Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canon EF and RF Lenses – All Autofocus Motors

exclusivearchitecture.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 147 posts

Re: Canon EF and RF Lenses – All Autofocus Motors

#121

Post by eftpotrm »

borlox wrote: post #116
post_break wrote: post #105

Canon is dead to me after they forced 3rd parties to stop all RF lenses. I bought the last AF lens by Viltrox and it's fantastic. I regret getting an RF body after they threatened them, and now only allow 3rd parties on their crop sensor bodies. Fuji, Sony, Leica, Nikon, all allow 3rd party lenses. I switched to Fuji and won't go back.

Exactly why I just bought a Nikon.

Nikon aren't doing much better on letting third-party lenses into the ecosystem, sadly - speaking as someone with three Nikon DSLRs and Sigma glass I'm very happy with.

Re: Canon EF and RF Lenses – All Autofocus Motors

#122

Post by [deleted] »

tonyarkles wrote: post #103
ryandamm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s open loop in that the measurement of it being in focus is reliant on the subject matter, and a different measurement. I’m not making this up, camera manufacturers have told me to my face that focus is open loop, period. They can’t guarantee repeatable focus. Notably the measurement isn’t of the state of the motor/gearing. Furthermore, being “in focus” means the subject matter’s out of focus blur is below some th…

I can back you up on that. I work on a highly custom system that uses EF lenses through an EF-to-serial adapter. The lenses don't even know what position they're at when you power them on. If you want to move them to a specific focus step you have to go through a homing procedure that drives the focus motor to a stop (I don't recall if it's the near or far stop). Lens-to-lens it's definitely not consistent. Step 142…

[deleted]

Re: Canon EF and RF Lenses – All Autofocus Motors

#123

Post by vladvasiliu »

tonyarkles wrote: post #103
ryandamm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s open loop in that the measurement of it being in focus is reliant on the subject matter, and a different measurement. I’m not making this up, camera manufacturers have told me to my face that focus is open loop, period. They can’t guarantee repeatable focus. Notably the measurement isn’t of the state of the motor/gearing. Furthermore, being “in focus” means the subject matter’s out of focus blur is below some th…

I can back you up on that. I work on a highly custom system that uses EF lenses through an EF-to-serial adapter. The lenses don't even know what position they're at when you power them on. If you want to move them to a specific focus step you have to go through a homing procedure that drives the focus motor to a stop (I don't recall if it's the near or far stop). Lens-to-lens it's definitely not consistent. Step 142…

How could they then tell to what distance they're focused?

I used to have two Ultrasonic lenses, the 17-40/4L and the 17-55/2.8. They both had distance scales which would move around as the lens focused.

My current Olympus lenses have a focus-by-wire manual mode, with a distance scale on the barrel. The camera also reports the focus distance in the EXIF. Are these just vague ballparks?

Re: Canon EF and RF Lenses – All Autofocus Motors

#124

Post by dboreham »

post_break wrote: post #105

Canon is dead to me after they forced 3rd parties to stop all RF lenses. I bought the last AF lens by Viltrox and it's fantastic. I regret getting an RF body after they threatened them, and now only allow 3rd parties on their crop sensor bodies. Fuji, Sony, Leica, Nikon, all allow 3rd party lenses. I switched to Fuji and won't go back.

Also not pleased that third party lens vendors were excluded. However the way I look at this is perhaps we would have no Canon cameras at all if the revenue they derive from lenses had not been captured.

Re: Canon EF and RF Lenses – All Autofocus Motors

#125

Post by dboreham »

rpearl wrote: post #82
nayuki wrote: post #72

Amazing website. If I didn't know better, I thought this content came from Canon itself. A couple of comments from me: > The following comparison chart shows all of the autofocus drive types that have ever been used in Canon's EF, EF-S, RF, and RF-S lenses. They missed mentioning EF-M, Canon's foray into mirrorless interchangeable-lens cameras. > Although the ultrasonic noise cannot be perceived by the human ear, it…

EF-M is fairly dead at this point isn't it?

I still use mine occasionally since there is no direct replacement in the RF product line (they're all much larger).

