The amount of lenses now available to videographers and photographers has never been higher. It used to be you can have your trusty set for all occasions, and for some this is still the case. However there has never been so many manufacturers on the market, for lenses and cameras alike. All are adding their own spins, their own advantages, and with that their own pitfalls and minor annoyances. It is now almost impossible to have a kit for all scenarios you may face in your shoot requirements.
Rewind a few years, and everyone flocked to Canon, due to their range of DSLRs and Super-35mm cameras, it made sense to gear up with Canon lenses as a result.
Then Sony came back with their Mirrorless lenses, such as the extremely popular A7 range; A7Sii, A7R, A7iii, all with their new Sony E-Mount sensors. At first Sony pushed their own lenses, but soon they realised it made more sense to allow a manufacturer to produce E to EF adapters; the first to reliably hit that market was Metabones – and they are still the most popular choice, despite Sigma bringing out a very good version, and some decent budget versions out there also. All of these adapters produced annoyances though (Metabones less than others but it's still not perfect), which you just don't get when using the lenses on their native mounts.
So suddenly E-Mount lenses made a resurgence. Carl Zeiss made the Loxia lenses, which optically wowed so many people, but was still missing the key element of autofocus. So then they released the Batis range, at a slight (and I mean slight) cost of image quality, you gained continuous autofocus capabilities. It was a game-changer which timed very well with the explosion of small hand-held Gimbals. Suddenly you had a stunning Gimbal setup (A7Sii, Batis 24mm, Ronin-S) at a fraction of the cost you would have associated with that only a year or so earlier.
But larger cameras were also evolving, and the Canon C300ii took back some of the Sony market, again pushing the desirable lens setups back to Canon EF, with the stand out favourite of the last 12 months being the CN-E(CNE) Prime sets. This set also proved very popular on the bigger Sony cameras, such as the PXW-FS7, as they gave full manual iris control and even covered full frame, making them look stunning with the PXW-FX9.
Now Canon have released their new R (mirrorless) Camera to compete with Sony's small mirrorless E-Mount range.. which brings yet new lenses into play.
Can you ever have the exact camera or lenses you need for a specific job?
Gone are the days where we stocked up on 2 or 3 ranges. Today we have EF, PL, E-Mount, A-Mount, EF-M, Micro 4/3rds, Full Frame, Super-35mm... and it just keeps growing.
You just can't stock it all. And that's why we are here. If you need something new, something special, or just different, it just doesn't make sense to invest in a single range these days.