The Next "L" Lens Announcement Will be the... [CR2]

[mrzero]

Re: The Next \

What about the 50 or 85mm IS fast prime? Huh? Hmm? :

Well, technically, they wouldn't be L lenses, so the rumor isn't contradictory. But they sure are overdue given how long it's been since the 35 was announced.

 

[LetTheRightLensIn]

Re: The Next

That's the classic rubbish line about the 3rd party. You can just as easily get a dud Canon or Nikon. You could make a fuss with the exact numbers but unless there is something inherently wrong with the design then "in practice" it is not particularly more likely than the other.

It is not just a question of a good or bad design, although any designer of volume products worth his or her salt will try to minimize the sensitivity of the design to manufacturing variations. The extent to which the manufacturers are able to optimize their process control will play a big part in how likely you are to end up with a dud.

A company which maintains tight control over the materials, assembly equipment, manufacturing processes and externally sourced components will be able to minimize the percentage of out of tolerance products coming off the line. By controlling their test processes they can also ensure that most of the duds get rejected. This is what the science of process control is all about, and big companies like Canon take this very seriously. Not only does it improve the quality of their products, allowing them to charge higher prices, it also saves them money in failures and rework.

Even if two companies share a design, the quality from one may be very different from the other. An example which was quoted in a marketing class I took many years ago featured a gearbox that was built by both Mazda and Ford, who had (and I think still have) significant design sharing agreements. According to the class, Mazda's quality metrics were 8 times better than Ford's for the manufacture of an identical product. (I'm not bashing Ford by the way - this example is several decades out of date, so has little relevance today.) I don't have any hard data to compare Canon's quality with Tamron's, but I would disagree that the quality of the design trumps the manufacturing methods used to build it.

I recall that once upon a time Leica was kinda trashing Canon, saying yeah they may have great theoretical MTF charts for many designs, but look at the designs, no way they can get a decent enough number of copies come close to the ideal chart build, their designs for a number of lenses require way too fine tolerances, especially for Canon who doesn't test each piece and lens individually.

 

[jrista]

Re: The Next

That's the classic rubbish line about the 3rd party. You can just as easily get a dud Canon or Nikon. You could make a fuss with the exact numbers but unless there is something inherently wrong with the design then "in practice" it is not particularly more likely than the other.

It is not just a question of a good or bad design, although any designer of volume products worth his or her salt will try to minimize the sensitivity of the design to manufacturing variations. The extent to which the manufacturers are able to optimize their process control will play a big part in how likely you are to end up with a dud.

A company which maintains tight control over the materials, assembly equipment, manufacturing processes and externally sourced components will be able to minimize the percentage of out of tolerance products coming off the line. By controlling their test processes they can also ensure that most of the duds get rejected. This is what the science of process control is all about, and big companies like Canon take this very seriously. Not only does it improve the quality of their products, allowing them to charge higher prices, it also saves them money in failures and rework.

Even if two companies share a design, the quality from one may be very different from the other. An example which was quoted in a marketing class I took many years ago featured a gearbox that was built by both Mazda and Ford, who had (and I think still have) significant design sharing agreements. According to the class, Mazda's quality metrics were 8 times better than Ford's for the manufacture of an identical product. (I'm not bashing Ford by the way - this example is several decades out of date, so has little relevance today.) I don't have any hard data to compare Canon's quality with Tamron's, but I would disagree that the quality of the design trumps the manufacturing methods used to build it.

I recall that once upon a time Leica was kinda trashing Canon, saying yeah they may have great theoretical MTF charts for many designs, but look at the designs, no way they can get a decent enough number of copies come close to the ideal chart build, their designs for a number of lenses require way too fine tolerances, especially for Canon who doesn't test each piece and lens individually.

Only a lens bench test is going to tell you for sure. In that respect, LensRentals tests of Canon lenses indicate that for Canon's more recent lens designs, the quality of each model tends to be tightly clustered towards the highly performing end. There are outliers, but they tend to be pretty rare and far between. That indicates that Canon's manufacturing for lenses DOES keep most copies within tolerance. That goes not only for optical performance, but for AF performance as well (which LensRentals has also tested.)

Leica can *say* all they want. Maybe before the current generation of lenses, it may have been true. Empirically today, however, Canon lenses generally live up to the hype.

 

[lescrane]

Re: The Next \

I first rented the 100-400 lens about 4 years ago for rugby. Really fell in love with the lens. Kept hearing about the new lens that was "about to be released" so I waited. I have waited for so many years I am pretty sure if the price is a typical Canon price then I will just drop this as a must lens for me. I will have to try out the tamron 150-600 instead. I am not a pro, so if I get a decent quality build I would be fine with the images that I have seen released. I know tons of professionals never buy non Canon lenses for their cameras. Maybe canon is fine with that, with their current price structure however they will miss out on a large market for their lenses.

Good post. A year ago I would have lined up to spend 2K'ish on the alleged 100-400 L replacement. Maybe I would have gotten better IQ than on the old one which I sold but I'd still be limited to 400mm for bird shots and would still be shooting only ducks and herons

So I took a chance on the Tamzooka by preordering. It wasn't to save $$ really. I have thousands of shots I never would have gotten before. At 400mm, even 500, my subjective eval says....it's a tie w/the old Canon 100-400. Now that I can shoot smaller birds, I'm at 600mm most of the time, and yes, I keep it on F8, need to bump up my ISO to 800 or 1250 depending on light. I have no problems w/autofocus, etc

I realize that the 100-400 is used for subjects other than birds...eg sports, other wildlife etc and that a real sharp one might be worth paying double the cost of the Tamzooka. The only thing I would pay a premium for is
compactness...someone comes out w/a D.O. lens in the 200 500 range...that doesnt weigh a ton. Of course, judging by the cost of the 400 DO, it would cost more than a BMW>>>>>

 

[wickidwombat]

Re: The Next \

Tamzooka

I love it hahaha