Periodically? As in once?? Like 20 years ago.
And from what I read (correct me if I am wrong) it was only to add better auto focusing. I wouldn't call that a negative for purchasing Canon.
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Periodically? As in once?? Like 20 years ago.
And from what I read (correct me if I am wrong) it was only to add better auto focusing. I wouldn't call that a negative for purchasing Canon.
You know it is funny, some who criticize Canon for making a revolutionary change 20 years ago, are now championing Nikon for making a similar change TWO DECADES LATER!!!!!.
The funny thing is, 20 years ago Canon released the EOS system, and there was no other system that could touch it.
Caonon's EOS system was the FASTEST and most importantly the QUIETEST.
While other makers were attaching bulky motors to the bottom of the lens and using a noisy gear train to turn the focus ring, still others were stuffing a focusing motor inside the camera with nightmare linkage to the lens.
Canon on the other hand, leaped ahead by making the focusing motor an integral part of the lens, the only connection between the camera and body were electrical contacts. What was smart about this is that over the last two decades, Canon has made some changes to the EOS lens system, yet the mount has remained the same.
Read through the posts .... one individual trashes Canon for making a mount change 20 years ago, and in the next post champions Nikon for making a similar change.
Twenty years ago when I jumped on the AF band wagon I was given an opportunity. No matter what brand I bought, I was going to be buying new lenses, so ALL brands were closely scrutinized.
I chose Canon, and am glad I did ... I can see a future for Nikon users, and it looks like Canon's past. Buy a new Nikon, you gonna be, as one user put it " forced " to buy new lenses!!!!!
I wonder of those who bash Canon for making a lens mount change 20 years ago, know how many lens mount changes Canon has made since then and yet Canon users have not had to change a thing???
Canon mad a wise move .... ' make all connections between the camera body and lens electrical, and there will be no need to make changes to the mechanical mount '
I would since with Nikon they're adding better Autofocusing while still allowing the older lenses to be used (albeit with manual focus) with canon, all your old lenses turned into paperweights, too bad for you if you had some serious cash tied up in them since they were rendered virtually worthless by the fact as well.
SLC
Ahh but you see, Nikon hasn't changed their mount, they've changed their focusing mechanism, a better way to do it would have been Pentax's route of having a focusing motor in the lens as well as a linkage to camera based focusing motors for those cameras which can't support SDM. But at least with the D40, all the old Nikon lenses are supported, some just have an AF limitation. With Canon you can't even attach a pre-EOS lens (maybe with an adapter but even then you're buying an adapter to attach a canon lens to a canon camera and have it do what it was designed to do. Why didn't they just add a focusing motor while keeping their lens mount? Then the old MF lenses would still be viable while folks upgraded to AF?
The future for Nikon users isn't as you've described it, they can still buy an older non AF-S lens and it will attach to the camera, meter, and work just fine (without autofocus), they won't be forced into bying anything if their comfortable manually focusing, it was different with Canon. There's no need to buy a special adapter for those who may have had an old 35 mm Nikon and who wish to buy a D40 and still use their old lenses. It's not the same you see. Canon basically gave all their users the big middle finger when they went to EOS mount and rendered all their previous lenses obsolete overnight.
And Canon hasn't made any lens mount changes in which users haven't had to change a thing, the only change that's been made since then is the addition of APS-C lenses which still retain the EOS mount, FF users can't mount them, but it would be idiotic for them to purchase one since it would vignette like crazy anyway, they've got a bunch on nice FF lenses for the FF cameras (which also work on the APS-C bodies).
Seems to me that Nikon now has everything in their lens mount that Canon has, and they've not had to change their physical lens mount, so how can this be construed as a wise move for Canon?
SLC
If you're looking at the d40x or 400D, and you're starting out in DSLR, then I'd advise that you simply go with which body feels better in your hands. Ergonomics can't be ignored and that's what you'll be touching every time you shoot.
I'd say look at the Pentax, Sony and Olympus cameras as well. They may not have as broad a lens coverage, particularly used, as Nikon or Canon, but there are plenty of good lenses made for each of them, plus their bodies offer some additional benefits. I'm found of the Pentax bodies and their pancake lenses -- great for light travel work.
