01-13-2012, 05:32 PM
Wow, thanks for this info. VERY, VERY informative... particularly Roger's comment:
"... but when you consider most of our repairs are IS systems, autofocus electronics, and zoom mechanisms, it seems an inevitable conclusion that those well-built, purely mechanical lenses will be more reliable. I have a collection of 100+ year old lenses that I can actually shoot with. And I use 30 and 40 year old primes reularly. I don’t think there’s any chance at all that 50 years from now someone will be shooting with a working 70-200 f/2.8 IS or VR. I love the features of a zoom, the modern optics that are so sharp and contrasty, autofocus, image stabilization, all of it. But from a pure reliability standpoint all those features are things that will break eventually."
"... but when you consider most of our repairs are IS systems, autofocus electronics, and zoom mechanisms, it seems an inevitable conclusion that those well-built, purely mechanical lenses will be more reliable. I have a collection of 100+ year old lenses that I can actually shoot with. And I use 30 and 40 year old primes reularly. I don’t think there’s any chance at all that 50 years from now someone will be shooting with a working 70-200 f/2.8 IS or VR. I love the features of a zoom, the modern optics that are so sharp and contrasty, autofocus, image stabilization, all of it. But from a pure reliability standpoint all those features are things that will break eventually."