Why Tamron is a Far More Powerful Company Than You Think

For the past few years, I’ve been a convert to the L-mount alliance. As a stills-photographer who cares absolutely nothing about video, they’ve been giving me a lot of what I crave. Those things include better autofocus, live composite, LUT adhesion, multiple exposure RAW, build quality, lens selection, etc. Unlike Sony, Canon, and Nikon, the L-mount has a pledge to not screw each other over through the lens mount. Currently, some of the best brands that are part of it are Leica, Sigma, Panasonic LUMIX, and Viltrox. Sure, Samyang joined; but we haven’t seen much from the brand. But if Tamron joined the alliance, I believe that the industry would have some major shake ups.

Tamron is one of those brands who makes lenses for all the other brands. They’ve told us this for previous articles, and it can even sometimes be seen in the manufacturing. But let’s think about: right now L-mount only has two of the big third-party companies that are part of it.

Think about all the new lenses that would come. There’s a 28-300mm, 28-75mm f2.8 G2, 35-150mm f2-2.8, 35-100mm f2.8, 20-40mm f2.8, etc. Plus they’ve got a bunch of nice small primes.

If Tamron ever came to L-mount, I think that Canon, Nikon, and Sony would have a lot to worry about.

I’m not sure that it would ever happen though as Sony owns part of Tamron. With the way the world is changing due to component availability though, I think that things could change.

Most professionals still use Canon and Nikon for sure. But more are starting to use LUMIX and Leica both. Leica is wonderful for those of us who need an insanely durable experience with a long-lasting warranty of protection. Plus, there’s LUMIX with their versatility in both photo and video. When the S5 II came out, it was highly considered to be the best hybrid camera on the market. And today, the brand still has some of the best cameras around.

Sony took a long time to get to where they are by pushing their products mostly on social media influencers and making them feel like they’re so wonderful and important through collaborations. LUMIX does similar with everyone who does video, however though I’d say they take a more scaled back approach.

One thing is for sure, if Tamron doesn’t join the L-mount alliance, what’s to stop the new Chinese brands from making their own excellent zoom lenses. I mean, Viltrox could really come in and start taking market share from the other brands. Right now, the Chinese brands mostly focus on making prime lenses. But that has been changing in recent years.

What I’m personally rooting for is Tamron joining L-mount and disrupting the big three. But ultimately, I think that the entire photo industry would benefit from either insanely harder competition with one another where they don’t share components, or unifying hot shoes and lens mounts.

If we did that, I’m afraid that we’d have similar issues to Micro Four Thirds where the brands find subtle ways to screw each other over. It’s one of the reasons not highly talked about as to why that format fell out of favor.