After talking about the EU and why that didn’t seem to be causing any of the delays, the conversation in the forums, after discussing golf rangefinders, made a note that there seemed to be a supply shortage across all manufacturers. Someone mentioned Thom Hogan1 talking about it, and then something clicked in my lizard brain (which is always pretty dangerous).
A little forward note before we get into this. While the problem that we are discussing in this opinion piece is fact, the impact on the camera industry is something we are drawing a conclusion on. While it sounds plausible and realistic, we don’t have actual confirmation from Canon, Sony, Nikon or others. We just have heard there is some “shortage”.
The Global Mineral Problem
Outside of a few specific parts, there’s very little that is shared across all the camera companies, but there is a mineral that is. Magnesium. Canon uses this a lot. We dug up an older photograph, but it’s no different today, Canon creates its professional cameras with cast magnesium alloy construction2. This is also widely used by other manufacturers as well for their camera bodies.
Now let’s go back to 2021. It was a grand time. Something was happening around the world too, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. It couldn’t have been important, moving on *cough*.
China was and still is the world’s dominant producer of magnesium, accounting for somewhere between 87% and 94% of global magnesium output. However, in 2021, China’s environmental pushback caused a significant disruption in the production of magnesium. To meet their climate goals, the country implemented production curbs on magnesium, particularly during the last quarter of the year.
Magnesium doesn’t have a long storage life because of corrosion, so you can’t simply order it and store it easily when you need it. So, if it stops being produced, it quickly becomes a supply problem.
China’s goal was to reduce energy consumption by 3%. While this seems commendable, it created a ripple effect. Magnesium production is an energy-intensive process, and these restrictions limited quite significantly the magnesium output. But China’s green efforts weren’t the only problem. The country was also grappling with a coal shortage at the time. This further squeezed energy supplies, making it even harder for magnesium production facilities to operate at full capacity.
How bad was this you ask? Oh, it was really bad. Here’s the price of magnesium per kg over time3. The price massively spiked in late 2021 and while it’s steadily falling, it should be noted that it’s still 63% higher than in late 2020, which would seem to indicate that there is still a supply and demand issue that wasn’t there in 2020.
To compound all this, the magnesium market is expected to continue to grow in the coming decade, placing an even further strain on the supply of magnesium.
As China continues to pivot on all aspects of its infrastructure and clean energy usage up to promised levels, they are going to be consuming more essential materials themselves, including magnesium. At the same time just to make things worse on demand, China is rapidly building up its military. The industrial complex responsible for naval, air, and rocket force manufacturing will consume a significant portion of the magnesium produced in China. I think it’s safe to assume that when it comes to prioritization, China’s military-industrial complex will certainly be the priority consumer.
This seems to be what Precedence Research4 is thinking as well.
Asia Pacific dominated the global magnesium market in 2023, accounting for over the market revenue, and is expected to maintain its dominance in the forecast period. Countries like India and China have seen increased spending on electric automotive projects, while rapid growth in military aviation, aerospace, and space ventures is also driving magnesium market growth.
https://www.precedenceresearch.com/magnesium-market
Magnesium and related alloys could certainly be facing an uncertain and more costly future. Large and strategic industries that need significant quantities are going to take the lion’s share of the mineral supply, meaning that there will be far less for the smaller consumers to fight over.
A Gripping Mystery
So back to our original thoughts on all this, now that you are either depressed or running out and buying magnesium commodities. It could very well be that Canon and the other camera companies are still catching up to magnesium demand for lenses and camera bodies, and simply there’s still not enough to go around to new cameras and lenses. But there was one other clue that may seal the deal on this theory and that has to do with the BG-R10 – the battery grip for the R5 and R6. The battery grip was released with the R6 and R5 camera bodies and was made out of cast magnesium alloy.
Back in July 2020, Canon mentioned that the demand for the BG-R10 greatly exceeded supply. From the internet archive back in July 10, 2020;
Regarding the following products announced on July 9, 2020, we have received more orders than expected, so it may take some time for the products to be delivered.
[Applicable products] EOS R5/EOS R6/Battery Grip BG-R10/Extender RF1.4x/Extender RF2x
That puzzled me at the time – how the blazes could Canon run out of this, and why would it even take a significant amount of time for Canon to create more? There’s nothing complicated in a battery grip, and this is Canon – the world largest manufacturer of camera equipment. This would be mass produced on Canon’s automated assembly lines. It never made sense at the time.
In February 2024, Canon did another surprising move, and seemed to quietly discontinue or have major stock issues with the BG-R10, something that surprised me. Canon has never in my memory has never discontinued a battery grip while the camera that used it was still an actively shipped camera, and at the time the R5 and R6 Mark II were being shipped. Again, the manufacturing of a grip is a relatively trivial process when compared to a camera. So much so that third party grip manufacturers can produce high quality and reliable products.