Re: Canon EF and RF Lenses – All Autofocus Motors

#126

Post by m3kw9 »

post_break wrote: post #105

Canon is dead to me after they forced 3rd parties to stop all RF lenses. I bought the last AF lens by Viltrox and it's fantastic. I regret getting an RF body after they threatened them, and now only allow 3rd parties on their crop sensor bodies. Fuji, Sony, Leica, Nikon, all allow 3rd party lenses. I switched to Fuji and won't go back.

[flagged]

Re: Canon EF and RF Lenses – All Autofocus Motors

#127

Post by randerson »

post_break wrote: post #105

Canon is dead to me after they forced 3rd parties to stop all RF lenses. I bought the last AF lens by Viltrox and it's fantastic. I regret getting an RF body after they threatened them, and now only allow 3rd parties on their crop sensor bodies. Fuji, Sony, Leica, Nikon, all allow 3rd party lenses. I switched to Fuji and won't go back.

I'm in the same boat. I wouldn't be as upset if the Canon range was uniformly excellent. But every one of their RF ultra-wide zooms suffers from softness or extreme vignetting. I sent back a $2200 RF 15-35mm, and for landscapes I now just use my iPhone Pro.

Re: Canon EF and RF Lenses – All Autofocus Motors

#128

Post by james_a_craig »

vladvasiliu wrote: post #123
tonyarkles wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can back you up on that. I work on a highly custom system that uses EF lenses through an EF-to-serial adapter. The lenses don't even know what position they're at when you power them on. If you want to move them to a specific focus step you have to go through a homing procedure that drives the focus motor to a stop (I don't recall if it's the near or far stop). Lens-to-lens it's definitely not consistent. Step 142…

How could they then tell to what distance they're focused? I used to have two Ultrasonic lenses, the 17-40/4L and the 17-55/2.8. They both had distance scales which would move around as the lens focused. My current Olympus lenses have a focus-by-wire manual mode, with a distance scale on the barrel. The camera also reports the focus distance in the EXIF. Are these just vague ballparks?

Some - not all - of the EF lenses have a distance encoder as well. It's fairly approximate; I think it exists mostly for the benefit of the flash system, which needs a rough starting point for the distance in some of the open-loop modes.

For the current Olympus ones, I think there's a broadly similar encoder on the ones with proper manual focus scales, and the pure fly-by-wire ones reset focus at connection so the camera can work it out.

There's a list of the EF lenses and which forms of distance information they provide here: https://web.archive.org/web/20130425064359/http://www.lenspl...

Re: Canon EF and RF Lenses – All Autofocus Motors

#129

Post by lizknope »

nayuki wrote: post #76
MartijnBraam wrote: post #20

I've always wanted to know how the various autofocus systems worked. This page is incredible. I wish there was another one with the Nikon autofocus systems since that's what I actually have. I still have several lenses with autofocus that don't have an AF motor in it at all, the motor is in the camera body instead there's a tiny screw on the lens mount that transfers the motor rotation to the autofocus parts in the l…

Nikon's lens/body compatibility matrix is horrendously complicated. https://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/compatibility-lens.htm Whereas I think "no metering" is never a problem on Canon. Over the decades as a DSLR shooter (on Canon), I even saw Nikon shoot themselves in the foot not once but twice. * When Nikon introduced "E" lenses (electronic aperture, like Canon and all modern designs), very few bodies were compatibl…

This third party company announced a Nikon F to Z lens adapter that will autofocus with older screwdriver autofocus lenses. They already had a Nikon F to Sony adapter and now they have a Nikon F to Nikon Z adapter.

https://nikonrumors.com/2025/02/28/monsteradapter-la-fz1-off...

I've been using my old 85mm f1.4 "D screwdriver" lens and others in manual focus mode on my Z8 and Z5.

Re: Canon EF and RF Lenses – All Autofocus Motors

#130

Post by MDGeist »

post_break wrote: post #105

Canon is dead to me after they forced 3rd parties to stop all RF lenses. I bought the last AF lens by Viltrox and it's fantastic. I regret getting an RF body after they threatened them, and now only allow 3rd parties on their crop sensor bodies. Fuji, Sony, Leica, Nikon, all allow 3rd party lenses. I switched to Fuji and won't go back.

They weren't dead to me immediately just because there are still third party RF lenses that rock, but when Sirui did the AF anamorphic lenses and I couldn't get one for my Canon then it really bummed me out. :/
Post reply on HN