Lens prices - paying for quality?

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Doog

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When buying lenses it is entirely possible to buy a very good lens for reasonable money. Let's say that's £400 for argument. It seems that the longer the focal length the more it costs. My question is why? Ok so we're talking about more material but surely not that much more that runs prices into the 7-8k price range. So the answer must be research and development right? Or is it? Surely once a lens has been specified it takes the same amount of engineering to make it? I tend to think that pricing for these longer focal length items are fixed in order to extract as much money from the photographer as possible as I just don't see where the extra manufacturing costs come into play that changes hundreds into thousands.

Is it all marketing? I wouldn't mind listening to the arguments.:)
 
You are talking alot for material though. Top quality glass for lenses costs over £1k per kg, plus metal bodies, weather sealing etc etc it all adds up.

Coupled with the more complex designs involved in constant zooms or fast primes and its easy to see why the price creeps up
 
Demand.

If you make a lens that will go with every other DSLR sold (Kit lens) it will be fairly cheap and they will be building in bulk. Massive bulk.

As a lens starts to go up in build cost, and becomes more specialist, the demand will deminish significantly. Demand drives cost much more than how much is actually costs to manufacture/market/package/test/ship a product. If you think of the up front cost a manufacturer has to swallow in R&D for a specialist lens compared to how many people they anticipate will buy it within a reasonable timeframe - in order to recoup that cost they have to price it accordingly.

Moving away from lenses - I use the arca swiss mount system for my tripod gear. While this is arguably the best and most standardised system out there is is generally only used by manufacturers who produce high end gear. L Brackets for this system usually cost upwards of £100 for what is essentially a piece of lightweight bent machined aluminium. It costs nowhere near that to manufacture the part but again, consider how many people use the system and how much it costs to set up for bulk manufacture then they have to charge enough to recoup costs in a reasonable timeframe.

Sometimes it really does deel like companies are extracting the urine - and if the right tool for the job costs X many will buy it regardless. But there is a lot more to it than how much it costs to build something.
 
Whilst I agree that probably good glass is the single most expensive item cost in making a lens I just don't see the price difference in there. As for demand, I'd hazard a guess that each one of us on TP would love to purchase a Nikon or Canon 600mm lens if only the cost wasn't so prohibitive so demand can't be the argument IMHO. Also for primes for example, a fixed length is surely easier to develop optically than a zoom?:shrug:
 
I think you're confusing focal length with other factors, such as aperture and optical quality.

For example, a Nikon 16-85VR (f 3.5-5.6) costs about the same as a 70-300VR (f 4.5-5.6) - about £400-£450.

The 70-200 f2.8 costs about 3 times as much.

So it's not about focal length, but a whole range of factors. Low f/ number lenses tend to have finer tolerances on the optics and mechanism (both of which cost money) and need bigger glass (which also costs money). Build quality also varies between lenses, and has an impact on price.

And finally, production volumes have an impact as well. A kit lens boxed with consumer-level DSLRs will made in vast numbers, driving down the cost. Rarer lenses only in the price range of pros/enthusiasts will have smaller runs, which increases production costs (as well as spreading the R&D cost over fewer lenses, which increases the price).


Edit: it appears all of my points were made by other people with faster typing skills than me...
 
Doog said:
Whilst I agree that probably good glass is the single most expensive item cost in making a lens I just don't see the price difference in there.
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70-300 : 745g
70-200 : 1,450g
Difference: 705g @ £1k/kg = £705
Difference in price £1,100

So the glass explains at least half of the difference (assuming the main reason for the difference in weight is the glass - not unreasonable), even assuming they both use the same glass (less likely).

More can be explained by better build quality and materials for the housing, a better quieter motor, additional features (focus lock buttons etc).

And finally, the difference in production volumes. I don't have access to the figures, but I would guess Nikon shift a lot more of the 70-300 than the 70-200!
 
Llamaman said:
70-300 : 745g
70-200 : 1,450g
Difference: 705g @ £1k/kg = £705
Difference in price £1,100

So the glass explains at least half of the difference (assuming the main reason for the difference in weight is the glass - not unreasonable), even assuming they both use the same glass (less likely).

More can be explained by better build quality and materials for the housing, a better quieter motor, additional features (focus lock buttons etc).

And finally, the difference in production volumes. I don't have access to the figures, but I would guess Nikon shift a lot more of the 70-300 than the 70-200!
Click to expand...

Which is a shame really? Drop the price by half and twice as many would probably buy it:thinking: I guess I'm just a little frustrated that what I want I just can't have unless I give up the dreaded weed:lol:
 
I would also argue that increased consumer demand driven by sales of affordable digital cameras has created a market for budget lenses made from relatively inexpensive materials and limited manufacturing quality control. The best lenses have always been expensive. It's just that there's a whole raft of new users looking enviably onto what has been there a long time anyway.
 
Doog said:
Which is a shame really? Drop the price by half and twice as many would probably buy it:thinking: I guess I'm just a little frustrated that what I want I just can't have unless I give up the dreaded weed:lol:
Click to expand...

I can understand that frustration. Its not as simple as dropping the price by half though. If you did that you may well be selling for less then you can produce for, so selling double the volume would mean double the loss.

Also, if Nikon halved their prices overnight, they'd be alot of hacked off shops and photographers having had their lens collections also half in value overnight
 
Doog said:
Which is a shame really? Drop the price by half and twice as many would probably buy it:thinking: I guess I'm just a little frustrated that what I want I just can't have unless I give up the dreaded weed:lol:
Click to expand...
I suspect if they dropped the price by half they'd make no profit (probably a loss), and so there'd be no point making the lens at all.

Bear in mind that supply&demand tend not to have a linear relationship with price, and production costs are not linear with production volume.

Anyway, assuming the same quality of glass as the 70-300 and all other things being equal, the cheapest price for a 70-200 would £400 + £705 = £1,105. Well above the £725 you suggest and sufficiently high that I doubt they'd sell twice as many.
 
Don't take me too literally on the half price thing, but I do believe that in this day of computer aided design and the lens making knowledge and precision engineering which is available to them, £7k is rather excessive for any lens.
 
There are very few lenses that are cheap and good and they tend to be normal focal length primes. When the get much wider, longer or faster the price goes up. It takes months to grow the flourite crystals from which elements for the big L series are ground. They cost a lot more to make and a lot fewer people buy them.
That being said I'm sure a profit would be still be made if all lens costs were halved.
 
The big superteles are expensive mainly because they need big chunks of glass (and other, even more expensive materials) that has to be machined with great precision. Making such perfect bits of glass is not particularly easy. Just watch this video (and Part 2).

And there's a lot more to it than just focal length. That's why Canon's 75-300 low-quality lens costs less than £200 and the 70-300 L costs £1140 and the 300 f2.8 prime costs £3500.
 
That's like saying a ferrari should be cheaper than a land rover discovery, because the ferrari is lighter and has less materials. It's just as much about how the materials are machined, designed and fabricated than the materials themselves.
 
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