4 ms·

Sorry, but I am skeptical of your argument that Japanese companies are any less cooperative or more avaricious than companies from other countries. I am aware

by dcrazy 2y ago

Sorry, but I am skeptical of your argument that Japanese companies are any less cooperative or more avaricious than companies from other countries. I am aware of several examples that directly contradict your argument: - JIS screwdrivers. - Really, JIS anything. - MSX computers. - FourThirds/MicroFourThirds. And there’s a practical reason for camera brands to have different mounts: different camera systems have different flange distances! You’ll even see multiple mounts within the same brand as the line evolves, as seen with the transition from Minolta/Sony A mount to E mount.

numpad0 2y ago
OT but flange focal distance is overmystified. It's just a mechanical interfacing spec. You can't drill a hole on the sensor and mount lens body on it, and lenses must be placed at exactly focal distance away for parallel beams to converge on film or farther for diverging beam(from non-infinitely-far objects), so body designers pass a distance measurement from film to a known feature(mounting ring top surface) to be able to design a lens barrel. That's the flange-focal distance, sort of a "design length of body" to subtract from your overall lens barrel length. It's actually possible to drill a hole on the PCB and woodscrewing lens directly on in cases with webcams and CCTV cameras, and in those cases the distance is 0.
- avidiax 2y ago
  For the case of 35mm SLRs, Nikon/Canon/Pentax etc. all have 45mm flange distances, give or take a couple of millimeters. That's basically the minimum to have room to swing the mirror and for a couple of shutter curtains. So all of them having completely incompatible mounts is because they wanted to compete based on lock-in to a complete system, rather than compete for bodies and lenses separately. Even worse, the fact that their flange distances are all within a couple of mm makes passive adapters impossible, since just the bayonet part of the mount is longer than that.
  - hcarvalhoalves 2y ago
    The Pentax followed the distance of the M42, which was pretty much an open standard by then, and many manufacturers at the time released lenses in K bayonet. The other camera makers diverged from the standard.
Dalewyn 2y ago
>several examples JIS isn't relevant outside of Japan, though. Everyone cares about ISO (USA) and standards like RoHS (Europe), nobody even knows what a JIS is. >there’s a practical reason for camera brands to have different mounts The reason is irrelevant, it's a camera and a lens and the fact they are incompatible is inexcusable. Japanese ham radio takes this further; when I said Kenwood microphones don't work with ICOM radios I mean they could use the same number of wires and perhaps even the same connector but they keep the wiring positions proprietary. So you want to use your Kenwood gear with ICOM? Or Yaesu? Well too fucking bad bud, either get out some wire cutters and a soldering iron or buy into one of the ecosystems like a good Nippon-jin. Imagine if Logitech, Corsair, Steelseries, and Razor all used USB for their peripherals but the wiring is unique to each of them, and imagine if mobos brands like ASUS and MSI partnered with specific peripheral brands and only featured USB ports compatible with them alone. That's the Japanese ham radio scene and yes it fucking sucks; and yes, they are getting eaten alive by cheap Chinese ham radio equipment that doesn't do that proprietary shit. If ham radio is too niche for you, don't worry: It expands to stuff like household appliances too. If you buy a Panasonic microwave oven or fridge and it breaks down you bet your ass you will need to buy replacement parts and perhaps even the repair labor from Panasonic. We all love to complain about walled gardens and planned obsolescence here in the Anglosphere, but Japan is several orders of magnitudes worse. They make Apple look like a paragon of standards compliance and interoperability.
- new299 2y ago
  Essentially all medium to high-end ham radio brands are Japanese. Cheap Chinese radios only dominate at the low end, and often have emission issues. I doubt the Japanese manufacturers are interested in competing here... Chinese radios do not dominate in Japan, I suspect almost nobody in Japan uses a non-domestic radio. Possibly the primary reason being that they generally have not passed the local emission certifications (which is annoyingly required for all ham radios). I don't see the incompatible microphone thing as an issue unique to Japan. Pretty much every 1980s computer had weird propriety interfaces. I suspect it was competition that forced them to standardize. You can find similar issues more recently (Apple/Lightening port, Dell/IBM laptop chargers, docking stations etc.) If you want to point to issue with ham radio in Japan, I'd go with the certification issue, which helps lock non-domestic players out of the market...

