Canon lenses = Ancient History?

I saw a newly developed camera on the news last night. I definately want one.
Developed by the British Army for high speed photography. It was sharp, sharp, sharp. OMG this thing was sharp.
Price was 250,000 pounds

I'd say that it's often market/sales driven as well. Meaning that marketers perform the task of influencing people in such a way that they need something.

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

You're making the assumption that a great deal of the work is automated. I'm sure it is on more normal-priced, popular lenses that use predominately plastic shells, stamped metal pieces, and commonly available optical glass (and the occasional plastic aspheric lens). But it certainly isn't on low-volume lenses like those $15,000 lenses you mention. For every 400 mm f/2.8 IS lens that Canon sells, they probably sell tens of thousands of other, more reasonable lenses. And don't forget that some of the ingredients in exotic lenses are considerably rarer than optical-quality glass. Flourite crystals have to be grown, and low dispersion glass is considerably harder to manufacture than is normal optical glass.

And, in many cases, L-glass aspherics are ground glass as opposed to moulded aspheric elements that show up on lenses like the 24-85 USM. Plus, we can't forget the huge diameter of the entrance pupil that's required to achieve f/2.8 at super-telephoto lengths.


And after all that, it needs to be said that the selling price is NOT dictated by the cost of manufacture - it is dictated by supply and demand as are all things in a free market.

My $.02: lens/glass I would metaphorically compare to watches. Nice L's are more like swiss masterpieces. Do they get old - certainly and new technology "dictates" newer and cooler watches with a lot of gadgetry, but the mechanical watches still have their place in the ranking.

I don't really worry about it. My best lens is 14 years old. Physically, not by release date. It was built in 1991. It is also still incredible.

I wouldnt consider something built within the last 20 year ancient. I wouldnt even consider my almost 90 year old Kodak ancient (still works perfectly)

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Desertraptor wrote:
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

Okay, a few points:

1.) Price is driven by what people are willing to pay. If a manufacturer can only produce a given quantity of products and maintain the necessary quality model, then they will sell them to the people willing to pay the most for them. The alteranative is for Canon's stockholders to throw out the management. I'm a consumer but my retirement program is full of stock, so I see both sides of that one.

2.) Prices have gone down on the more complex designs, and stayed fairly constant on the simpler designs. For example, the 85/1.8 sold for $277 in 1986, or $478 in 2004 dollars. The modern 85/1.8 is an outstanding lens, easily as good or better than the FD version, and the price is around $370. And the 80-200/4L sold for $590 in 1986, which is $1017 in 2004 dollars. The competing modern 70-200/4L is at most no more than two-thirds that price. In both cases, the modern equivalent is optically as good or better, includes additional features, is reasonably well made, and much lighter.

The focus is not as gooey feeling on modern lenses because autofocus motors would have a mighty hard time turning a lens body that had 3 or 4 square inches of thread contact lubricated by high-viscosity damping grease. To focus the lens with that little USM motor, the focus group had to be made loose and light. It was the same when lenses changed from non-automatic apertures to automatic apertures. An old rangefinder aperture might have 10 blades, and they would likely be lubricated. Now, aperture blades have to drop into place in a millisecond or so and have to be dry, loose, and light. Also, lenses today are expected to be lighter than their counterparts of old. Remember when Olympus's first SLR (the OM-1) stole the show when it came out beccause it was so small and light? These are not degradations in quality, but rather changes in design requirements. They may be cheaper to produce in some ways, but I suspect the additional features require additional production in other ways.

I really wonder if the better lenses are any less durable now than 20 years ago. My sense is that they are not. The plastic used absorbs shock far better than the aluminum and brass of old designs, and will transmit less of that shock to the internals. The old lenses were heavier and seemed stronger, but I actually doubt they were any more durable.

Finally, even though digital SLR seems to have created an explosion of buying, I submit that the lenses in 1986 had been made during the SLR boom of the late 70's and early 80's that was a bigger market than the current DSLR market. And that market was filled with people willing to spend less.

Rick "who thinks prices have come down in important ways" Denney

My father-in-law paid $600 in 1960's for his gear, do the math and L's are comparitively cheap. You could have a decent new car for less then $3000 in the 60's.

I wish the prices of everthing else went so linear....

I'm not sure they make many L's either, I'm sure 300D sales outnumber all the 70-200 f2.8L's sold to date.

As for Tom's cheap Rebel comments, I remember buying my Elan 7, I went to the store for an Rebel, it took all of 5sec. to laugh at that camera. The Rebel-D is a tad better but only because the batteries ad heft making you think it's better. Else it's not much better built then a Rebel Ti.

I'm holding out for the Elan-D one day

Hmmm. I'm not so sure that my old F-1, with brass showing on all edges and dents here and there, looks better than my Elan II, which still looks new. Granted, the Elan hasn't seen as much, but that F-1 was brassed and dented even after five years of hard use. I would say that the look of an enameled or chromed camera showing brass requires a nostalgic subjectivity to appreciate.

