Sony has been pushing hard in the mirrorless camera realm for about seven years now, and they have undoubtedly made major progress both in terms of technology and market share. Still, Canon and Nikon hold a major advantage over Sony that if leveraged correctly can help them significantly in the long run.
Adapters
I have been primarily a Canon shooter my entire life. I shot on Canon film cameras growing up and ended up in their digital ecosystem purely by chance when I found a good Black Friday deal and kept growing from there. The geek in me certainly was tempted by Sony when it exploded onto the scene with quickly advancing technology. So, in 2017, I found a used a7R II body. There was only one problem: all my glass was made by Canon.
However, one of the big promises of mirrorless when it first hit the market was the ability to adapt lenses. Due to shorter flange distances due to the lack of a mirror box, the promise was that pretty much any DSLR lens could be adapted to a Sony mirrorless camera and that that would rewire how a lot of photographers thought about and worked with their gear. I certainly jumped on that hype by buying a Metabones adapter. At first, it seemed great: my notoriously finicky 85mm f/1.2L lens focused perfectly on my big toe when I tried out the adapter for the first time sitting on my bed. However, the limitations quickly came into focus: the autofocus speed of adapters was frequently very slow and sometimes glitched out completely depending on the attached lens. It became clear that it could not be relied on for crucial work and certainly not for anything that required continuous autofocus — fast or slow. Adapters were great for video shooters or anyone wanting to experiment with vintage glass, but the promise of a system with universal compatibility wasn't all we had hoped.
2010
What is important to remember is that a decade ago, the photography landscape looked very different. DSLRs ruled the land, and Canon and Nikon ruled DSLRs. In fact, in 2010, Canon had a 44.5 percent of the market share of interchangeable lens cameras, with Nikon at 29.8 percent, and Sony at 11.9 percent. Furthermore, Canon and Nikon had (and continue to have) deep lens libraries, with many professionals deeply invested in those systems.
This created an appreciable amount of intertia for a lot of photographers in terms of gear. Switching brands is tedious and often costly, and even if another brand offers clear advantages, a photographer will often stick with their original brand due to the depth of their investment in that system. Nonetheless, Sony managed to win a lot of users over by aggressively pushing mirrorless technology forward (as did Fuji), a testament to just how exciting their cameras have been and a symptom of Canon and Nikon's hesitancy to dive into mirrorless seriously.
Canon and Nikon's Advantage
However, things are different now. Both Canon and Nikon have acknowledged the mirrorless future and entered the market space seriously. And while they have released lenses for their respective mirrorless mounts (in particular, Canon has aggressively developed their RF glass), their advantage lies in those deep lens libraries and Newton's First Law. Photographers are generally reluctant to switch brands, and the more deeply they are invested in a specific company's equipment, the deeper that inertia goes.
Eventually, the industry is going to be entirely transitioned into the mirrorless realm, and eventually, the majority of photographers are going to have to follow it. If first-party adapters (e.g. a Canon adapter for adapting a Canon DSLR lens to a Canon mirrorless camera) did not maintain the full performance of the lens (like my Metabones experience), this would level the playing field quite a bit, as a photographer would have the opportunity to reevaluate their brand investment when the time to switch to mirrorless came. However, working with a first-party adapter is a vastly different experience.
Reviews of Canon's EF-to-RF adapters and Nikon's FTZ adapter have almost universally praised autofocus performance, indicating no loss in autofocus speed and just as importantly, equivalent (or often even increased) accuracy and precision due to the fact that mirrorless cameras do not have separate autofocus sensors and thus do not need autofocus microadjustments. This is huge, as it means photographers already invested in Canon or Nikon DSLR lenses can buy a mirrorless body and complete the transition to mirrorless at their own pace or even just stick with their DSLR lenses indefinitely.
