The cameras being made now, and the market that shrank around them.
02Section
Canon's RF, Nikon's Z, Sony's E-mount and the rest of the field after the mirror was dropped.
Pieces 06Code 02Set in Spline Sans Mono
02.1 · Lead piece
When Canon, Nikon and Sony abandoned their legacy mounts within a few years of each other, the engineering choices they made guaranteed permanent incompatibility.
A shorter flange distance unlocked optical flexibility and, for three of the four brands, ended a mount that had served for decades.
Sony Semiconductor Solutions supplies image sensors to Nikon, Fujifilm and Ricoh, so a competitor underpins rivals' cameras. Canon makes its own.
One company, two strategies: Fujifilm is selling a fixed-lens APS-C camera that nobody can find and a medium-format system that almost nobody needs.
When Olympus exited imaging in 2021, the camera division did not close — it changed hands.
A mount agreement made the lenses interchangeable. It did not make the cameras alike.