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News Viltrox is trying to get a L-Mount licence

Quentinquirelino

Well-Known Member
Viltrox officially started that they are in negotiations with Leica for a L-Mount licence:

 
I have a couple of Viltrox lenses for my small Fujifilm setup and they are excellent and well-built. I'd be very happy to see them get an official license and start producing lenses that fill gaps - the 135mm and 28mm options already mentioned would be a great start!
 
Already searching for Viltrox 135 & 28 reviews Z04 Flucht
 
I know very little about Viltrox. Seems there are lots of bijou Chinese/Taiwan MF lens manufacturers already though (7Artisans, TTArtisan, Meike, Laowa, …), so I’m wondering what Viltrox can bring to the party. Hopefully they’ll bring us full AF lenses that are not just alternatives to existing Sigma/Panasonic options.
 
Viltrox is quite established in the Fujifilm world… they delivered 90% of Fuji quality for half price. But never tried them myself. Especially the 13/1.4 for Fuji/Sony aps-c is highly regarded
 
Viltrox is improving at a pretty insane speed over the last few years.
I reviewed their first L-mount lens soon after the first gen Lumix cameras were released, it was a manual focus lens, image quality was really average, pretty chunky size, build quality was a bit rough, it was alright for the price but the expectations for third part lenses were a lot lower back then. Viltrox was also known as a camera accessory company back then, but it was not exactly a camera lens company.
But when I visited their Headquarters in Shenzhen two years ago, I was very impressed. Viltrox obviously has a lot more resources than most brands I visited during the same trip (maybe apart from Hollyland which is absolutely huge!)
Over the last two, three years, apart from their cine/anamorphic lenses, Viltrox has fully transitioned to making autofocus lenses only. Their "pro" lenses are almost as good as some of the best third-party lenses in the market, but cheaper. Their recent 135 1.8 LAB lens is like 95% as good as the Sony 135 GMaster, but much cheaper and with some fancy features that even Sony doesn't have. The only downside is the size/weight but it is still a pretty amazing lens.
Their recent 28mm pancake lens is also very interesting. Autofocus, real pancake size, f/4.5 aperture, good enough image quality, and only US$99! That's really what Lumix should have released with the S9. I've asked Viltrox many times please release that lens in L-mount.
Viltrox is also releasing crazy number of lenses. I think they released around 10 autofocus lenses just in 2024 + other a bunch of manual focus cine and anamorphic lenses. So if they join L-mount, users would have a lot more good quality choices at very affordable price, even if some are overlapping the lineup from Lumix, Sigma.

But don't get too excited about this rumour. I know quite a few brands have been trying to become part of the L-mount alliance for a while but not getting anywhere.
I think some will probably end up create AF L-mount lens without officially joining the L-mount alliance like Meike.
 
Officially being part of the alliance may raise prices because I assume they'd have to pay something to Leica for the honour, so if they stay out but no-one threatens court action (a la Canon) and the lenses work OK then that's fine with me.
 
I know quite a few brands have been trying to become part of the L-mount alliance for a while but not getting anywhere.

These are no good news. It is an unnecessary hurdle for LMount to gain bigger market share easier.

As far as I remember Sony allowed everybody to join and this was the reason why Sony gained so much market share in a very short time.
 
Quote Wikipedia:

On 8 February 2011, Sony announced the release of the specifications for the E-mount lens system, allowing for third-party lens makers to create lenses for NEX cameras without having to pay royalties. The mount specifications have been released to registered parties since April 2011.[13] Getting a license for the specifications requires approval by Sony and the signing of a non-disclosure agreement.[14]

Obviously Sony made still enough money with its lenses.
 
Obviously Sony made still enough money with its lenses.
Because they place restrictions on third party manufacturers: they can't use the body mount so they can't make teleconverters, plus Sony teleconverters won't work with third party lenses, and they restrict the maximum frame rate to 15fps. That makes something like Sigma's new 500/5.6 significantly less appealing than Sony's equivalents to wildlife / sports photographers.
 
Speaking of Viltrox and Sony... Viltrox has made a tiny adapter to use Sony E-mount lenses on Nikon Z bodies... for only $99. I would like them to do something like this so I can use Sony lenses on L-mount bodies but I don't know if it is technically possible

 
A quick web search tells me that the L-mount registration distance is 20mm while the E-mount's is 18mm, so it's not possible but could be done the other way around (although there's very little motivation to do so. The Z-mount's is very short at 16mm which is why it allows even other mirrorless lenses to be adapted to it.
 
A quick web search tells me that the L-mount registration distance is 20mm while the E-mount's is 18mm, so it's not possible but could be done the other way around...

I don't think so. Flange distance is one thing. The other is diameter. Nikon Z has 16mm flange distance and 55mm in diameter. Sony E has 18mm distance and 46.1mm in diameter. Leica L has 20mm distance 51.6mm in diameter.

So for E to Z, you have 2mm in distance and almost 9mm in diameter difference for the adapter.

For L to E you would gain 2mm distance but you would have only 5.4 mm in diameter difference. The thing that E mount in the narrower one,makes it even more problematic.
 
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