Of course, Canon and Nikon want people to purchase their new mirrorless lenses, and Canon, in particular, is doing a fantastic job of creating show-stopping lenses that offer performance and features a step up from their already great latest generation EF lenses and thus giving reason and temptation for photographers to upgrade, but before a photographer decides to purchase new lenses, the company has to convince them to buy their specific lenses. Having first-party adapters that make the mirrorless transition so smooth help to lock users into a brand all the more and leverage that aforementioned inertia.
Further Benefits
Canon is doing an especially great job of leveraging this key benefit. While the Nikon Z 6 and Z 7 and Canon R5 and Canon R6 all have in-body image stabilization, Canon is getting innovative with their adapters. There is the standard adapter for $99, which allows you to adapt EF lenses and maintain all the standard functionality. There is the Control Ring Mount Adapter EF-EOS R for $199, which adds the Control Ring found on all RF lenses that allows one to control parameters like ISO using a dial on the lens.
This is pretty neat.
Then, there are the Drop-In Filter Mount Adapter EF-EOS R with Circular Polarizer Filter ($299) and Drop-In Filter Mount Adapter EF-EOS R with Variable ND Filter ($399). These are especially interesting for a few reasons. First, they can be fantastic options for landscape photographers, as they save money and bulk by obviating the need to carry filters of different sizes and make it especially easy to work with lenses with bulbous front elements like many ultra-wide options. This gives photographers an easy and affordable way to maintain compatibility of their lens libraries or to explore more interesting options that enable new ways of shooting.
Conclusion
10 years ago, Canon and Nikon ruled the DSLR world, and there are literally hundreds of millions of their lenses in the libraries of photographers around the world. Combined with the fact that their first-party adapters provide a seamless experience and significantly ease the financial pressure of transitioning to mirrorless, Canon and Nikon have the chance to significantly leverage their previous DSLR market shares as we move into the mirrorless future.
Jim Hawkins I am not sure how recently you used Sony bodies/lenses, but it may be worth a revisit. My Sony 70-200 f2.8 blows the doors of my old Canon 70-200 f2.8 II, the 24mm f1.4 from Sony is pretty stunning, I don't think a blanket rule that Canon/Nikon lenses are always better is true in 2020 but I could be wrong.
I am a couple of years into Sony and have not had any overheating issues with the work that I do, I know the early generations had all kinds of temperature problems, but that is bound to happen when you put a load of tech into a new box. Hopefully the early warnings re: the new Canon RF bodies overheating in video are overstated, but shooting 20 minutes of video is not my usecase, so I dont imagine it would impact me if I went that route.
Either way if you have the glass you love and shoot it regularly on a body you love, that is great and the sticker that says who made it doesn't matter.
Happy shooting
The Sony overheating is with video and it's the exactly same problems Canon is having now. I have the A7RII so it's not the latest though.
Adapters suck. But Nikon's FTZ sucks less than 3rd party gizmos that are loaded with delays and incompatibilities. If you have a bunch of non-ancient Nikon F lenses, you can buy a Z6/7 with confidence, although you'll give up some of the size and weight advantages that mirrorless originally promised. And trust me, you'll get really tired of swapping that adapter around and removing it when you use Z lenses.
If you have 3rd part F mount lenses, it might not work - there are compatibility issues.
Canon, with their all-electronic EF mount since 1987 has an advantage here. Every EF lens Canon has ever made works just as well on RF mount cameras as it does on EF mount cameras. For third party lenses, all of those which have updated firmware to work on the latest DSLR models also work just as well on the RF bodies.
Ex-Canon shooter, current Nikon shooter. Most relatively recent Nikon lenses (last fifteen years) all work great with the FTZ adapter. Those Nikon f1.8 lenses are affordable, light and very high quality, the equal or better than their Canon equivalent.
Canon does have an advantage in ultra-fast, ultra-heavy electronic lenses. The L f1.2 type gear. I don't like to carry glass that heavy or expensive.
