Do you think Sony's non-GM lenses will ever get linear manual focus?

[Jordan Lee]

I have the Sony 55mm f/1.8 with my A7III, which is an awesome lens except for the fact that its manual focus uses focus-by-wire. As you know, it's very hard to achieve repeatable focus pulls and the like with these kinds of lenses. I understand that some of Sony's GM lenses have linear manual focusing, which, while not as nice as a mechanical focus system, is much preferred to the variable speeds of their other lenses. So my question is, do you think it'll ever be possible to update the firmware of a lens or the camera body to switch a lens' manual focus to linear? Or is it impossible because of the construction of those lenses?

[Mokara]

1 hour ago, Jordan Lee said:

I have the Sony 55mm f/1.8 with my A7III, which is an awesome lens except for the fact that its manual focus uses focus-by-wire. As you know, it's very hard to achieve repeatable focus pulls and the like with these kinds of lenses. I understand that some of Sony's GM lenses have linear manual focusing, which, while not as nice as a mechanical focus system, is much preferred to the variable speeds of their other lenses. So my question is, do you think it'll ever be possible to update the firmware of a lens or the camera body to switch a lens' manual focus to linear? Or is it impossible because of the construction of those lenses?

Unless the lens controls focus entirely by hardware, there is no particular reason why something like that could not be set as an option in firmware.

[noone]

I understand the new 24 1.4 is just what you are after.    Yes it is a GM but is different to other GMs I think in many ways.

The 55 1.8 is a bit out on its own now being Sony Zeiss as there don't seem to be any new ones like it and the 24-70 and 35 2.8.

I would think there will be more lenses like what you want.