Canon lenses = Ancient History?

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

I've been through plenty of other wides, searching for that perfect 20 mm or so lens.

Could I interest you in the Zeiss Jena Flektogon 20 mm f/2.8? Here's my quick test against the 16-35....

http://www.photography​-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=122109

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

They're going for about £2000 on ebay at the moment, quite infrequently though.

The 19mm Leica-R comes close to the distagon and can be used with an adaptor. Similar price to the Zeiss too, i.e. lots of money.

It's all a superb example of the law of dimishing returns.

As rdenney says optics are more or less figured out since the beginning of last century. Only better construction processes allowed manufacturer to make "better" glass : higher precision, atypical surfaces, better glass formulaes etc.
Coating was invented in 1934, and was used systematicaly after the war. Coating is actualy a *very clever* and *very precise* processus. It involves finding a way to deposit a substract whose depth is *exactly* a quarter of the wavelength of the center of the spectrum... And yeah that was invented in 1934...
Multicoating does the same thing, just slightly better, it's again just normal manufacturing processes and new deposits.

So as far as pure optics goes, your "new" lens is maybe 2% better than a 1970's one (if any!) and maybe 5% top better than a 1950's good lens. Thats all there is.

The rest is mostly "gizmos". AF made the lens mecanics evolve toward the "light" while before that everyone cared about the "smooth as silk" rotation of barels. IS is even more gizmoy, especialy how Canon stonks it on slow lens to "make" them more expensive.

However, these electronics COULD be updated, it's especialy true with the IS, Canon *could* release "mark II, III" etc of the same optics with new gizmos, updated IS and that sort of things. After all, they DO so with the smaller lens in the compacts..
Sometime I get the impression that Canon makes a new lens, build 10 millions of them, store them in a large warehouse and ships them for 20 years afterward.
Otherwise, standard manufacturing processes would *scream* to stop making "version 1" IS electronics when you already have a "version 2" and "3" too. It would be cheaper to adap the lens to use the new version than dedicate part of the manufacturing force to continue making obsolete (and therefore more expensive) stuff.

Depends on price and condition. I'm paying 'playing around' prices at the moment for these fellas, but given Mr Foxbats $$$£££ information maybe these wide boys aren't sold at playing around prices

Nah condik, skip the Flek 20, it's all fluff. The manufacturing was random, and it seems the "good copies" are very, very rare. The 2 I tried were pretty much useless, with lots of CA even stopped down a lot. And I'm not alone, I read on FM a guy who tried *12* copies of the 20 to find a good one. At $300 a pop it starts getting a bit expensive
All in all, my Sigma 18-50 f2.8 is a *lot* better... Also the Flek 20 is very expensive (for a M42)

But I disgress...

Many thanks sir.

Please ignore my earlier PM as you've answered perfectly here

Actually, had you looked at the images, you'd see that this particular flektogon isn't all that nice anyway (so much for my attempt at the British humour ). It does have that nice feel of the older lenses, but image-wise, it can't out-do the Canon zoom.

In fact, the Canon 20/2.8 that I had is a better lens, except for the vignetting on full-frame.

Actualy, on this thread foxbat has a nice Flek 20 that gives hin very good results. but he has to stop it down to 22!!
I took one appart myself, it was the hardest servicing I ever did. That lens was obvisouly one of the first to be machine assembled, which explains the bad performance; most of them are probably out of alignement.
The one I took appart took me 3 weeks of soaking the front ring in a mix of silicon based lubricant and solvent to finaly manage to unscrew the front!

Other points to consider in looking at changes in lens design and construction are:
1) Canon's changing all its lenses to use lead-free glass, without necessarily changing the lens mark. This involves a certain amount of re-engineering as well as basic research since even if the configuration of an element doesn't change, the necessary procedures for preparing it may.
2) The glass used in a lens is a major component in its weight - it's not easy to make a significant reduction in weight without getting rid of some glass, or replacing it with something else wiht comparable index of refractionbut less density. The rest of the lens construction needs to be able to handle this weight and maintain correct positioning under the stresses of normal use. How many people like the 50 f/1.8 Mk II's construction as compared to the metal 50 f/1.8 Mk I? But there's a lens that really has benefitted (in size, weight, and price) from re-engineering and volume production.

Well... the internal combustion engine is how old? 150 years since the patent? How many changes have been made to those?

Your lightbulbs are how old? Do you need new lightbulbs?

Fridge design?

I wish I had a silent USM motor on my fridge

Most of the lenses used on large format cameras use optical formulas devised in the 19th century which have been refined by new glass formulae and manufacturing techniques.

All true, pretty much. Though it seems to have taken Sigma until recently to multi-coat a lens without the yellowish color cast.

I'd love to have silky-smooth barrel rotation AND autofocus. As for IS, it's very benificial on longer glass. I haven't tried it on shorter lenses, though. It's nice to have a couple of stops worth of tripod built into the lens.

Well, Canon did just update the 75-300 IS into a 70-300 IS with the newer generation of IS. Of course, they also charge $150-200 more for the new lens. If it were truly to Canon's economic advantage to update the IS in, say the 28-135, to the latest version, I would think that they'd do it. The electronics portion of the IS system is cheap either way.

I didn't try mine at f/22, but maybe I should. Then again, at 20 mm, the 16-35 does fine at f/8.

I may take this one apart, just for fun. It isn't a terrible lens, though I do wonder why the aperture blades are silver-colored instead of flat black. That's got to have some effect on contrast, and not in a good way. I was surprised at the less-than-stellar corner performance at f/8.

Bottom line is anything in the Eos System ancient? I mean some of the older must have L's would have been the 28-80L and the 80-200L and though no longer for sale new, I would call them oldies but goodies (classics), but not ancient.

BTW, I would love to see a copy of that list, I don't recall seeing Eos magazine on the shelf in the states.