Canon lenses = Ancient History?

We all know, I believe, that technology marches along at an incredible pace. Whether it's processor power, memory, miniaturization, lighter weight materials, amazing strides are constantly and continuously being made on many fronts.

Alas, except one. Lenses. I just received my latest issue of EOS Magazine. It's a feature-filled periodical with articles of great interest. One such is on Canon's tilt shift lenses, a topic which I keep trying to understand. But I digress.

The magazine came with an insert which is a list of every Canon Camera and Lens ever made, along with a description of same and year of production.

Damn, lenses are old. While there are a few new ones, many, many of the lenses we buy today, brand-spankin' new, came out five or more years ago. I can't imagine that these can't be updated, at least in terms of materials to save weight, etc.

Just as an example:

100-400, introduced in Nov. '98
Even the vaunted 70-200 f2.8 IS, which is newer than the non-IS, came out in August of '01.

As far as primes are concerned, the story is even older:

300 f2.8L IS USM July of '99, six years old. Ancient by today's standards.

The revered 14 f2.8, Canon's widest prime, which costs a pretty penny, came out in December of -- are you ready? 1991. Fourteen years ago.

Yes, I realize it still does the job, that's not my point. I just don't understand, and it's probably because of my simple mind, how in all this time manufacturing techniques have not improved so as to bring the costs down and the yields up.

Any comments?

Ancient is a relative thing - electronics get old a lot quicker than the more mature industries like glass, metals, and plastics. Optics are mature - there aren't any extreme advances ready for market. Probably the most extreme advance to hit market relatively recently is diffractive optics, and such lenses aren't quite up to par compared to more conventional glass.

They can use plastic lens elements, and some of Canon's lower-cost lenses probably do have some plastic elements. They're lighter and less expensive than glass. But optically, there's a price.

Great lenses are perhaps like the Great White Shark.

They don't need to evolve???

Ancient? I'm a young really young pup, but come on....until my first piece of EOS gear every camera I ever owned was older then me, lenses too. I have a Pentax from the 60's, and before that I had a Konica same era. New for me at one time was my late 70's FD gear, still have that too. Wow I thought auto-Aperture was the best thing since sliced bread. I can recall arguements with professors over when and how fast digital would be viable. I remember when a local pro spent thousands on a 1MP camera.

My father-in-law still shoots a Konica SLR he purchased new in the 60's he has a sweat 250mm prime for it. It's going to go in for it's 2nd service-overhaul soon. His regret was not buying the 28mm for it, I may pick him up that lens one day to complete his set.

To be honest, I tend to think most of my gear save for the L lenses are built very cheaply. I have 50mm primes that I purchased for under $100 used that blow most of my zooms away. AF screen suck, I have no clue why we even have AF-M switches, unless you remember the good old days of manual focus screens, it's my opinion you don't really know what an art a great focus action shot was.

Everyone talks about how great opitically L's are, looking back at my old gear it's how lenses should be. It's a shame to think today's kit lenses even pass for lenses at all, they are built like the old Happy meal 110film cameras if you ask me. (remember those things?)

I can remember when my buddy got his 28-70L brand new, I still concider that a damn new lens. Digital sucks in some ways, this buying the latest and greatest every few years is the pits, I mean I've had my Pentax serviced or rebuilt a few times, will that ever happen to my Drevel, no they'd laugh me out of the store.

How old is your computer, MrChad? How old is your car? Just curious.

I wasn't using ancient in a "bad" way, but just stating that I was surprised that the lenses of "today" came out soo long ago. The storied EF1200mm lens came out in 1993. Surely manufacturing techniques have made a lens of this type, or any other for that matter, cheaper to make while still imbuing the same quality, or, according to you, lack thereof.

Optics are a mature technology, and a 3-dimensional one. Light has physical properties that we can model with great precision, and so does glass. Manufacturing tolerances for figuring glass are to the point where glass can routinely be figured to within a small fraction of the wavelength of light.

Breakthroughs are rare, and have come as a result of several things. One is that mechanics are more complex, in that we are now prepared to have floating elements and other things that once would have been infeasible when everything was machined from metal.

Another is that we can deal with complexity by modeling the behavior of glass and light on computers in very sophisticated ways, which has made it possible to calculate complex zoom lenses. Still another is that we can now produce lens shapes that were once infeasible, such as aspherical lens elements. And every now and then we discover new glass formulas that have desireable refractive capabilities. Lens coatings have improved to the point where we no longer need to worry about the number of lens elements.

Once in a while we have a breakthrough to a new whole new approach. Diffractive optics might be one such. Image stabilization might be another.

But for the most part, improvements are evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

The Canon lenses you characterize as old, of course, are not old at all. The Zeiss Planar, one of the sharpest normal primes in existence, is based on a design calculated in the 1890's. Canon's normal lenses are based on the same design. The Sonnar was first calculated in the 20's. The first retrofocus wide angle lenses appeared in the early 50's, with the Flektogon, Distagon, and Angenieux Retrofocus designs. Those Distagons are still available today, with evolutionary improvements from computer design and new coatings.

