So far this year we’ve had one DSLR, two development announces, four mirrorless camera announcements, and no compact camera announcements. In 2019 it was no DSLRs, seven mirrorless cameras, and eight compact camera announcements. 15 actual camera releases versus 5. It definitely feels a bit like we’ve entered the camera desert and are happy to see even tumbleweed.
On the other hand, lenses are still proliferating, with well over two dozen new lenses announced this year so far (it may even be three dozen if we count everything; I’m still trying to catch up). Even that’s down from about four dozen in 2019—Sigma alone almost had a dozen that first quarter just bringing their Art lenses over to the L-mount—but it doesn’t feel significantly so.
Here are some of the more significant of the recent lens announcements, just in case you missed them (unless something feels truly special, I just add new lenses to the sansmirror, zsystemuser, or dslrbodies data bases):
- Canon RF 100mm f/2.8L macro
- Canon RF 400mm f/2.8L
- Canon RF 600mm f/4L
- Fujifilm 18mm f/1.8
- Samyang FE 24mm f/1.8
- Sony FE 14mm f/1.8GM
- Sony FE 24mm f/2.8G
- Sony FE 40mm f/2.5G
- Sony FE 50mm f/1.2G
- Sony FE 50mm f/2.8G
- Tamron E 11-20mm f/2.8
- Tamron FE 150-500mm f/5-6.7
- TTArtisans (many) 21mm f/1.5
I expect this to trend to continue. Canon and Nikon have a couple of bodies to fill in, Fujifilm and Sony have one or two bodies to update. But the total body count for this year is likely to be on the low side.
Meanwhile Canon and Nikon have a lot of lenses to fill in, Sony is obviously still filling in gaps, while Sigma and Tamron are likely to try bringing existing lenses over to RF, L, and Z mounts this year. And of course, the Chinese optics companies are iterating lots of manual focus lenses still.
To me, this feels like a “lens year.” We’ll know more about how the mounts are filling out with optics this year, much more.