I wouldn't worry about the long discussion about canon lenses phased out 30 yrs ago -- for someone who is new to a DSLR, it really won't make much of a difference and probably isn't worth worrying about.
I'd say look at the Pentax, Sony and Olympus cameras as well. They may not have as broad a lens coverage, particularly used, as Nikon or Canon, but there are plenty of good lenses made for each of them, plus their bodies offer some additional benefits. I'm found of the Pentax bodies and their pancake lenses -- great for light travel work.
I wouldn't worry about the long discussion about canon lenses phased out 30 yrs ago -- for someone who is new to a DSLR, it really won't make much of a difference and probably isn't worth worrying about.
I often hear the 'Nikon hasn't changed the lens mount for 4000 years'
Funny how I don't know any Nikon owners that have any old lenses (no doubt they'll all be here).
Not as far as i'm aware. Canon removed all mechanical connection between the body and lens. So I'm guessing they we're probably the first to create such a mount (I do stand to be corrected).
Funny how I don't know any Nikon owners that have any old lenses (no doubt they'll all be here).
Not as far as i'm aware. Canon removed all mechanical connection between the body and lens. So I'm guessing they we're probably the first to create such a mount (I do stand to be corrected).
I've got a Nikkor 300/4 that if it doesn't pre-date Canon's mount change comes pretty close. Until digital, I shot more medium and large format than small format though, so I don't have an AI lens collection- if I'd shot more 35mm, I'd probably still be shooting a lot of the lenses. I know quite a few photographers who do shoot with old Nikkor glass.
That's a rather naive view of optics and film emulsions IMO.
How did you white balance your film? Ever shot with tungsten film? Ever believed that all tungsten lights had the same color temperature?
Sharpness? Ever wonder why some folks spent time agonizing over high-actuance developer choices? Ever wonder why those choices existed? T-grain films? A lot of those variances have been leveled by digital.
The same reason they're talking about megapixels, that's what the market wants to hear about. Plus, consumers are more likely to upgrade bodies at a fast pace than lenses. Notice the nanocoating push Nikon is talking about? Can't reduce that flare with a sensor change. While sensors do have a bearing- just as film choices did, there's simply not the same level of differences in sensors of the same generation and size from most manufacturers..
Show me a shot in normal lighting that's properly exposed that can't be taken with any of today's modern bodies. Show me a shot under relatively bright studio lighting that looks anything other than incrementally different taken with a D40, D70, D2x or D3. I can show you shots where one lens flares and another doesn't. I can show you shots where one lens vignettes and another doesn't. I can show you shots where one lens has good contrast and another doesn't...
That's not borne out by the few cameras which have no or removable anti-alias filters. It's more about resolution and exposure latitude than anything, and frankly you're starting to see digital bodies that have more of it than film even with AA filters.
I own some old manual focus Nikon lenses, I don't own a Nikon DSLR but my friend does and she gets a lot of mileage out of those old lenses. They meter just fine, and they are manual focus, but they always were. They are fantastic old fast prime lenses and I'm not sure that some of them are matched by the newer versions. Not only that, but my friend didn't have to go out and spend $$$ to replace them since they still work with her camera the same way they worked with my old F2.
And yes Canon were the first to create a lens mount with all the lens functions controlled by electrical contacts, but the mount it's self isn't really any different than Nikon's or Pentax's or anyone else's for that matter. They all twist and lock in, what's different is the physical dimensions of the fins on the lens mount. Nikon and Pentax have had a motor in the camera body for years that connects to the lens via a socket and works quite well. I would hardly describe it as a nightmare, (but if I was a Canon fanboy I might do so to try and make a point). Now that they are moving to more lens based systems they've simply added electrical contacts to their same old lens-mounts that they've been using for years. The only difference now is the shape of the mount which allows only Canon mount lenses to be mounted to Canon cameras, only Nikon mount lenses to be mounted to Nikon's and only K mount lenses to be mounted to Pentax. Apart from that, there is no real difference.
