Canon RF 35mm f/1.2L USM Confirmed for 2024 [CR3]

[Dragon]

Canon has always made the 1200mm to order, so they do not have any unsold ones.
I do not think they have lost money on the 1200mm, but, since they made very few of those (I think I have read 20 somewhere) and since they do not make money on someone reselling them (and those have been resold), I think they've made relatively little money on it

In the equipment business, the custom department normally has higher margins than any other part of the company. They only sold a few of the @F 1200 lenses, so they likely didn't make a lot of money in total, but as a percentage of what those lenses sold for, I suspect they did quite well. When discussing business, it is important to understand the rules and the terminology.

 

[Del Paso]

In the equipment business, the custom department normally has higher margins than any other part of the company. They only sold a few of the @F 1200 lenses, so they likely didn't make a lot of money in total, but as a percentage of what those lenses sold for, I suspect they did quite well. When discussing business, it is important to understand the rules and the terminology.

"Custom" production also yealds another important gain for a company, namely experience and creativity for the developing team. This is one reason why many car companies maintain a racing departement, not only for advertising.

 

[EOS 4 Life]

Canon has always made the 1200mm to order, so they do not have any unsold ones.
I do not think they have lost money on the 1200mm, but, since they made very few of those (I think I have read 20 somewhere) and since they do not make money on someone reselling them (and those have been resold), I think they've made relatively little money on it

Yes and no.
Canon kept a few for themselves which later sold at auction for a few hundred thousand US dollars each.

 

[SwissFrank]

Canon has always made the 1200mm to order, so they do not have any unsold ones.
I do not think they have lost money on the 1200mm

1) If there was a cost they could sell them at to at least break even, it'd be in the catalog and available for order at any time.

2) If they could break even on something like that, they could break even on a 35/1.0, 50/0.7, 135/1.0DS and so on, but aren't offering such things either.

It's not as if they have to set up an assembly line for it, as they wouldn't have had an assembly line for the first 20.

You guys are welcome to think what you want but I suspect you guys haven't really considered what the cost might of designing and manufacturing those parts in the days before CAD/CAM, doing all the paperwork to get it approved for use in all the various countries of the world and so on. I've never done optics but I've been an engineer for decades and that stuff takes time.

The weird thing is that I'm saying halo products are a loss leader but could have been worth it anyway. You guys are arguing with me that nah, they didn't lose money on the 1200, but if you're right, you're making a stronger argument than I am for my proposed halo sub-product line!

Anyway none of us know for sure. I'm happy to admit I don't know. I just like talking cameras. Thanks for hearing me out.

 

[SwissFrank]

Reading your post, I'm actually glad your not in charge because I'd guess Canon might be bankrupt by now...
how do "by-invitation-only..." or rental only create enough revenue in a struggling market? They simply don´t...

I don't think you really understand the concept of halo product.

Many manufacturers make a small number of high-end products as a form of advertising, to get their brand covered by the media and create a buzz among the customer base. You see this a lot with car companies a lot, whether it's a high-end sports or luxury car, or making a car for a race series. I don't think Toyota created the Supra in the 1990s to make money, but just to get people who like cars to start talking about Toyota more. Same thing with Toyota making an F1 car.

In fact I've often wondered if making SLRs and today's MILFFs actually make as much profit as Canon's other business units, but it might nonetheless be worth doing to Canon as a subtle advertising and branding.

 

[EricN]

1) If there was a cost they could sell them at to at least break even, it'd be in the catalog and available for order at any time.

2) If they could break even on something like that, they could break even on a 35/1.0, 50/0.7, 135/1.0DS and so on, but aren't offering such things either.

It's not as if they have to set up an assembly line for it, as they wouldn't have had an assembly line for the first 20.

You guys are welcome to think what you want but I suspect you guys haven't really considered what the cost might of designing and manufacturing those parts in the days before CAD/CAM, doing all the paperwork to get it approved for use in all the various countries of the world and so on. I've never done optics but I've been an engineer for decades and that stuff takes time.

The weird thing is that I'm saying halo products are a loss leader but could have been worth it anyway. You guys are arguing with me that nah, they didn't lose money on the 1200, but if you're right, you're making a stronger argument than I am for my proposed halo sub-product line!

Anyway none of us know for sure. I'm happy to admit I don't know. I just like talking cameras. Thanks for hearing me out.

I agree with you except one thing:
In the early 1990s, you didn't need to know much about photography to understand what made a 1200mm lens special, but even now, some photographers won't understand why wider focal lengths at impressive apertures are special and we have people here (who probably already have IBIS) that say they prefer F/1.4 IBIS to f/1.2 because it's not that much difference. I'm guessing we won't see anything impressive like you mentioned because to save weight and money, software corrections will be needed, but then you'll have some people making that complaint.

 

[EOS 4 Life]

1) If there was a cost they could sell them at to at least break even, it'd be in the catalog and available for order at any time.

That is not a safe assumption.
They made the lens because it was requested and had no reason to ever make one for a loss.

 

[EOS 4 Life]

I don't think you really understand the concept of halo product.

I don't think you understand the concept of made on consignment.

 

[SwissFrank]

They made the lens because it was requested and had no reason to ever make one for a loss.

So the entire R&D for the lens, designing every single part, testing, redesign, retesting, regulatory testing e.g. for electronics interference and so on, was amortized over how many units? What do you believe that fixed cost was in total and what's the marginal cost per lens? If they've already paid off the fixed costs, the price should be much lower now, right? And when people are bidding US$750k for a used one, why wouldn't Canon keep selling these new ones you say they can manufacture at a profit whenever they want, especially if they've already amortized their fixed costs as you're implying?

