Does lens age matter?

What Numenorean said! Don't be THAT Guy....

I think it can matter. But since you have it you should be able to tell yourself if its worth the price or not. It is not fair to send it back just because is old. If the lens is heavy used, looks like its heavy used and has serious visible flaws which are not declared by the seller, then its a different story

I have two lens in my kit - 20-35 and 75-300 ... both look like it came out of the box yesterday ... both have had some use, but not a lot --- and it would be a huge deal for anyone. I love the 20-35, would never sell it, but the 75-300 I don't like much and its had limited use, almost brand new, and looks mint, twice mint - perfect.

If the lens looks new, acts new, works new, well then it's new to you, so save the bucks and start thinking about another lens ... Lens age and wear will show up fairly easily, but for the most part, will not effect the images unless damaged in some way. I'd keep it.

if there is nothing wrong with the image quality, then keep it, use it and enjoy it...if it is broken in any way just get rid of it...ITs an L lens, so the quality will be fine....doesn't matter if it was made yesterday or 10 years ago.

I would not be worried about the age, but for a 10 year old lens,
I would want to pay half of the new price to be an enticing deal for me.

I would be more concerned with buying a heavily-used 6-month-old lens of a pro shooter. (wear and tear)
Rather than a 3-5 year old lens that saw very little use and appears as new.

If the lens is as advertised, then you got what you paid for and have no reason to return it.

Tom Reichner wrote in post #17165327
Stuart,
Age makes no difference whatsoever. In fact, when I buy used lenses (and I only buy used), I don't even ask about the manufacture date, because it simply doesn't matter. Same thing with small scratches on the glass or dust inside the lens - these things do not matter at all insomuch as affect on images are concerned. All that matters are the pictures that the lens produces and the durability of the lens, and neither of these are affected by age.

That !

Rolex wrote in post #17165606
so lets just re-cap ..... its 10 years old so its got 10 years of wear!!!!!!
of course it makes a difference

it doesn't matter how old it is, it matters how it was used. if its in good condition it, age has no bearing.

Tommydigi wrote in post #17165357
This is true but if the cost was similar I would just get a new one so I vote return it and get a new one. In time you can add your own dust and scratches :-}

If the price is close its worth it for the warranty alone.

No. That is a decision the buyer should make before actually buying the lens. It's directly rude to waste the sellers time by returning a perfectly fine lens just because the buyer changes his mind.

Charlie wrote in post #17165421
I disagree

Age matters more now than it did during the manual focus days for a few reasons:

1. Lenses are more complicated now than in the past, electronics can go bad. Adding electronics to MF lenses has helped tremendously, but introduces more problems.

2. Silent updates. We really dont know what type firmware or chips the older gear uses. Lensrentals has data that shows there are silent updates that improve lenses.

if it works good, then it works good, but age does matter, you definitely want newer for those reasons stated.

I haven't seen any indication that electronics should be a reason for staying away from older date codes. Maybe you could post some statistics about electronics failures indicating that there is any ageing issues?

Silent updates? Any thread you have seen that indicates that old lenses of this model doesn't perform perfectly?

Charlie wrote in post #17165421
2. Silent updates. We really dont know what type firmware or chips the older gear uses. Lensrentals has data that shows there are silent updates that improve lenses.

Hum ... how to say ... you need to read/re-read what Roger Cicala (from LensRentals) wrote here >> http://www.lensrentals​.com/blog/2013/07/sile​nt-changes
hum ... it's not what your are stating, not to improve a lens

Just to make it short i'll take the last paragraph from him >>
"These aren’t always ‘secret upgrades’ as the paranoid among us like to think, but sometimes they are. Most often, though, they’re simply a change in subassembly supplier or a more effective way to manufacture a part, like this one."

pwm2 wrote in post #17168208
I haven't seen any indication that electronics should be a reason for staying away from older date codes. Maybe you could post some statistics about electronics failures indicating that there is any ageing issues?

Silent updates? Any thread you have seen that indicates that old lenses of this model doesn't perform perfectly?

do you really need stats to tell you that solders break and electronics overheat?

70-200's are notorious for breaking. Mo parts, mo problems.