by dcrazy 2y ago

numpad0 2y ago

OT but flange focal distance is overmystified. It's just a mechanical interfacing spec. You can't drill a hole on the sensor and mount lens body on it, and lenses must be placed at exactly focal distance away for parallel beams to converge on film or farther for diverging beam(from non-infinitely-far objects), so body designers pass a distance measurement from film to a known feature(mounting ring top surface) to be able to design a lens barrel. That's the flange-focal distance, sort of a "design length of body" to subtract from your overall lens barrel length. It's actually possible to drill a hole on the PCB and woodscrewing lens directly on in cases with webcams and CCTV cameras, and in those cases the distance is 0.

avidiax 2y ago
For the case of 35mm SLRs, Nikon/Canon/Pentax etc. all have 45mm flange distances, give or take a couple of millimeters. That's basically the minimum to have room to swing the mirror and for a couple of shutter curtains. So all of them having completely incompatible mounts is because they wanted to compete based on lock-in to a complete system, rather than compete for bodies and lenses separately. Even worse, the fact that their flange distances are all within a couple of mm makes passive adapters impossible, since just the bayonet part of the mount is longer than that.
- hcarvalhoalves 2y ago
  The Pentax followed the distance of the M42, which was pretty much an open standard by then, and many manufacturers at the time released lenses in K bayonet. The other camera makers diverged from the standard.

Dalewyn 2y ago

>several examples JIS isn't relevant outside of Japan, though. Everyone cares about ISO (USA) and standards like RoHS (Europe), nobody even knows what a JIS is. >there’s a practical reason for camera brands to have different mounts The reason is irrelevant, it's a camera and a lens and the fact they are incompatible is inexcusable. Japanese ham radio takes this further; when I said Kenwood microphones don't work with ICOM radios I mean they could use the same number of wires and perhaps even the same connector but they keep the wiring positions proprietary. So you want to use your Kenwood gear with ICOM? Or Yaesu? Well too fucking bad bud, either get out some wire cutters and a soldering iron or buy into one of the ecosystems like a good Nippon-jin. Imagine if Logitech, Corsair, Steelseries, and Razor all used USB for their peripherals but the wiring is unique to each of them, and imagine if mobos brands like ASUS and MSI partnered with specific peripheral brands and only featured USB ports compatible with them alone. That's the Japanese ham radio scene and yes it fucking sucks; and yes, they are getting eaten alive by cheap Chinese ham radio equipment that doesn't do that proprietary shit. If ham radio is too niche for you, don't worry: It expands to stuff like household appliances too. If you buy a Panasonic microwave oven or fridge and it breaks down you bet your ass you will need to buy replacement parts and perhaps even the repair labor from Panasonic. We all love to complain about walled gardens and planned obsolescence here in the Anglosphere, but Japan is several orders of magnitudes worse. They make Apple look like a paragon of standards compliance and interoperability.

new299 2y ago
Essentially all medium to high-end ham radio brands are Japanese. Cheap Chinese radios only dominate at the low end, and often have emission issues. I doubt the Japanese manufacturers are interested in competing here... Chinese radios do not dominate in Japan, I suspect almost nobody in Japan uses a non-domestic radio. Possibly the primary reason being that they generally have not passed the local emission certifications (which is annoyingly required for all ham radios). I don't see the incompatible microphone thing as an issue unique to Japan. Pretty much every 1980s computer had weird propriety interfaces. I suspect it was competition that forced them to standardize. You can find similar issues more recently (Apple/Lightening port, Dell/IBM laptop chargers, docking stations etc.) If you want to point to issue with ham radio in Japan, I'd go with the certification issue, which helps lock non-domestic players out of the market...