Canon Closes Its System; Nikon Pretends to Have Closed System

To the frustration of the greater part of the high-end mirrorless camera market, both Canon and  Nikon’s new mirrorless mounts haven’t been invaded much by third party lens makers – particularly the great-but-cheap lenses from Sigma and Tamron.

Recently, Canon Germany made news in acknowledging that it was proactively threatening third parties with efforts to protect what it considers its intellectual property (IP) with either the use or the branding of its RF mount. Notably lost in the coverage of this development, the IP used by the third parties is most likely the mere representation that the lens is an “RF” lens, rather than an actual technology employed in the lens, as international usage of “patent and design rights” is very general.

Nikon, on the other hand, appears to have avoided third party invasion with the twin strategies of having shrunk so much that their market is less attractive and – we now learn – they appear to be farming out lens development and manufacture to one of those third party lens makers, rebadging existing (and quite good) designs as Nikon lenses.

Tamron has always white-labeled lenses for major brands. It was and may again become its primary market. Tamron’s financial data shows that for every seven lenses it sells as a Tamron lens, it sells five of its lenses as another brand’s. The new 17-28, 70-180 lenses added to their roadmap just happen to match specs of the very successful Tamron E mount lenses of those approximate ranges.