In terms of resolution, the quality of most lenses will be controlled more by the execution than the design.

The next big breakthrough might be a marriage of the lens capability with the post-processing algorithms. It might be possible, for example, to digitally manipulate the image according to the known behavior of a particular lens design to improve performance. That way, the processor can know lens faults ahead of time instead of trying to sense them by evaluating the image, as we do now. This, by the way, was how we were able to get good use out of the Hubbell Space Telescope before repairs to the optics of the mirror were made.

Rick "who thinks improvement in the three-dimensional world come more slowly than electronics consumers have been conditioned to expect" Denney

Mr. Chad brings up a good point. I have my old 50/1.8 FL lens (pre-FD) and it is an incredibly well-made piece of glass. Every movement on that lens is as smooth as silk. The focus ring is damped, precise, and the distance & DOF marks are spread out enough to actually use. The aperture ring has a very precise ball & spring mechanism with a detent at each full stop. In the respect of build quality, lenses have gone way, way downhill.

{RDENNEY QUOTED: Flektogon, Distagon, and Angenieux Retrofocus"

Are those cuss words?

That was certainly a mouthful and very informative. I was trying, by my post, to understand, and you've certainly made it a lot clearer. Some would say clear as mud, but not me. (j/k) Actually, that was a great response. Thanks.

And I love your ending tag lines.

To answer an earlier post, parts of my computer are circa '98, but it's mostly a 2003 custom built jobby, some pieces are '05. The wife has a nice new Apple iMac G5, can't wait to try out Apple's Aperture on that puppy.

My current company lease car is an '05, the wife's car is an '04, but my personal car is a 2000 (yes I call this relatively new). Before that I had a '97 and before that I had a 1968 with 20,000mi on it purchase from the original owner in '96, sold it with 40,000mi on it to purchase my current personal car the 2000 (Avatar car).

I don't keep old junk to be cheap, I keep vintage things because in decades gone by labor was cheap and craftmanship meant something to people. Most things made today are cheaply built. The upside of today cheaply made goods is in a few years I hope to pick up an HD flat panel tv for under a grand

Exactly, but let's face it today's L zooms are really nice--and so fast and bright. Buy yes the aperture and focus rings on my old gear was so nice to hold and use, even my L's fall short in that area by a large degree. And old camera bodies got better with age, todays polycarbon-plastic junk just looks old, dirty, and scratched. Eos isn't that old didn't it come out in the early '80s, man those early bodies look so cheap....kinda like todays Drebel's, woops!

I recall about 10-15 years ago, wanting to update my camera outfit. At the time, I was shooting my FT-QL with 3 lenses, the 50 I mentioned above, a 135/2.8 Tamron, and a Tamron 35-80 f/2.8 zoom. The zoom was actually wearing out! Anyway, I walked into the camera store, picked up the Rebel and immediately put it down. I told the store clerk that there was no way I would buy something so cheap.

Fortunately, the 10D, 5D, and 1D II haven't felt anything like that camera. And the 350D/XT really feels more solid in the hand than that early EOS Rebel did.

When Digital brought camera bodies into the high speed evolution track of the personal computer,. it forced Camera manufactureres to adapt to this new pace oor fail. Many struggeld, some failed. One of Canon's storng suits has allways been diversity,., it was allready familiar with teh new today old news tomorrow world of computing,. so it adapted to this new pace of photo equipment evolution better than any other camera compnay.. by far. Nikon is only just now getting to the point of being able to keep up. (at least where DSLRs are concerne,. it had to fight it's own existing entrenched demons from the film era to make it in todays world)

My point,. lens evolution seems slow only by comparison.

It does not change as fast as computer driven electronics simply because it doesn't have to,.
Also,. digital is new,. it was experimental just 5 years ago..
Optics on the other hand have been around since gallileo.. there is less new ground to break.

The optics design and evolution can not be compared to fledgling technology like Digital bodies...

In time the race for better DSLRs may slow down to the pace of the 35mm SLR of just a few years ago. Canon was not cranking film bodies at the pace that DSLRs are being intorduced... It didn;t need to as the tech was not moving so fast.

Technical evolution is driven by need. What do we need that we don't have today?
My question is more about price. With the number of people now getting into photography in a major way (since digital) me included. When manufacturing costs have come down (due to robotics and OS cheap labor) Why are we paying such costs for equipment?
Why produce two or three levels of technology. Do we need to propagate class distinction even in photography.
There was a time when only pros would have L glass. Now it seems most of us have some. IMO it should all be L glass quality. How does any company justify $15,000 for a lens when the work is automated

CDS, you make very valid points.

desertraptor, I wholeheartedly agree with you too, and that was part of my point. Not only is it automated, but the high R&D costs have surely been recouped many times over.