I also have the remains of a couple of Pentax KXes from the late 70's. One has a crack through the body that extends from opposite corners of the film frame. And the other has a squashed metal cover over the prism. The cracked one lost its life to a fall from a tripod, and I figure a modern DSLR wouldn't be any more likely to survive. The squashed prism housing, though, resulted from a fall to a wooden table from a height of five inches. I suspect any modern camera with a plastic housing would not even show a scratch (the Pentax died other other causes, however--a sheared shutter curtain pin).

I also have several zooms from that era that rattle like old window panes. My EF lenses all rattle like old window panes, too, but that's because the mechanisms have to be loose to be moveable by those little motors without binding. At least the rattling isn't getting any worse.

Rick "who has plenty of cheap cameras to admire" Denney

I have not followed camera gear for a long time - but the examples quoted point to two things that have changed:

a. Replacement of material like aluminium with plastics - I'm guessing Canon did a decent amount of research in deciding the plastics were better to go with. For durability, ease of use and maybe cost.

b. R&D costs are still probably incurred on even the 'settled' lenses coz the new paradigm could be around the bend and they still have to have people looking for it.

And still looks like costs in general have fallen if we take inflation adjusted levels - but could it have been even lower - probably yes would be my guess

All this brings me to a rather positive conclusion however - the conversion of what was considered professional grade to become a prosumer grade with a lot of volume is a fairly recent phenomenon. And it will drive prices down, fairly drastically in some cases - but for that, there has to be market pressure. And there's lots of margins on the table - probably explains the Tamrons and the Tokinas taking on a wider range than ever before.

But I would never expect the price drop in camera bodies to be replicated on lenses. They will adjust but its more to reduce margins than to reflect technology and lower cost...

I'm with you all the way here. Contax made excellent stuff. Kyocera decided that Contax isn't making any money, though.

The modern 85/1.8 is an excellent lens. I can't say much about the FD or FL version as I've not had those. I'd bet that they feel more solid, though. Then again, I wonder what an FD-build 85 would cost today. Just pontificating aloud now.

Gooey might be the wrong word, but the silky-smoothness of a well-machined device still exists on the 85/1.2L, the 400/2.8 USM II, and probably a couple of other lenses. Unfortunately, they had to motorize the manual focus to achieve this. But it makes a difference. In contrast, the 100-400L has a rather stiff feeling, and my 24/1.4 is not very smooth either. A lot has to do with the plastic-on-plastic bearing surfaces. I suppose that machined metal surfaces would be a bit expensive these days.

Well, most of the big L glass still has a metal body, and they do take quite a beating on the sideline of NFL and college football every week. I don't think that the 28-80 consumer zooms would last through one game in that environment. Heavy isn't a bad thing if the weight is in the right places, though it doesn't help when a lens is dropped. Probably doesn't hurt either, unless another lens is light enough for wind resistance to affect its rate of fall.

Anyway, it'll be interesting to see how many of today's normal consumer glass (50/1.8 or 50/1.4) are still in operable condition when they reach the age of my 1968 vintage 50/1.8. It may not matter by then if some breakthrough technology makes the lens obsolete, but I'd bet that at least at the low-mid priced end, today's optics aren't all that durable. Mid-high end, yes. If we see any of today's lenses in service 35 years down the road, it will most likely be the 70-200 L lenses rather than the 18-55 Kit lenses.

Tom "who agrees to a certain extent, though he still longs for the finest stuff from the pinnacle of the mechanization age - the 1950's and early 1960's".

I'll bet that the 50/1.4 will still be completely usable in 30 years, if the electronics hold up. I would not class the 1.4 as a consumer lens--most pros who would use a 50 would use the 1.4 and it has to meet their standard or that wouldn't buy it. Judging from what we read here, they do.

The 1.8 is a different matter, but then it was substantially reduced in quality to target a consumer price point. I don't know the price of a 1.8 lens in the 1960's, but the price in 1986 was $102, which would be $175 in 2004 dollars. And it would be $34 in 1969 dollars. The current lens is priced at $90, which would be $50 in 1986 and $16 in 1969. I have this feeling that a $16 lens in 1969 might not be a heck of a lot more durable than the modern 1.8.

And, despite that I think the new stuff is better than it feels, I still have that 1954 Rolleiflex 3.5 MX Type 2, with the Xenar lens and the synchro-Compur shutter. No, they don't make them like that any more. But the $265 that it cost new would require $2000 now, for a manual-everything fixed-lens TLR with no meter. It's lovely to fondle, however.

Rick "who paid $50 in 1973 for a used 35/3.5 FL lens, and $100 in 1985 for a used TX with a 50/1.4 FD breech-lock lens" Denney

The laws of physics are still the same. I think the main improvement in lens design happend when computing power got good enough to do detailed simulations. The same thing happend in most areas of engeneering.

As the others have noted lens design is a mature technology. The best wide-angle ever made is the manual focus 21mm Zeiss Distagon and it's decades old.

It's an awesome lens, but not without its faults - it has considerable wave distortion (also known as moustache distortion due to the shape) for example. On the other hand, nobody seems to be able to design an ultra-wide lens that retains its sharpness from corner to corner as well as this one.

I need one of these little fella's but hard to find. At the mo' I'm a bit deficient in the wide area