Sunday, August 9, 2026

Sony opened the week with two moves that read as one story: a non-binding proposal to fold Tamron in as a wholly owned subsidiary, and an official E-mount license list — Carl Zeiss, Cooke Optics, Cosina, Fujifilm, Kenko Tokina, Samyang, Sigma, Tamron, Thales — that pointedly excluded every Chinese manufacturer building for the mount. Four days later the list resurfaced with Samyang formally added, but Viltrox, Meike, TTArtisan and 7Artisans were still nowhere on it. Sony was drawing a fence, and drawing it twice.

The fence looked shakier by midweek. A Chinese court invalidated part of Nikon's Z-mount patent after a challenge from Viltrox's parent company — the physical bayonet design, not the deeper electronic protocols Nikon still holds a dozen patents on, but a crack all the same. Then Japan's Patent Office did the same thing to one of Red's compressed Raw video patents, this time on a challenge from Panasonic. The wrinkle: Nikon now owns Red, having bought the company to settle its own dispute years back, which means Nikon spent this week losing patent fights on both sides of a mount war and a codec war simultaneously.

Meanwhile the third-party makers Sony's list was built to keep out just kept building. 7Artisans landed its AF 40mm f/2.5 LITE on Nikon Z and Leica L, mounts nobody asked Sony's permission for. Laowa's Aksen ultra-macro primes spent three straight days rolling out — first for Fujifilm X, then across Sony E, Nikon Z, Canon RF/EF, L-mount and MFT, then in dedicated full-frame parfocal form — an unlicensed rollout that didn't need anyone's list to reach six systems in a week.

Sony's own numbers backed up why it's drawing the line so carefully: Q1 FY2026 earnings showed Imaging & Sensing Solutions profit more than doubling, with the Tamron proposal formally folded into the results, and by Friday the company was warning that FX5 demand had outrun supply in Japan. Elsewhere, Lightroom finally got Generative Expand outside Photoshop and DJI's Mic Mini 2S added onboard recording worth knowing about. But the week closed on quieter notes worth sitting with: a photographer in Iran, known for two decades documenting the country and mentoring hundreds of others, was shot dead by authorities; and Chris Smith, whose 1964 frame of the Beatles clowning with Cassius Clay became one of the most reproduced sports photographs ever made, died after four decades behind the lens.