An American drone company has joined the L-Mount Alliance. But who is Freefly and why does it matter?

The L-Mount Alliance has officially welcomed its 11th member. American drone company Freefly has joined the L-Mount family, the group announced on April 17.

The L-Mount Alliance is an agreement between several brands that collaborate on a system that now includes more than 20 cameras and over 130 lenses. Essentially, the collaboration means the lenses from member brands work as first-party optics on member cameras, even if the camera body and lens have mismatched brand names.

Freefly joins the ranks that include the group’s founders – Leica, Sigma, and Panasonic – along with Ernst Leitz Wetzlar GmbH, DJI, Astrodesign, Samyang Optics, Blackmagic Design, Sirui, and Viltrox.

Freefly is a US-based company that produces high-end drones, stabilizers, and cameras. Freefly specializes in the more high-end segment rather than consumer drones, offering tech made for cinematographers and filmmakers, as well as equipment designed for industrial inspections. That US location is important, as American drone pilots are facing an FCC foreign-made drone ban that prevents future drones from gaining the necessary approval to be sold in the US.

Joining the L-Mount Alliance means that it’s highly probable that future Freefly drones and cameras will offer an L-Mount option, allowing them to use the existing range of L-Mount optics. The Freefly Wave camera, for example, which can shoot handheld or mounted on a drone, is a Super 35 format camera with a global shutter.

The Wave uses a Sony E-Mount, but that’s a passive mount, which means there’s no electronic communication with the camera for features like autofocus, auto aperture, and including the lens data in the metadata.

Tabb Firchau, the CEO at Freefly Systems Inc., says that joining the L-Mount Alliance will allow the company to move faster than before. “The L-Mount allows us to interface with a wide range of beautiful lenses that are small, light, and feature advanced electronics that enable exciting electronic control options from the camera. We look forward to contributing to the Alliance and hope to put L-Mount lenses in places the world has not seen them before – from rocket launches to fighting forest fires.”

Joining the L-Mount will allow Freefly to use an existing family of lenses on their products – but only time will tell exactly what product from the brand will be the first with an L-Mount.

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