From my personal experience:
I have owned a Canon EOS R for the last 15 months. I don’t own any RF lenses. All my 4 lenses have their own Canon adapter. I have 1 of each of the 4 versions out there: standard, control ring, variable ND and polarizer. All 4 lenses autofocus works better now than ever before. The IS is unaffected in all lenses. Image quality, due to the R been far superior to my old 7DII, is excellent. At this point I see no need to purchase an RF lens. But I will be adding to my kit an R6.
PS. The lenses I use adapted are: 100 2.8 L IS, 85 1.4 L IS, 16-35 4.0 L IS and the 100-400 L IS II
I shoot Sony now. I'm really happy with my Sony and Tamron lenses. They take amazing pictures. I really see no reason to adapt. I used to shoot Nikon & sold those lenses on Ebay. To me it comes down to price and features.
I think the new Cannon gear is pretty fantastic, but it is expensive. Also they don't have any long native zooms or primes (except for those new F11 zooms. What are those for?)
Nikon is so far behind I doubt I'd ever go back.
Also to everyone who talks about the Sony menu system. Yes, it is complex. However it is highly customizable and I find it much easier to shoot with than my old D850 now that I've taken the time to customize it. In fact I rarely even access it anymore. Ask any Sony shooter.
I want the camera that gives me the best results. Right now that's Sony. Tomorrow it may be Cannon. The new native lenses focus faster and more accurately than any adapted lens. If you're going to go mirrorless, go all in and use native lenses. Embrace the new technology. You'll be glad you did.
You are so right! I mean correct.
Found this online, hopefully others are not involved as well (Sony is named among Apple, Samsung, BMW, etc.).
https://www.sundayguardianlive.com/news/global-brands-employ-uyghur-musl...
Decades of lens and body design and development experience is what Canon and, especially, Nikon have over Sony. It shows in the ergonomics alone. They know how to build cameras that will survive their environments. All the cracks in the Sony sensor mounts are just an example of this.
I beg to differ. https://youtu.be/_xYR1DqB9jk
So a shorted hot shoe can fry your Sony ay? Now, what were begging to differ? https://tinyurl.com/y9xpp4po
Utter tosh!......and utter bollocks. The things people choose to believe.
Can you clarify the difference between "tosh" and "bollocks," please?
I have no problem using my Canon lenses on an Olympus OMD 10 body, apart from the fact most look ridiculous they work just fine.
The only adavantage Canon and Nikon have over any other camera maker is the understandable reluctance of their existing customers who have invested heavily in their products to jump system.
For too long both Canon and Nikon have relied on this fact in order to drag their feet.
Are the latest products from both Canon and Nikon ahead of their competitors in all aspects?
No they're not, there may be the odd feature here and there, but nothing to attract me I'm afraid.
Maybe they will start to catch up.
I wonder if Nikon FTZ adapter is compatible with a several Sigma/Tamron lenses that many photographers purchased for their Nikon DSLR?
Yes it is. I have multiple Sigma ART lenses and they work flawlessly with Z6/FTZ - even better than on my D750's because like the article mentions, they use on-sensor AF, so there is no chance of error or need for calibration.This makes the whole AF reliability problem of Sigma lenses disappear. Since I have three ART lenses and love them all, this was a door opening to heaven for me. And one of the main reasons I went into Nikon Z. That and the fact that Nikon kept so long on releasing an D750 successor.
Tamron lenses are a bit trickier. You need G2 lenses, which can be updated by firmware if you buy the USB Tap-In device to do so. I have a G2 70-200 F2.8 and I find it really only usable at AF-S, not AF-C. It jumps around a lot in AF-C. But it's perfectly usable at AF-S. If I need AF-C, I just put it on my D750.
The battle is Sony's to lose. Sony's colors were always questionable, but that has been a very subjective topic. However, Sony has continued to be crippled with several objectively major flaws that seemed to have never become resolved - poor usability in physical and GUI interfaces (horrible menu system), overreliance on custom buttons (without the proper amount of dedicated ones), no proper touch screen, and no articulated screen. Then came the more minor but still unpleasant things like poor video bitrates and 8-bit encodings, inability to do anything while the buffer was being written out, etc. Sony probably might have been almost done for if it wasn't for the Nikon's mind-boggling single slot uber-expensive XQD decision(Z6, Z7). The strongest asset in Sony's favor remains its very good autofocus of course.
