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More 3rd party lenses coming
- Thread starter pdk42
- Start date
Travis Butler
Well-Known Member
Depends on pricing and performance!
The Z version of the 50 is $228 US; about half the list price of the Panny, but the Panny's currently on sale for $300, so not as attractive right at the moment.
The Z version of the 50 is $228 US; about half the list price of the Panny, but the Panny's currently on sale for $300, so not as attractive right at the moment.
Lsake
Active Member
7artisans? Do they have AF license?
I think it will be tough for the Chinese brands to make headway. Between Sigma and Panasonic we’ve already got great lenses at competitive prices. maybe if they are super low cost they’d be good options for focal lengths you’re not going to use much.
I think it will be tough for the Chinese brands to make headway. Between Sigma and Panasonic we’ve already got great lenses at competitive prices. maybe if they are super low cost they’d be good options for focal lengths you’re not going to use much.
Here is an extensive tech test on the 50mm if you are interested... Also mentions AF isn't silent which I kind of expect nowadays.
https://phillipreeve.net/blog/review-7artisans-50mm-1-8-af
https://phillipreeve.net/blog/review-7artisans-50mm-1-8-af
We have to think not only at our own needs. The L-Mount needs more third party lenses in different price categories, which seduce new costumers into the L- Mount system.
Sooner or later many of them will upgrade to more expensive Sigma, Lumix or Leica lenses. But first they need to enter the mount at all.
Contax/Kyocera made this very smart. They had two different brands with the same C/Y lens mount. Yashica and Contax.
Yashica was for the lower budget. Good quality, very good price performance ratio, low margins. All with the Yashica brand on it, but with C/Y lens mount.
Contax was high end like Leica. Zeiss lenses and excellent Contax bodies. All with C/Y lens mount.
Therefore you start cheap and have a great upgrade path if you need better in the future within the same lens mount. At the same time Kyocera did not destroy the more expensive brand "Contax" and its price level.
This is what almost killed Leica with its Leica R4s etc. experiments.
Therefore the more third party lenses, no matter how good, the better for L-Mount and its market share.
Sony would have never had the market share of today, if they would not have allowed everyone to use their mount.
The solution for today's problems are often already there, if you only look back in history. Many brands do not get this - not only in the photo industry. Learn from the past, learn from others. Be modest and listen to your custormers or you will run out of business. Simple as that.
Yeah really? Where are they now? More than 20 years since they made anything
Yeah really? Where are they now? More than 20 years since they made anything
This has other reasons. The CEO of Kyocera at that time was a photo enthusiast. He was the one who decided to buy Yashica and to push the cooperation between Zeiss and Kyocera. Contax is a Zeiss owned brand and Zeiss licenced the name to Kyocera to offer Contax cameras.
There was an internal "fight" within Kyocera when DSLRs were introduced about the future strategy. First Kyocera decided to try it and they introduced a new mount (Contax N mount) with autofocus and mainly for digital use.
The Contax N1 and Contax NX were introduced and als the worlds first fullframe DSLR called Contax ND. Yes, the ND was introduced before Canon's first fullframe DSLR.
They introduced at the same time also a Medium Format system with AF for film and digital backs of other brands, which was far ahead of other MF systems at that time (645) with great lenses etc.
But they chose the wrong sensor for the full frame N-system in the Contax ND. A.sensor originally designed to be used in medium format cameras, which produced a lot of heat in smaller 35mm bodies and which was very power hungry. This technological hurdle mixed with a terrible marketing for that new Contax N system and wrong decisions about which lenses to introduce first for this new 35mm product line, resulted in a bad start and many discussions internally.
At that time the Kyocera CEO's thinking was, that they only want to offer fullframe and always only the best. But they did not have the knowledge in sensor production, which makes this goal impossible to reach. At the same time they refused to use cheaper/easier to implement APS-C sensors like Nikon et alii did. They made their own life unnecessary complicated in a fast moving market.
After this experience it was decided that photography shall not be among their product line anymore and they closed it.
That was a hard time. I was running the biggest Contax community worldwide (Contaxinfo.com) and had very good relationships to Kyocera UK and Japan. Very disappointing to watch these internal fights and the outcome of it. We even designed a special edition Contax camera with our forum logo engraved on it.
If they would have made better marketing, a slightly different lens line at the beginning and above all APS-C sensors instead of way too expensive fullframe sensors, they could have achieved a big market share.
Jonathan-Mac
Well-Known Member
This seems very odd - Leica lowering itself to copying lenses that don't come from first-party, quality, established names like Panasonic or Sigma. Sounds dubious.
I welcome the newer Chinese brands like /Artisans, TTArtisans and Viltrox, they provide a good quality budget end for the system, but imagination doesn't seem to be their strong suite.