Reservoir Dog wrote in post #17168329
Hum ... how to say ... you need to read/re-read what Roger Cicala (from LensRentals) wrote here >> http://www.lensrentals​.com/blog/2013/07/sile​nt-changes
hum ... it's not what your are stating, not to improve a lens

Just to make it short i'll take the last paragraph from him >>
"These aren’t always ‘secret upgrades’ as the paranoid among us like to think, but sometimes they are. Most often, though, they’re simply a change in subassembly supplier or a more effective way to manufacture a part, like this one."

you need to pay attention, I said silent updates, not silent changes.

are you going to pretend these dont exist? The article you posted isnt about silent upgrades, just silent changes.

lensrental use to do a lot of that repair data stuff, and for some reason, they stopped. Basically lenses like the 17-55 and 70-200mk2 had a lot of issues, and eventually, became more reliable lenses..... that's a silent update. Tamron 150-600 AF fix.... silent upgrade... 40mm pancakes initially had issues, newer ones dont.... silent update.

10-20mm had reliability issues way back when, then became reliable one year, same with a few other lenses. NOT the same as the "silent changes"

Charlie wrote in post #17168353
do you really need stats to tell you that solders break and electronics overheat?

That isn't what I asked about. What I asked about is statistics that tells that the lens is more prone to fail after 10 years. Note that most failures happens the first year or even the first weeks/months. After that, there is a very low failure rate for the electronics - and a failure rate that doesn't increase until the electronics is very significantly old. Unless the electronics is suffering moisture. In which case age doesn't matter much anymore. In the end, electronics tends to age very well, unless there are larger, wet, capacitors that dries out - that and dust is the main reason why lots of power supplies, motherboards etc tends to fail after a couple of years.

Any statistics showing failures distributed over age? Even here, most failures are likely to happen to very new lenses. Then they work very well until they start to fail from wear. But a little used lens that is 10 years old may have less use and less wear than a professionally used lens has collected after a couple of months.

And the important thing is still: that's something for the buyer to consider before they decide to buy.

stuart1980 wrote in post #17165301
Hi everyone,

I've just purchased a canon 70-200 f4L off ebay and checked the serial number to determine the age.
It was manufactured in 2004, i was wondering does this make much of a difference in terms of image quality?. There's not a huge amount of difference between what I paid for this and what a brand new one would cost cost.
Would it be sensible to send this back and pay the extra for a more recent copy?

Cheers, Stuart

No, don't bother. It's honestly not worth spending the extra money so you can call it "new". Only the newbies to photography care about that and want to throw their money away. Those of us that have been photographing for a long time know from experience that age doesn't matter.

Dude, do you realize that the SILENT UPDATES that you're talking about are almost always cost-cutting measures in the parts or manufacturing process that are implemented to make the lenses cheaper to produce so a lens stays profitable?!

Haha. You make it sound like a silent update is an unpublished upgrade. Not ever.

amfoto1 wrote in post #17165337
It depends upon the lens... some lenses have seen "silent upgrades" over the years. Others haven't.

AFAIK, the 70-200/4L selling new today is identical to what has been sold since it was introduced (1999), so I doubt there would be any advantage to buying a more recent copy.

The other possible factor is wear and tear. If the lens you got has seen light, amateur use and appears well kept, all the Canon 70-200s are real workhorses and may hold up for many years or even decades use.

My 70-200/2.8 IS "Mark I" from 2001 still works perfectly, but it's obviously been used pretty hard. This particular model did see a "silent upgrade" revision to the IS mechanism, but according to Canon it was only done for serviceability and didn't improve durability or effectiveness of the IS, so I never spent the $600 to have it done.

I also have a 70-200/4 IS that I bought used a year or two ago (though it looked like new then), and it's been very reliable as well. The IS version was introduced in 2006, so that's the oldest my f4 IS lens could be. I just haven't looked to see if I can find a build code on it.

But, again, all five models of the EF 70-200s have been really tough, pro-grade lenses.... L-series with reasonable sealing for dust and moisture resistance. Use a flashlight and check out the innards. There are probably a few specks of dust in there (nearly all lenses have a few), but so long as there's no fungus or element separation, it will likely be a great lens. Test shots with it will tell you the rest of the story.