EF 300 & 400 f/2.8L IS II Shipping to Selected Dealers

[dnhjr]

Man! Canons big lens prices sure have gone up. Much higher the Nikons now.

 

[Edwin Herdman]

Nobody seems to remember one big thing that affects prices; inflation!

I usually mention inflation but not this time - you're right though, buying a new car engine isn't like buying a lens of a ten-year old design. It's appropriate though - when you pay for old technology you are getting less (compared to what is now possible) than you would have in 1999 (I know some people will disagree but I mean this in a purely economic sense, not in terms of how capable the lens actually is for users, and so on).

 

[markIVantony]

A (translated) update from the Canon.jp website:
>>
Notice of product supply EF300mm F2.8L IS II USM

August 31 (Wednesday) to Okimashi to EF300mm F2.8L IS II USM for sale, and have gotten orders far exceeding initial expectations, the period of time, is expected to stimulate your time before delivery of the product.
We apologize to our customers that will apologize for the inconvenience you.
Today, it strives for a stable supply of products on the relevant departments, thank you as your understanding.
>>

Same for EF400mm II

 

[Scott_7D]

The GM 2.2L is hardly a good example here. It's the automotive equivalent of an old EF28-90mm f/3.5-5.6 or (insert terrible, cheap Canon lens here). It is as basic and unrefined an engine you'll find these days, though it has been discontinued for 5 years or so. Your average brand-new 2-2.5L 4 cylinder costs about $5k and some, like Honda's awesome Type-R grade K20A is about $13k.

A 400mm f/2.8 is an ultra-high performance product with low production volumes. Think of it as a Porsche GT3 or Ferrari engine. Those go for $50k and up.

Just the time taken to grow the crystals for the Fluorite elements is huge, never mind grinding and producing all the "regular" glass elements.

argh! why are these lenses so expensive?? I recently installed a new engine in a friends S10. We paid $2100 for a brand new GM 2.2L engine, NEW, from the local GM dealership. Think of how much metal, engineering, etc is in an engine. For the price of ONE lens, we could buy three new engines!

I do not understand :-/ The time to precision-grind glass? Umm...

LOL, I still want one!

 

[markIVantony]

yes it was a poor example. I'll be sure not to make that mistake in the future.