And why WOULDN'T Canon be interested in a halo effect, when it's so common in so many other industries?

What Good Is a Halo Car Anyway?

Car companies throw the term around all the time, but does anyone actually know what a halo car isand what its really good for?

www.popularmechanics.com

 

[roby17269]

1) If there was a cost they could sell them at to at least break even, it'd be in the catalog and available for order at any time.

2) If they could break even on something like that, they could break even on a 35/1.0, 50/0.7, 135/1.0DS and so on, but aren't offering such things either.

It's not as if they have to set up an assembly line for it, as they wouldn't have had an assembly line for the first 20.

You guys are welcome to think what you want but I suspect you guys haven't really considered what the cost might of designing and manufacturing those parts in the days before CAD/CAM, doing all the paperwork to get it approved for use in all the various countries of the world and so on. I've never done optics but I've been an engineer for decades and that stuff takes time.

The weird thing is that I'm saying halo products are a loss leader but could have been worth it anyway. You guys are arguing with me that nah, they didn't lose money on the 1200, but if you're right, you're making a stronger argument than I am for my proposed halo sub-product line!

Anyway none of us know for sure. I'm happy to admit I don't know. I just like talking cameras. Thanks for hearing me out.

Yep, we do not know, we just like to speculate about what Canon has done, what they do and, more importantly, what they should do

I am arguing the specifics of the 1200. Other halo products may have been made in batches and may not have sold as well as expected. I dunno.
I agree that halo products fulfil business needs beyond pure profit, but I do not agree that halo products need to be loss leaders in every case.
Nowadays things seem to be different anyways, as production seems to have moved to smaller batches for all products, so maybe even halo products have a lower risk of incurring in losses (which, I believe, given the state of the market, manufacturers would be less inclined to accept compared to the past).

As per why Canon does not make them anymore, there are plenty of reasons in my mind: even if the 1200 makes money for each unit sold, it may very well take up so much capacity of the lens production line that the combined profit generated by making more smaller cheaper lenses is greater. Plus lenses get obsloeted sooner or later, this is not the first halo lens that is retired, and there is a cost in keeping the tools and expertise around to make older lenses. Again, I don't know, just speculating

 

[scyrene]

So the entire R&D for the lens, designing every single part, testing, redesign, retesting, regulatory testing e.g. for electronics interference and so on, was amortized over how many units? What do you believe that fixed cost was in total and what's the marginal cost per lens?

I don't have an opinion either way but surely a lot of the 1200's internals were shared with the other supertele primes? They weren't designing every component from scratch for that one model, surely.

 

[EOS 4 Life]

So the entire R&D for the lens, designing every single part, testing, redesign, retesting, regulatory testing e.g. for electronics interference and so on, was amortized over how many units? What do you believe that fixed cost was in total and what's the marginal cost per lens? If they've already paid off the fixed costs, the price should be much lower now, right? And when people are bidding US$750k for a used one, why wouldn't Canon keep selling these new ones you say they can manufacture at a profit whenever they want, especially if they've already amortized their fixed costs as you're implying?

And why WOULDN'T Canon be interested in a halo effect, when it's so common in so many other industries?

What Good Is a Halo Car Anyway?

Car companies throw the term around all the time, but does anyone actually know what a halo car isand what its really good for?

www.popularmechanics.com

I can tell that you never worked on consignment.
R & D is factored in when deciding what to charge the customer.

 

[SwissFrank]

R & D is factored in when deciding what to charge the customer.

I don't know why you're so invested in the idea that a halo product would pay for itself, to the point you'll just insult a long-standing fellow member of the group.

1) what was the development budget
2) what was the unit cost
3) how many did they expect to sell
4) how many did they actually sell
5) how did they get #3 and #4 to be the same number or even within a factor of 2x
6) once they fully paid off the R&D, why not continue to sell the lens at a massive discount, assuming the R&D was high and now totally paid off?
7) why didn't they do another lens like that?
8) why didn't Nikon or anyone else do another lens like that?

And most importantly:

9) when so many other industries have halo products, how are you so sure that it's out of the question for an optics manufacturer to have one? I'm happy to hear you out, just cut out the snide remarks and explain how you are so sure. To be clear I'm not stating as a fact that it's a halo product, merely that it seems EXACTLY like the halo products in so many other industries.

It certainly looks like the equivalent of a photographer going the extra mile to get an eye-catching shot a customer won't be paying for (or won't be paying extra for), but serves to attract attention and draw in new customers. Have you never taken such a shot? If not, is it impossible to imagine a photographer doing that? And if a photographer can do it, why is it impossible to imagine a firm doing it? The automotive press is absolutely full of such stories--Subaru SVX was sold for $3000 less than the cost to make them, but it was a halo car designed to get shoppers into showrooms. Buick Reatta, similar story. Ford GT 2-seater, same story. Toyota 2000GT (as seen in the Japanese Bond flick of the 1960s) same story. Toyota surely didn't make money on the Supra Turbo of the 90s, as they made it for 8-9 years with zero updates then discontinued and didn't introduce a follow-on for a decade. And yet that Supra still keeps Toyota on the minds of car fanatics the world over, with clean examples trading for up to twice what they went for new and still winning at the drag strip and still a top dream car of the tuner scene. As advertising you could hardly do better.