Does lens age matter?

Charlie wrote in post #17168353
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.


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"

You need to pay attention, in the article it's written : >> I don’t like the term ‘silent upgrade’ because such changes aren’t always an upgrade, it may be something as simple as a new vendor supplying a slightly different part. There also seem to be times when the change is actually a downgrade.

stuart1980 wrote in post #17165301
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,

Are you even sure about that? Before 2008 Canon used a separate date code which will tell you when and where the lens was made. I am not aware of any source that maps serial number to build date for the pre-2008 lenses.

Almost certainly not significantly. Canon are pretty good at trumpeting major improvements to a lens by bumping the "Mark" or, in this case, adding "IS". Sometimes minor improvements like more aperture blades sneak in. You have the lens. Is there any obvious performance deficiency?

Do the right thing, be a good eBayer and suck it up. This kind of buyers' remorse is why I don't permit returns on cameras and lenses when I sell on eBay. It was up to you to ask for the serial number/date code before bidding. You don't have to tip your hand about the actual build date, just ask for the information.

I do show images of date codes and date a lens where possible. I have given dates of up to 30 years old and had happy buyers. If a lens had any of the common ailments of age - most commonly a stiff focus ring - I'd disclose and describe it.

Electronics can fail, but (as said) it's most likely when the lens is very new or very old. This is called the bathtub curve. The idea that the circuits inside an EOS lens would overheat from use is preposterous.

Lens mechanicals are on a steady downhill from new. The thing is, they take a long time to go bad, generally longer than the EOS system has been in existence. The lenses I've sold have been manual focus mechanical lenses, and are still young at 20. EOS lenses have motors in them for aperture and focus, and those do wear out - but with use, not age.

Finally, it's bad for a lens to sit unused, and that, I suspect, is what many new examples of the 70-200 f/4 could have been doing. It's the IS version everyone wants. It may just be a lens better bought used.

This is all true. I have a lens from 1994, when the EOS system was a little over 5 years old, and it's still working fine, sounds fine, and produces the same quality pictures as it did when I first bought it.

melcat wrote in post #17168439
Are you even sure about that? Before 2008 Canon used a separate date code which will tell you when and where the lens was made. I am not aware of any source that maps serial number to build date for the pre-2008 lenses.

Almost certainly not significantly. Canon are pretty good at trumpeting major improvements to a lens by bumping the "Mark" or, in this case, adding "IS". Sometimes minor improvements like more aperture blades sneak in. You have the lens. Is there any obvious performance deficiency?

Do the right thing, be a good eBayer and suck it up. This kind of buyers' remorse is why I don't permit returns on cameras and lenses when I sell on eBay. It was up to you to ask for the serial number/date code before bidding. You don't have to tip your hand about the actual build date, just ask for the information.

I do show images of date codes and date a lens where possible. I have given dates of up to 30 years old and had happy buyers. If a lens had any of the common ailments of age - most commonly a stiff focus ring - I'd disclose and describe it.

Electronics can fail, but (as said) it's most likely when the lens is very new or very old. This is called the bathtub curve. The idea that the circuits inside an EOS lens would overheat from use is preposterous.

Lens mechanicals are on a steady downhill from new. The thing is, they take a long time to go bad, generally longer than the EOS system has been in existence. The lenses I've sold have been manual focus mechanical lenses, and are still young at 20. EOS lenses have motors in them for aperture and focus, and those do wear out - but with use, not age.

Finally, it's bad for a lens to sit unused, and that, I suspect, is what many new examples of the 70-200 f/4 could have been doing. It's the IS version everyone wants. It may just be a lens better bought used.

pwm2 wrote in post #17168369
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.

hard to get that actual data, but if you search lensrental archives you can find some like this: http://www.lensrentals​.com …0/09/lens-repair-data-4-0

they dont list comprehensive data that a manufacturer would have, but they do suggest silent updates that help reliability. I think you can find another article that shows the most reliable lens by far, is a fully manual zeiss (not surprisingly).

I'm not saying the lens TS bought is good or bad, just saying that age does matter, and for the record, TS should keep the lens he bought.

Reservoir Dog wrote in post #17168402
You need to pay attention, in the article it's written : >> I don’t like the term ‘silent upgrade’ because such changes aren’t always an upgrade, it may be something as simple as a new vendor supplying a slightly different part. There also seem to be times when the change is actually a downgrade.

uhhhh, you replied for me with a silly article unrelated to my post.

Just because the article has the term "silent upgrade" it has nothing to do with my post. Way out of context, and I corrected you on it.

take an old lens and a newer lens. which lens has most likely seen more use? the only way I would buy an older lens is if the price discount reflects the age otherwise I buy new or newer lenses.

so, yes, age matters. to me.

Charlie wrote in post #17169236
hard to get that actual data, but if you search lensrental archives you can find some like this: http://www.lensrentals​.com …0/09/lens-repair-data-4-0

they dont list comprehensive data that a manufacturer would have, but they do suggest silent updates that help reliability. I think you can find another article that shows the most reliable lens by far, is a fully manual zeiss (not surprisingly).

I'm not saying the lens TS bought is good or bad, just saying that age does matter, and for the record, TS should keep the lens he bought.

The table you linked to shows that hard used 70-200/4 IS has an annual repair rate of 12%. But that doesn't indicate that there are increased probabilities of age-related issues as the lens gets older.

What it does say is that a Sony 70-200/2.8 has more than twice as many repairs/year as a Canon 70-200/2.8. And that a Canon 70-200/4 IS requires more than twice as many repairs/year as the median of the lenses LensRentals stocks. But that is obviously answers to completely different questions. And even these answers are quite weak because of the small sample - which is covered by the observations directly after the table. Remember that one lemon will upset the statistics.