Legacy lenses, a thing of the past?

[Griffin]

I just got to thinking about modern day lenses, and how they're all completely electronic. Focus is by wire, aperture is set via a button on the body. in fifteen or twenty years from now they might become utterly useless due to changing lensmounts and certain manufacturers going out of business. I look at the m43 porn thread and all these old lenses given a second chance. Somehow I don't see this happening with today's plastic and rubber variants.

I like how Pentax kept the same lensmount throughout their lifetime. Did Nikon change theirs? I know Canon did.

Anyways, whatever...

 

[DNG]

Go back to the 60's and 70's where much better materials was used...(Before AF was around)
Formulas don't change too much, Coatings do, though.

Now to the Q....
I HOPE SO.... That will keep the $$$ low for Pro-level lenses that can be bought at 1/10 to 1/5 the retail price when it was new.

 

[mdarnton]

Pentax didn't do as well as Nikon. Pentax' bayonet lenses don't fit the original screw mount lenses. Nikon was doing best, until this year, when they decided to give up on AF-D lenses, which will fit cameras right back to the original Nikon F, for G lenses, which won't: end of the line for them. However, so far, both Pentax and Nikon lenses from day one will work on current cameras, more or less.

Canon. . . . well, Canon never cared all that much about their customers' long-term interests.

 

[peteography]

Are you kidding me, Nikon abandoned their entire customer base, changing not only their mount from S to F, but their entire range of professional cameras from rangefinder to slr when they introduced the Nikon F in 1959!

 

[DNG]

Pentax didn't do as well as Nikon. Pentax' bayonet lenses don't fit the original screw mount lenses. Nikon was doing best, until this year, when they decided to give up on AF-D lenses, which will fit cameras right back to the original Nikon F, for G lenses, which won't: end of the line for them. However, so far, both Pentax and Nikon lenses from day one will work on current cameras, more or less.

Canon. . . . well, Canon never cared all that much about their customers' long-term interests.

You got that right, I had a Canon F1 with a few nice FD lenses, and the EOS mount screwed me over with a registration that was longer for the EOS mount. And never offered a "Quality" Negative Strength Optical mount converter.

 

[axiom]

That's alright.. in the end all 35mm SLR mounts will die.
Who needs a mirrorbox in their camera?

 

[BobYIL]

I do not believe that all of the legacy lenses would be a thing of the past because:

- We still like the rendition of some of them for any reason. Actually some of the vintage lenses have more "character" or distinct "signatures" than the majority of their modern brethren.

- We have learned how to cope up with some optical deficiencies like CA, vignetting, distortion, etc. through new post-processing possibilities 😛

- Their mechanical quality is hard-to-duplicate in our day. Take a Summicron 35/2 v.1 in you hand to see what the real Leitz quality was.. The first Nikkors for the Nikon F, the quality of the black-paint, none of my new Nikon lenses can approach this build quality. The Leica R-lenses, even aperture rings turning on ball-bearings, to make you convinced that they will survive the next 100 years too.

- And the new lenses with all micromotors, micro pcbs, image stabilization circuitry, especially the new ones having no aperture rings !, focus-by-wire, they do not even have legible DOF scales, everything squeezed into plastic housings! How many years do you think such complex circuitries can survive? Also would it be feasible to have them repaired 10 years from now.. or will the service parts be available?

As long as we keep those vintage lenses there will be a number of adapter manufacturers to make them usable with the future cameras too. Even the camera manufacturers are aware of it 😉

 

[willie_901]

In the future fewer and fewer customers will appreciate and be willing to pay for heavy, mechanical lenses. Customers may be willing to pay for significantly improved manufacturing tolerances. Think about the ratio of AF to MF-only new camera bodies purchased since 2010. Performance and convenience have overwhelmed legacy camera bodies.

There will always be collectors. But the utility of lenses designed for larger sensors is limited with smaller sensors. The angle of view and DOF differences can just be too much. Lenses designed for smaller sensors are even less useful with larger sensors.

Then there's software. Already LUMIX and ZUKIO m4/3 lenses apply significant corrections to their RAW files. Many other vendors do so to JPEGS. Millions of these lenses are in use. I won't even start talking About post-processing methods that alter DOF and OOF rendering.

Sometime in the next twenty years there could be a radical improvement in lens technology. I'm imagining a change that is as profound as the introduction of the Bayer sensor.

Technology changes things.

 

[redisburning]

computers are dandy until they break.

then you will hope you didn't throw away your abacus.

still, planned obsolescence is a fairly new concept. we will see how long tolerate it. longer than I have; I'm 23 and I hardly buy anything that hasn't lasted 3 decades; other than my computer and my pocket knives, my cameras, pens, furniture etc are very old; at least compared to me.

 

[RObert Budding]

Are you kidding me, Nikon abandoned their entire customer base, changing not only their mount from S to F, but their entire range of professional cameras from rangefinder to slr when they introduced the Nikon F in 1959!

True. And if they hadn't they would have lost the entire market - just like Contax.