The state of third-party lenses for the RF mount, Canon may be involved | Canon Rumors

One of the most important things in the gear world for value conscience buyers, are third-party lenses. Sigma and Tamron became pretty big players in the EF market when they both changed direction and brought their lenses up market, but still aggressive price wise when compared to similar Canon offerings.

The rollout of third-party lenses for the RF mount has been extremely slow, and we only have Rokinon and Viltrox making autofocus lenses for the RF mount, but they use the EF protocols and not the latest and greatest from the RF mount.

Samyang at one point made RF mount lenses, but that abruptly stopped without any public reason why.

I have now been told through a third party that Viltrox, a smaller manufacturer of lenses has been told by Canon that they cannot make RF mount lenses and to stop selling any such products. Did the same thing happen to Samyang (who makes Rokinon)? Are other third-party manufacturers going to face the same request (demand) from Canon?

This information goes against what we have always assumed about third-party lens options, Canon may not help you make them, but if you can do it yourself, have at it.

That leaves us with some big questions about SIGMA and Tamron, both have been extremely quiet on the topic, and if they have said anything, it’s been the usual “we will consider this in the future”, or “we have maxed out our production capabilities”, which is just means they can’t actually tell us what is going on with the RF mount.

Is Canon looking to add some kind of revenue stream from third-party manufacturers? That could be good business as the industry continues its evolution.

We don’t have expert knowledge on how these sorts of technologies are protected by patents and whatnot, so if anyone has insight beyond guessing through a Google search, we’re all ears.

We now believe that Canon wants some level of control over everything that works with their system, and we hope to hear from Canon, SIGMA and Tamron on this topic in the near future, because buyers are becoming a little restless.