lux and have the new 35 Lux on order I opted not to get the APO's for M Mount.

Feb 18, 2023 at 04:36 PM

rscheffler
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

Which is why a chipped M-RF adapter would be so awesome! I too love the 50 Lux ASPH and it would be great to be able to focus it on my Canons via the MF assist feature.

Feb 18, 2023 at 04:38 PM

rscheffler
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

jcolwell wrote:
I'm not dissing Voigtlander. This is exciting, in its own right. I still shoot the Voiglander Color-Heliar 75/2.5 SL and APO-Lanthar 180/4 CF ED (both in OM mount). I find they play very well with Zeiss Classic and Canon L lenses.

Also, I have the SW Heliar 15/4.5 ASPH LTM and Snapshot-Skopar 25/4 MC LTM. I'd love to pick up a CV 21mm LTM lens, if my little SMC Pentax-M 20/4 looks too out of place, on a big RF adapter. At longer focal lengths, I get into Canon RF lenses; all for my super-fine Canon 7 rangefinder.

Sorry if my response seemed to imply you were dissing Voigtlander. That wasn't how I took it. Rather, I'm a bit sad that Zeiss has seemingly let their lens lines go dormant. There is a lot of great ZE glass that just needs a makeover for mirrorless to join what Zeiss already released for FE mount. I'm just not confident that anything will happen. It would be very cool if Zeiss transferred their Milvus line to Cosina to reformulate as needed for mirrorless. My impression is Zeiss, as an early partner with Sony, doesn't seem interested in other mirrorless systems. Or maybe there's something in that partnership that prevents it. It would be unfortunate, if true.

Feb 18, 2023 at 04:47 PM

runamuck
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

I thought Canon was stopping 3rd party lenses for some cams?
https://www.popphoto.com/news/canon-third-party-lenses/

EtA:
https://fstoppers.com/business/after-banning-some-third-party-lenses-what-does-canons-rf-future-look-616907

Edited on Feb 18, 2023 at 05:56 PM · View previous versions

Feb 18, 2023 at 05:46 PM

PhilH
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

As mentioned, this likely means a licensing agreement has been met between Canon and Cosina. Which provides wonderous thoughts of Zeiss and Voigtlander lenses for Canon RF.

The major questions as agreements like this existed to produce EF lenses in the past is:
- Does this agreement allow for autofocus lenses?
- Does this agreement allow for manual iris lenses?

We'll assume that electronic transfer of lens data like focus, iris, potentially zoom will be doable. For those not ultra tuned into this stuff, these are some of the reasons Zeiss could make manual iris lenses for Nikon and not Canon as well as things like Batis having autofocus and that being "never pursued" for Canon.

Some additional questions beyond that. And certainly nothing quick will be going down, but there's mid-term through long-term potential for Zeiss to reinvent Otus for mirrorless, which I think some of us would enjoy. Zeiss was able to get the weight down on their Milvus serious a great deal, translate that mindset to mirrorless and that will be successful in my mind. Voigtlander could revamp a great deal of their lineup for RF as well. Likely updating the APO optics to perform well on non-m sensors would be high on my list of desires.

But for those who are focused on optical performance, I want to see more RF L series prime series, Sigma Art prime, or Leica SL prime levels of performance or beyond. Hyper corrected, well ground, space age coatings, etc.

Feb 18, 2023 at 05:51 PM

rscheffler
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

Yes, Zeiss is a big question. While Cosina makes a lot of the manual focus Zeiss lenses, Zeiss is still the brand on those and ultimately is the one likely to have to want to negotiate a licensing agreement with Canon. Given how little Zeiss has done recently in still photography, that's a big question mark, IMO.

I'd love to see SL Summicron levels of performance in medium speed manual focus primes in RF mount. Cosina can definitely approach this and already has some of this glass in Sony FE mount that could be ported over. I'm just starting to experiment with some of my rangefinder lenses on a Canon R6II and unfortunately it's not all good. While there seems to be less detail smearing than perhaps with stock Sony sensors, Canon's FSI sensor design and/or microlens design is resulting in edge color shifts. This could provide some challenges for Cosina in porting over existing lens designs to Canon.

