A lens mount is a lens mount there is nothing new in more recent mounts they are all bayonet. Contacts have been added, very little has changed E mount offers nothing new in lens mount design. Though it does bring more problems to the table with native lenses which suffer more due to the closeness of the lens to the sensor.
Adapters are fine but they are not quite the panacea some suggest, and even if Sony bagged a lot of users they'll bring their own glass and invest little in Sony lenses thus as we've discussed already most of the profits are in the lenses not the bodies.
That's for Canon and Nikon - established players who have been continuously in the camera business for decades - not Sony, which has only been on the scene for a few years.
You can only sell lenses if people are using your bodies and moving completely over to your system.
There won't be any pain my end I paid peanuts for most of the lenses I own and had a free ride with IBIS too, I can't match that with another maker.
You're one of the lucky few, then.
How do you expect Sony to get someone who has tens of thousands of dollars worth of Canon or Nikon gear to dump it all and switch over to them, when their lens choices are so limited? Sure, Minolta had some, but those are essentially ancient lenses designed for the film era which won't hold up to a modern 50MP sensor.
In both the Canon and Nikon lineups, there are some standout lenses in each system that make a compelling case for buying at least a foothold in them - TS-E lenses, 200-400L and the supertele 500/600/800L for Canon if you're into wildlife, 14-24 for Nikon. I can't say the same for A-mount.
Some folks just don't get it not everyone digs mirrorless I'm in the process of dumping my X mount gear it's nice enough but offers nothing I can't do with A mount for less cost, and with every lens stabilised Fuji just can't match that despite an interesting sensor. Handling wise the smaller bodies just don't cut it for what I want to do, in the end I decided like a lot of SLR users I was just better off with a good quality premium compact for those days I don't want to take the bigger bodies out.
No-one's forcing you to use mirrorless.
For landscape work, I hate the SLR form factor. Most of it is dead weight - all I really need is the sensor and the LCD. I never used the viewfinder.
Obviously, for wildlife/action, it's a different story.
It might work for some people I get that, but as the only choice it sucks plain and simple. If I were a travel photographer I might dig micro 4/3 quality is good some nice (smaller) lenses too. I can get that. E mount offers a smaller body and bigger lenses I already have a lens collection there is no point buying another one. Very few users I know dumped their SLR gear many ignored ILC's entirely and some bought a body to play with adapters. That's not moving people to mirrorless it's selling them a body. Don't expect Canon or Nikon to dump their mounts either not going to happen.
Canon and Nikon already have established places in the photography world. Sony needs to carve its own niche, and it's not going to do so by aping the big players and trying to muscle in on the SLR business with a system which, for all intents and purposes, is identical, except with a poorer lens selection and no proven track record in photography. No-one's going to dump their current lenses just to buy into a new system which is more-or-less the same and has no guarantee of being around in ten years' time. Mirrorless is that niche - Sony does it better than anyone else, and they would be able to do it even better if they can get past the fixation on 'mirrorless' meaning 'small' and just build a capable, high-performance camera, with the emphasis on the 'performance' part rather than the 'small' part.
Mirrorless doesn't mean small. Mirrorless just means no mirror box and pentaprism, and an electronic viewfinder. I would welcome it if they built a full-size (but not necessarily full-thickness or SLR weight, because mirrorless doesn't need the thickness for the mirror box or the weight of the pentaprism setup) mirrorless body which emphasised performance rather than small size. This fixation on size rather than functionality has been the biggest problem with mirrorless and why it's having difficulties breaking into the professional world (apart from non-action usage). From video cameras, we know that viewfinder lag can be reduced to only a few milliseconds (unnoticeable) instead of the few hundred milliseconds of current mirrorless cameras, which are restricted to low-power processors due to their small size restricting them to weak batteries. And AF systems and processors have, similarly, been slow, because power restrictions h. With a full-size camera containing a decent battery (e.g. with current video cameras, most of which are mirrorless). these restrictions don't exist.
Build this camera and they can gradually encroach on Canon's and Nikon's ground while they build up their lens collection and their photography credentials. You're selling them bodies now, many of which are being used with their old lenses (which is possible on E-mount and thus lowers the barrier and disincentive to switching), but, as your lens lineup grows, you're also slowly selling them lenses. Eventually, when their current lenses are old and have outlived their purposes (i.e. when the current 70-200L II is seen in the same light as the ancient 70-200 f/2.8 without IS, or the even older 80-200) they will have no problems switching across to your now-large and diverse lens lineup, since their previous equipment will have served its useful purpose and they won't just be dumping it for a new, untried system that does pretty much the same job.