Sony color isn't bad, and it's certainly correctable, something that can't be said of Canon color. The present-day Sonys are decent, but not built up to the standards Nikon and Canon are well versed in.
Sony colors are easily correctable and already much better in Capture One compared to LR. Otherwise we wouldn't see so many portrait- and fashion photographers moving to Sony. Importing in RAW and applying the preset color profiles makes it an automated process.
The past few years Sony has made improvements on usability and handling as well. Of course for Nikon or Canon shooters there's a certain learning curve to pass, but allowing for some time to adjust makes all the difference. The A7RIV and the A9II are quite good now. It's about time we give credit where credit is due instead of bashing based on views from the past...
Now I know you're off the mark, Sony originally made it's name in the video business for it's color. I hope to never buy a camera that relies on a touchscreen and I don't have a problem at all with the custom buttons and menus. I bought a Nikon 850 and sent it back because dear God I could never adjust to a DSLR again.
Another crap nonsense BS from fstopper...what else is new.
Why would being able to adapt DSLR lenses be an advantage? There are over 70 native e-mount lenses in all price and quality ranges for Sony shooters. Sony shooters do not need to adapt anything.
gear, gear, gear to keep the passion alive... when people outside the minuscule bubble do not care a single iota.
The adapter with the ND is compelling, especially for anyone shooting video. Does anyone have experience with the adapter with the variable ND? I never found a variable ND filter for the other side of the lens that I ever felt was useable (color shifts, "x" patterns).
You caught me on the headline but you missed the mark. I originally learned film for the Army with a Canon A1. After much thought and trying Canon and Nikon before Sony. I literally wore out the shutter on a Pentax ME Super after 30 years of use. I finally pulled the trigger on a Pentax K7 and what a piece of junk! It had noise at ISO 100!? So I read up A LOT MORE and bought a Sony A6000. Love, love, love it! Super fast shooting, 12 fps, with good AF. Lightweight with the kit 55-210 smaller than a beer can. Believe it. I still do, I have two!
Which brings me to the point, what Nikon and Canon have on Sony? Durability. They are not ready for the abuse and their service model really sucks even with the $100 pro service. I'm hard on gear. I'm outside and moving with horses or crowds or chasing storms. I upgraded to the Sony A7RII expecting a pro grade camera, dropped it in subzero weather, by the lake, on a huge rock. Broke the plastic off the eye piece. Everything else was fine. Called up pro service. $400 without even looking at it, by model that's the price. I've had it in once already for the menu locking up. One of the A6000s had the same menu problem. Those are $200 to service. The eye piece is still broken. The A7RII overheats shooting video and because it's 43 MP the cache is slow even with Extreme 95 mb, the fastest chips the camera can use. Big, beautiful images for landscapes! So, I have Sony gear across the board and I'm eyeing the A9 but I'm pretty put off by the durability.
I did just read this review though, metal body and all weather sealed.
https://www.slrlounge.com/sony-a9-ii-review-staying-one-generation-ahead...
If you're rough on your cameras you should also be aware of this, if you're not already:
https://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2020/06/12/confounded-by-focus-par...
Nonsense. Nikon is lost in the ocean now. The new cameras coming out - Canon R5, R6, Sony A7S3 are blockbuster upgrades. Nikon has no answer to these and their current mirrorless cameras don’t even compare to the Canon and Sony models that are being replaced. In the APS-C market they made half hearted releases so as not to canabolize their DSLR market and no one is buying Nikon entry level models because smart phones take relatively good pictures and videos for most of that market and don’t want to lug an extra device. Nikon had a massive layoff last year and their future doesn’t look rosey.