Feb 18, 2023 at 07:15 PM

melcat
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

PhilH wrote:
For those not ultra tuned into this stuff, these are some of the reasons Zeiss could make manual iris lenses for Nikon and not Canon as well as things like Batis having autofocus and that being "never pursued" for Canon.

The Batis lenses are widely believed to have been designed and manufactured by Tamron (evidenced, it is said, by patents). Similarly, the ”Sony Zeiss” ZA lenses for E mount are widely claimed to be an in-house Sony effort.

there's mid-term through long-term potential for Zeiss to reinvent Otus for mirrorless, which I think some of us would enjoy. Zeiss was able to get the weight down on their Milvus serious a great deal,

You have the timeline wrong here. The ZF/ZE, now “Classic”, lenses for Nikon F and Canon EF mounts preceded the Otus ones. Several Milvus lenses are rebarrelled Classic ones with around 20% weight increase. There is no evidence that Zeiss are interested in weight reduction for mirrorless mounts; on the contrary, they appear to be needlessly increasing the weight for marketing reasons.

___

I like Canon’s engineered plastic and rational ergonomics. The Zeiss ZE 100mm f/2 “Classic” is one of my most-used lenses, but I don’t like the cold slippery metal barrel and Abba-era focussing ring, and I had hoped I could eventually replace it with a Canon-branded RF lens. If Canon opens the mount to Zeiss, that becomes less likely. I have been scathing in this forum about the RF lens system and some RF lenses in particular, but for the above reason I actually would like Canon to prevent Zeiss from making native RF lenses. I actually can wait for Canon to build out a complete system, and I hope this time they do instead of ceding some lens types to third parties.

As for Voigtländer, the retro aesthetics repel me.

Feb 18, 2023 at 08:24 PM

burningheart
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

runamuck wrote:
I thought Canon was stopping 3rd party lenses for some cams?

I think Canon is more focused on license agreements where Canon makes a good rate of return on a license agreement with companies that will uphold the license agreement, possibly the quality of the lens manufactured and where the manufacturer doesn't directly compete with Canon. Voigtlander being MF won't be competing in the AF realm.

Feb 18, 2023 at 08:37 PM

jedibrain
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

Do they have a decent lens in the 20mm range for astro? That would be so cool. Don't need AF for that purpose either.

-Brian

Feb 18, 2023 at 09:30 PM

TeamSpeed
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

Canon only goes after RF AF lenses, not RF MF lenses. There are a few aftermarket RF lenses now.

Viltrox was hit by canon due to their 85mm AF lens, and they tracked them from the shelves, I like mine!

Feb 18, 2023 at 10:07 PM

highdesertmesa
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

rscheffler wrote:
What may be the first third-party lens brand to be licensed by Canon to release products in the RF mount, will be revealed on Feb. 23rd at CP+ in Japan.

The brand with this honor is Voigtlander, manufactured by Cosina. This suggests that whatever Cosina/Voigtlander releases will be manual focus only, given that all Voigtlander lenses produced by Cosina to date have been manual focus. This includes their recent releases for Nikon Z mount, Fuji X mount and going back to all their releases for Sony FE mount.

While I'm sure many will be disappointed by manual focus only, it's a good...Show more →

I can't see where it says that the RF lenses will be the Voigtlander brand, I only see Cosina. I mean, it makes sense it would be Voigtlander.

Strange that Canon Rumors has not picked up on this.

Feb 18, 2023 at 10:47 PM

rscheffler
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · First licensed(?) 3rd party Canon RF lens(es?) to be announced at CP+ Feb. 23

highdesertmesa wrote:
I can't see where it says that the RF lenses will be the Voigtlander brand, I only see Cosina. I mean, it makes sense it would be Voigtlander.

Strange that Canon Rumors has not picked up on this.

That's true. And I did think about that, briefly. I'm making the assumption based on Cosina's other mirrorless lens releases under the Voigtlander brand. Whatever the case, it will be great to see something from Cosina in RF mount!

Feb 18, 2023 at 11:22 PM

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