Nikon has done a great thing with the D80 and above by including a motor for older autofocus lenses, as well as electrical contacts for the newer lenses. Pentax has done the same and in my opinion, taken it one step further by also including a socket for camera based autofocus on their motored lenses. That way there's no compatibility issues whatsoever with any of their cameras. Nikons AF-S lenses as far as I know, don't include screw drive systems for use on non AF-S equipped cameras.
SLC
From an engineering standpoint it IS a nightmare.
What do you have when the Focus Motor fails?
If it is in the body, you lose the function with all your lenses, not to mention you might lose the body completely depending on the nature of the failure.
If it is in the lens, you lose the function in that particular lens.
Actually back in the late 1980's if the Nikon AF motor didn't sound like a Mack Truck coming down the road I would have gone with them, or was it Minolta that sounded that bad.
It's obvious you are not a Canon fanboy ..... but since it was you who brought that term up, I feel obligated to use it. It is quite clear you are a Nikon fanboy.
But hey, I am happy for Nikon .... they have finally seen the light and are doing it the right way.
Well I don't know about you Harcosparky, but I plan on replacing my camera body much more frequently than my lenses, I'd rather have the body fail and need replacing than the lens because the camera body is designed to be upgraded periodically. I've shot a lot of body based AF cameras, never had a single problem with any of them anyway. Can't say the same for my Canon using friends and their lenses, I don't claim that most of their lenses have failed, or even that a significant percentage have failed, but one notable failure was a 400 mm f/4.0 prime that cost well over the price of the camera body my friend was using at the time (I think it was a 20D). Sadly it was outside the warranty period and was prohibitively expensive to have repaired at the time, he could have gone out and picked up a used 30D for less than the final bill on the lens, still I'm willing to bet he was glad it was the lens that failed rather than his camera right?
And believe me I'm no Nikon fanboy, I have some old manual focus lenses and a F2 camera body that I learned on and inherited from my father. But I shoot exclusively Pentax now, and I'm admittedly very very fond of their products. If you must label me as a fanboy of any sort it would have to be a Pentax fanboy!
But I will say that I have a much greater respect for Nikon than Canon, and if it were just those two camera brands for me to choose from, I wouldn't even need to deliberate; in that scenario it'd be Nikon or nothing. Luckily for me, I have more than just those two to choose from and Pentax ticks all the boxes for me personally and my shooting style and lens preference.
SLC
And believe me I'm no Nikon fanboy, I have some old manual focus lenses and a F2 camera body that I learned on and inherited from my father. But I shoot exclusively Pentax now, and I'm admittedly very very fond of their products. If you must label me as a fanboy of any sort it would have to be a Pentax fanboy!
But I will say that I have a much greater respect for Nikon than Canon, and if it were just those two camera brands for me to choose from, I wouldn't even need to deliberate; in that scenario it'd be Nikon or nothing. Luckily for me, I have more than just those two to choose from and Pentax ticks all the boxes for me personally and my shooting style and lens preference.
SLC
Yes, it was a bad focus motor which apparently required a significant amount of work to replace (clean room etc).
Yeah, me too, but better a $1,500 camera body (and probably just the AF system at that) than a $5,600 lens right!
And you've misconstrued my post about not being a Nikon fanboy. In a Canon vs Nikon sense I suppose I'd be a big Nikon fanboy, but it'd be like choosing the lesser of the two evils for me. I'm a huge Pentax fan, then I'd probably go Samsung
, after that it'd be Olympus for me, then Sony, then Nikon, then Canon a fair bit farther down the ladder from there. I usually disapprove of anyone with such a commanding market share, it's companies in those positions who will screw over even their most loyal of customers without even blinking an eye, it's what they did in the 80's and I wouldn't be surprised to see them do it again. Watch, they'll be the company who when FF finally becomes as cheap as APS-C to fabricate, will sharply abandon APS-C, lenses and all, without providing a smooth transition to FF for those with huge arsenals of EF-S lenses. Nikon has the crop sensor mode on the D3, other companies will do the same, but it's in Canon's style to screw people over so they can pry a few bucks from their bank accounts (at least from what I've seen).SLC
SLC
So by changing the lens mount 20 years ago means they screw people over?