Currently from the Canon Japan webstore we can see that it’s discontinued in Japan.
However, looking back, if Canon was critically short on magnesium, they would probably rather use that on high-value items instead of battery grips. This would easily explain why they were short supply when it was first announced, and also why Canon decided to discontinue it altogether while the R5 and R6 Mark II were still being shipped and sold.
The Impact
This all may have had a far more reaching impact than I originally thought. This was an article that as I wrote it more things suddenly made sense to me, which probably means it’s all wrong. It happens to me all the time. But for now, we are going to believe in Occam’s Razor and run with this.
Canon’s L lenses especially the longer lenses use a combination of magnesium and titanium. Cast magnesium alloy is used for Canon’s prosumer and professional camera bodies and most of the grips for those cameras. If Canon was indeed in an extremely short supply of magnesium, the following actions may also be explained.
- EF lenses and Cameras being quickly discontinued. It could explain why Canon discontinued EF mount cameras and lenses rapidly as they simply didn’t have the material on hand to support the manufacturing of both EF and RF cameras and lenses. If something were to give, it was going to be the system that was going to be discontinued, and not the new system they wanted people to migrate over to.
- RF Lens and Camera Shortages. It would explain why Canon is always mysteriously short on both cameras and L lenses, something we have never seen before. I personally never bought the idea that Canon couldn’t simply meet production demands, since Canon was used to producing 2x the number of lenses and camera bodies in the past years, and certainly has optimized that even further in the decade since that time.
- Newer Cameras and Lenses are taking longer to come to market. Because there is less magnesium, there’s less supply to keep making the older cameras and readying for the new camera coming to market that will supersede it. Production of the follow-up product begins well before it is launched.
Having magnesium in short supply would exasperate almost every aspect of manufacturing new cameras, and force a nasty manufacturing triage that Canon probably wished they didn’t have to do.
While we may never know if this is truly the case, or even if it’s the only shortage, it’s certainly a plausible explanation that is happening around the industry.
References
- Strange Things Written on the Internet XXX – Thom Hogan ↩︎
- Canon EOS 5D Mark II: 21MP and HD movies – DPReview ↩︎
- Magnesium Pricing – Trading Economics ↩︎
- Magnesium Market – Precedence Research ↩︎
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I hope y'all enjoy the read.
However for Sony, they still pumping shxts out every so often....it's hard to justify on their side (?
Magnesium shortage is certainly a plausible theory. Of course Canon et al. would probably never admit such things that affect operations. I just hope it doesn't translate into sky-high prices compared to the original R5.
Your view on Magnesium seems very reasonable. But why wouldn't that be the talk of the Camera Industry?
Also it is hard to see the very thin stable oxide layer on a stored billet of Magnesium would impact the later manufacturing process.
The camera companies if you haven't noticed, aren't exactly known for having frank conversations, but they have all said something about supply shortages, etc.
It's also the case that magnesium is being researched and developed for use in EV batteries, as an alternative to lithium-ion batteries. If that comes to fruition, then whatever shortages there are now are going to be a drop in the ocean compared to the future!
Raw materials are the first step in the total supply chain. Any shortages or limitations here affect everything downstream, including and not limited to the component parts but also their manufacturing tools and processes (think moulds, machinery, chip manufacturing etc).
In the current manufacturing "Just in Time" environment, delays at raw material level have significant impacts. Manufacturers do not want to have millions of dollars in warehoused components as these are additional costs. And launching a new product with uncertain supply would be potentially damaging to the brand.
While the "supply shortages" may not be only magnesium or its alloys (as this article highlights), there are still many global shortages that will have an impact to some degree - and at different frequency or intervals - and that makes forecasting and production schedules that much harder to predict.
The camera companies painted themselves into a corner equating magnesium alloy with their premier camera models.
I have long struggled to find a common denominator that would fit across lenses and camera shortages - we know it's not the optics or glass since that wouldn't impact cameras that much these days. electronics? hardly anything shared between camera and lenses - a few custom ASICS and off the shelf components wouldn't cause such a problem.
Processors would be a camera only thing.
even sensors, camera only.
Yes, there could be a vast cloud of supply chain problems, but this neatly fit. it doesn't mean it is right, but it was a heck of an article to write up even if I'm out to lunch on it, and I learned stuff and that's never a bad thing to do.
and I'm here with popcorn when the other people / sites start talking about it
This might finally be time for classic materials making a comeback!
Marble!
Heavyness is a sign of quality. I'm sure people wouldn't mind carrying around a 10kg rock around their necks.
Then we have .. who's getting it? it could be that Japanese manufacturers are not getting it as timely as in the past. if they are having to start / stop / start / stop production because they aren't getting it when they need it.. can mess everything up.
And china does crazy things to prices too.
I agree, this is a problem of the camera companies' own marketing. they've made us now think that we NEED mag alloy. My beloved EOS-3 I didn't think had any mag alloy.