Why no fast WA primes?

[gurbally_seth]

<p>Canon will have to quickly produce one ``wow'' full-frame, fast camera body to let pros use its WA primes like 24mm 1.4, 35mm 1.4 and 50mm 1.2 to their full strength. It has to move quickly to annul the advantage that Nikon now enjoys because of its better bodies.<br>

Nikon is busy consolidating itself in the consumer market. It thinks that pros can do with high ISOs. Which is very wrong in the long run. </p>

[ilkka_nissila]

<p>Anatole, that just doesn't make any sense. AF lenses without lens motor are driven by the cam that goes through the lens mount; AF-S is driven by the electrical contacts and if you can put five of them you can put ten, so... Some people love to use the venerable Nikon mount as a technical reason why XXX can't be implemented. This happens periodically. Before the D3 it was said that Nikon can't do a proper full frame camera because of the small mount. Turns out they were very wrong - Nikon's full frame cameras work brilliantly. Before that they said Nikon can't put AF-S and VR together in the same lens because of the small F mount. Wrong again. It was said that 35/1.4 can't take the electrical contacts because they wouldn't fit. Bjorn Rorslett retrofit the chip onto his, so there doesn't seem to be a good reason why there couldn't be an AF-S implementation.</p>

<p>Focusing fast wides at wide apertures manually is quite difficult with current Nikon focusing screens and viewfinders. Apparently this isn't so much the case with Canon's high end cameras. Autofocus would be quite useful in these lenses as would a viewfinder with a proper screen and no stupid LCD overlay to fuzzy the image. A few years and I'm sure we'll get a few fast AF-S wide angles.</p>

[oskar_ojala]

<p>The talk about the mount being too small is just a myth. Besides, the fast WA primes don't need to be f1.2, f2 would be fast enough especially if that and all other apertures are good.<br>

If Nikon would make a FX DSLR with a good groundglass for MF and no LCD and some good WA primes then that would enable totally new things for hand held photography after dark. Just because some people have no use for them doesn't mean that there are people who wouldn't be able and have the desire to use them. I'm not lusting for everything in Nikon's lineup anyway, there are plenty of popular lenses that I'm not buying.<br>

Cosina can make a small, high quality (both mechanical and optical, even has an asph element) WA prime and sell it in retail for a bit over 400 euros. Now surely Cosina isn't somehow a mile ahead of Nikon in making quality lenses for reasonable prices, or are they?</p>

[jc_k]

<p>The Canon 24/1.4L is listed at $1,250 on Adorama. It's definitely out of reach of most people's budget. And that's the same price range as most of the fast-primes (faster than f/2) wider than 35mm. It must be a small niche of people who need 1.4 that a f/2 cannot do the job, or need the 24 that a 28 or 35 cannot do the job. Maybe if u're shooting a cathedral interior at night hand-held. I guess Nikon figured that if 95% want a "fast-enough" (aka f/2.8) zoom while 5% need the very last f/stop, it's better for their bottom-line to lose a battle if they can win the war.</p>

[scott_murphy_photography]

<p>Perhaps with the new "FX" D3 and D700 cameras with the 23.9 x 36 CMOS's we will see more prime lenses. I think the smaller CMOS cameras are going to start going bye bye when the technology allows them to be made more inexpensively.</p>