I've used Canon for about 12 years, the only thing they screw us with is the price. That also applies to Apple, Adobe, Microsoft and everyone else that trades in the UK.
I found this quote on the internet, and I gotta say the guy is pretty much on the money .....
I shoot sporting events ( mostly High School events )for the local bi-weekly newspapers from time to time. Often times there are photogs from the larger papers in the region covering a game if it warrants coverage by them. Not once have I seen a photo using Nikon have an AF body with an old manual lens on it.
Same thing hold true for some other events I shoot, one of them a majo Anime Convention in Baltimore, Maryland called OTAKON.
I don't know, maybe the photogs I run into are not old enough to have older lenses, but in my bag is my trust old Canon F1 and a couple of lenses with it as well as some film. It's the only 35mm SLR I know of that will function without any battery installed. ( nice feature if a battery dies in the field )
I will say my next purchase is gonna be a B&W digital film back for a medium format camera. I cannot wait to get my hands on one of those.
I shoot sporting events ( mostly High School events )for the local bi-weekly newspapers from time to time. Often times there are photogs from the larger papers in the region covering a game if it warrants coverage by them. Not once have I seen a photo using Nikon have an AF body with an old manual lens on it.
Same thing hold true for some other events I shoot, one of them a majo Anime Convention in Baltimore, Maryland called OTAKON.
I don't know, maybe the photogs I run into are not old enough to have older lenses, but in my bag is my trust old Canon F1 and a couple of lenses with it as well as some film. It's the only 35mm SLR I know of that will function without any battery installed. ( nice feature if a battery dies in the field )
I will say my next purchase is gonna be a B&W digital film back for a medium format camera. I cannot wait to get my hands on one of those.
As a former Nikon user (Nikon F3 HP with motor drive, SB12 flash, and several Nikor lenses that I still have), I see that some in this forum don't understand that what Canon did with their lenses 20 years ago was a bold move into the future. In fact Canon, with their digital technology, has been ahead of of Nikon in several areas, including full-size sensors, and noise reduction at high ISO. In the last year, Nikon has finally caught and surpassed Canon in the area of noise reduction at even higher ISO with the D3, and also caught Canon with a full-size sensor.
Something else that some of you should know is that I can still use old Canon lenses on my Rebel XT, except that I have to focus manually. Not only that, but with the right mount-kit I can do the same with Leitz lenses, and even an old Nikor 50mm f/1.4 from my old F3.
But Nikon has a lot of nice zoom lenses as you can see in this photo
http://www.slrclub.com/bbs/vx2.php?id=work_gallery&no=435970
Something else that some of you should know is that I can still use old Canon lenses on my Rebel XT, except that I have to focus manually. Not only that, but with the right mount-kit I can do the same with Leitz lenses, and even an old Nikor 50mm f/1.4 from my old F3.
But Nikon has a lot of nice zoom lenses as you can see in this photo
http://www.slrclub.com/bbs/vx2.php?id=work_gallery&no=435970
You'd be singing a different tune if you had a whole bunch of $$$ tied up in manual focus lenses 20 years ago and had them become useless because Canon changed the physical shape of the lens mount overnight. But since you've only been shooting Canon for 12 years, you didn't experience the hit like many users did. On another forum I frequent, a lot of Nikon users are former Canonites, they switched when Canon abandoned their previous system, there was no incentive to stay with Canon at that time since their lenses weren't carrying over so they went with a brand that showed support for their customers, and a respect for them and the money they'd spent on the system in Nikon. I'm sorry, but there's no excuse for hanging loyal customers (any of whom had invested thousands of dollars in your products) out to dry.
