Since I got into Canon around 1996, for the longest time I envied Nikon users their autofocus 85/1.4. It seems "Goldilocks," just right, in between the too-big 1.2 and too-mundane 1.8. Funny, I started having eye problems around the time they finally made an 85/1.4 so I never actually tried it.
They'll probably charge enough for the licensing that the 85/1.4 from a third party would not be cheaper than their in-house 85/2. The 85/2 also would probably get some buyers for "being Canon," whether just for the name recognition, or because Canon's been making these things for a century and really knows what it's doing. (Lens Rentals takes apart all the lenses and seems really impressed with Canon's internal designs.) Or for the macro capability, or perhaps its higher image quality.
I am not aware of a use case for an autofocus 14/1.4 but it would be great to be EF mount and manual focus for astro.
Post WWII, Japanese manufacturing was cheap and "cheerful" and now a symbol of quality. The Koreans came next and now the Chinese in most industries with car production being the most obvious. Western technology was transferred to tap cheap labour and domestic market penetration but China has dictated the best terms for local equity ownership and overall IP transfer. A massive emerging middle class is helping them to become self sufficient and they produce some key commodities that the world has difficulty finding and they are trying to develop bleeding edge tech as well.
One factor is that it's very hard to buy big parcels of land to build a factory. It requires making deals with 1000 of individuals and not everyone is willing to sell no matter what the price. Modi's previous job was chief minister of Gujarat and he was very pro-business but I don't think he could do a huge amount either. I also wonder if a lot of people don't have a documented ownership and thus simply can't sell: their family may have been in a site for many generations but simply not have anything that says it's theirs.
Exactly, I don't even do astro, I want it for my fellow shooters. It's not only got the spec but it has nearly zero coma. It's really purpose-made for this this... purpose... that doesn't sound right???
and they made is solely for Sony E mount which is suspiciously like Sony did a deal with them for some reason.