So Nikon and Canon's competitive advantage is... wait for it... they have more DLSR lenses out in the wild and photographers are hesitant to swap platforms. really? Sony simply makes better glass and already possesses a fully mature ecosystem of focal lengths. Even with good adapters, the old canon glass can't keep up with today's high-resolution sensors, and even when you factor in the adapters, you're still only going to be using Canon DSLR or mirrorless glass on the R5 or R6 for the foreseeable future. The mount is locked away from third parties. After reading the title of this article, I seriously thought the author was going to bring up flange distance, ergonomics, color science, or any of the actual valid criticisms one can make about Sony. Instead, they went for the low hanging fruit and stated the obvious; canon and Nikon used to sell a lot of cameras and people don't like reinvesting in new lenses. Well, I hate to break it to yah, the vast majority of people who swapped to Sony during the mirrorless revolution won't be coming back. As you said, they are already invested in Sony glass. Hesitant to switch. lol
Sony leads CMOS sensor and lens development nowadays. Canon and Nikon rested on their laurels too long, not to mention gimped their flagship products playing the market segmentation game. Now with their Cinema line no longer relevant thanks to RED and Arri, plus getting their clocks cleaned by Sony for the past 4 years, Canon is finally willing to give you a good photo and video camera in the same body. Geez, thanks Canon!
Let's yalk about Sony advantage over Vanon and nikon: They completely failed anything they could with the last camera they produced. period.
We still talking about amazing adapters but the truth is that Canon R and RP were pretty much a flop, single slot on one side, no ibis on the other, man ehat a disaster!! ... not even need to talk about Z systems. I wish and hope that these system will vompete any soon in order to give us a boost in technology and a drop in prices!
At the moment I see Canon moving great step towards a real ml camera with latwst announcement, but prices are high and performance is pretty similar to a Sony A7r3 or a73.
I will rename the article as follow:
How Cabon and Nikon Camera may get to Sony level and market share
I like listening to classical music and taking photos. I cant really tell the difference between my £800 hifi system and a £3,000 one. Equally I have always used Canon and having recently added the Canon RP and a couple of RF lenses to my kit I can't discern any major differences. I make pretty good images (I think) and I enjoy listening to music. Enjoy life, it is short.
For video: Summer 2020 Olympus was the first to fall and with the release of the A7SIII the game is over (for video) and takes very good 12MP stills. It's a two horse race Sony & Canon. Canon's missteps include EOS R - a short lived stepping stone to the disastrous R6 & R5 (video not stills). Canon EF glass can be adopted to Sony's FE which erases the legacy lens advantage. Canon said they will cut back on R&D for ILC cameras and focus on surveillance systems and cinema cam's.
For Stills: While I use my cell phone and aging Lumix FZ1000 for stills if I was a pro like my older & younger brothers... I would keep shooting on Canon or Nikon DSLR because it seem hard to beat for ergonomics, high speed AF, etc.
Switching? If you move from DSLR to mirrorless you face the same basic PRO/CONS. Also, while legacy DSLR lenses can be adapted to mirrorless you cannot adapt mirrorless lenses from one brand to another so you must think very carefully about which FF lens pool you are going to buy into.
Crop Sensor lenses are history due to cell phones attacking the space. We've all seen iphone stills that "appear" on a computer screen to match $5000 DSLR & Lens setup and that is where most pictures are viewed.
Panasonic (GH5), Olympus (OMD), Fuji (XT_) are great cameras but to build a system for low-end video FF is what way EOS RP with kit lens & someday the mighty A7SIII OR EOS RP + GH5 & Used MFT lenses.
Ive shot both Nikon And Sony for many years. Adapted Nikon lenses on the Z mount do not work the same as they do on the f mount cameras. The stabilization stays on the entire time with some of the VR lenses and the auto focus is slower. The reason I have used Sony more often than Nikon in the last 2 years is because the auto focus in the Nikon mirrorless is not as quick, accurate and flexible as with the Sony cameras in my opinion.