I don't know about you, but I prefer Nikon and other's approach of keeping the same mount so people could continue to use their nice manual focus lenses while they started to buy autofocus lenses. Canon users couldn't do that, if they wanted an autofocus camera they had to start again from nothing, and to twist the knife in further, their MF lenses were rendered worthless financially as well since they were no longer supported by new Canon cameras. They couldn't even hope to get good money for their old stuff to help finance the purchase of new stuff. That's what I call screwing your customer base over. Why couldn't they keep the old mount and just add the electrical contacts to it? That would have been a much better approach and I wouldn't have anything to say about it. Everyone likes to tout Canon's supremely complete system as one good reason for buying into them, but I didn't go for that rationale since I'd seen their actions in the past. In my mind there's no compelling reason for buying into a system when the maker of that system has shown a willingness to abandon that system. Others like to use the argument that Pentax may not be around in 10 years when I mention them; I don't buy that either since they've been making SLR's and lenses much much longer than either Canon or Nikon, but even if they do fold and I'm forced to buy into a new system, it won't be any worse than Canon users had it in the 80's
. I find it funny how Canon users seem to want to dance around the subject, but the fact remains they've abandoned their entire SLR customer base in the past, who says they won't do it again?
SLC
I didn't realise that the all FD lens/cameras stopped working when the EF mount was introduced.
Canon did for a while sell an FD to EF converter which helped users switch (although not compatible with all lens). So not exactly abandoning the old system.
Yes they did abandon the old system, what part of change the mount don't you understand. Sure they tried to appear as though they were taking care of people by providing an adapter to use with their old lenses (but you still had to fork over some cash for that as opposed to Nikon users who just continued using their MF lenses on their AF bodies).
And being smug and pretending to not understand something I posted doesn't change the fact that it happened. You should be able to read from my post that I wasn't implying that all the FD lenses and cameras stopped working literally, simply that people with FD lenses couldn't use them on any new camera bodies when the ED system was introduced, they were left isolated, holding a system with no upgrade path to speak of (a predicament that current Canon users love to use in reference to smaller brands when trying to persuade people to purchase Canon now). They had to buy new lenses if they wanted to buy a new camera body (or buy some adapter just to be able to continue to use their perfectly good lenses that they'd accumulated over the years).
And harcosparky, the Pentax LX, K1000, I believe the ME super, and a bunch of Nikon bodies (I know the early F series cameras for instance) cameras also are functional without any batteries installed. The only thing that wouldn't work without a watch battery in the camera was the light meter. Those who carried external light meters lost nothing in the event of a battery failure. Your Canon isn't/wasn't unique in that regard at all.
SLC
And being smug and pretending to not understand something I posted doesn't change the fact that it happened. You should be able to read from my post that I wasn't implying that all the FD lenses and cameras stopped working literally, simply that people with FD lenses couldn't use them on any new camera bodies when the ED system was introduced, they were left isolated, holding a system with no upgrade path to speak of (a predicament that current Canon users love to use in reference to smaller brands when trying to persuade people to purchase Canon now). They had to buy new lenses if they wanted to buy a new camera body (or buy some adapter just to be able to continue to use their perfectly good lenses that they'd accumulated over the years).
And harcosparky, the Pentax LX, K1000, I believe the ME super, and a bunch of Nikon bodies (I know the early F series cameras for instance) cameras also are functional without any batteries installed. The only thing that wouldn't work without a watch battery in the camera was the light meter. Those who carried external light meters lost nothing in the event of a battery failure. Your Canon isn't/wasn't unique in that regard at all.
SLC
Nope, that's not the case.
It was Minolta that gave us that joy, along with wireless flash. In fact, a lot of tech that's out on the market for SLRs came from either Pentax, Olympus, or Minolta, leaving Canon and Nikon scooping up the features.
They introduced the EF lens in 1987, in 1990 they released their last FD body (T60). Yes, they did drop the FD mount, but over 3 years. Not the dramatic abandonment you state.
So, they changed the lens mount. That annoyed some people, they've not changed it for 21 years. I'm happy to continue to keep taking the 'risk' by buying Canon. Hey, you can point and laugh if they change the mount next week.
Regardless of what Canon (or Nikon) may do to their camera mounts, one still can work around such things as you can see below (Canon using Pentax and other lenses, Nikon mounts, etc.):
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=467248
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=467248