[Scythels]

Brightcolors, the materials do not dictate the price of a lens.  If this lens were made just of BK7 you could make all of the optics for $200 or so.  LaSF materials or glasses to the left of BK7 will drive up the cost, as will aspheres, but there are mechanical difficulties to consider - centering such a beast will be monstrously difficult and will be a huge driving factor on the price.  There is also the name-your-price aspect, as it is the only 11mm available.

[borisbg]

I gues this CP+ intended leak game.

50MP is impresive.

[davidmanze]

This could be of interest, the future is mirrorless 

 Yup, there's no looking back!.........       B)

[Brightcolours]

Brightcolors, the materials do not dictate the price of a lens.  If this lens were made just of BK7 you could make all of the optics for $200 or so.  LaSF materials or glasses to the left of BK7 will drive up the cost, as will aspheres, but there are mechanical difficulties to consider - centering such a beast will be monstrously difficult and will be a huge driving factor on the price.  There is also the name-your-price aspect, as it is the only 11mm available.

You can't make a low volume, complex lens like this with such complex elements "for $200 or so". The costs of producing the elements are far higher than just the raw material costs.

[soLong]

A 53mp full frame no AA filter, hmmm…..

<p style="font-size:12px;font-family:Helvetica;"> 

<p style="font-size:12px;font-family:Helvetica;">For a best buy i’d rather go for a 40mp APS-C if it were the same size and weight as a 100D....Well twice the pixels might up the weight a gram or two:-)….I was wondering how long before they found the 70D's missing bits.

<p style="font-size:12px;font-family:Helvetica;"> 

<p style="font-size:12px;font-family:Helvetica;">So, twice the pixels twice the price?…. Yep, i’d possibly pony up $A998 for it if they were offering lens packages too….

<p style="font-size:12px;font-family:Helvetica;"> 

<p style="font-size:12px;font-family:Helvetica;">....That is if the pictures from it on my shop test were ok….Um, you did check the 7D2 pics at the shop of course….hmmm, i do rather like my 18mp sensor tho ;-)

[Scythels]

You can't make a low volume, complex lens like this with such complex elements "for $200 or so". The costs of producing the elements are far higher than just the raw material costs.

Sure you can.  What is your experience?  From where does your assumed knowledge stem?  This lens costs more than $200 to make because it is not all BK7 -there are probably 4 maybe even 5 or 6 different materials  - but the element count does not directly influence price is my main point.  There are mechanical factors that are accounting for a great deal of the price with this lens. 

 

Additionally, unless it has many aspheres or an aspheric surface on a fragile material (doubtful, design for manufacture is huge) or many fragile materials than it is not more expensive to produce strong curvatures than weak ones, at least not noticeably.  It will take more time but this is somewhat a nonfactor.  Modern production equipment is very stable.  Maximum element thinness was determined long before the lens made it to production and the thinnest portions are stable/easy enough to manufacture. 

 

This hypothetical camera lens is also not low volume, not that you have a real basis for such a claim.  No camera lens is low volume except maybe supertelephotos.  In optics under 100 units per year is right around the threshold for low volume.  Supertelephotos also present greater manufacturing difficulty than this lens because of the large and very heavy elements.  While these elements are not difficult shapes to produce, standard grinding and polishing equipment cannot handle such large objectives and expensive machines capable of producing larger lenses are needed.  These machines cost >$100,000 each so it is a significant investment.

[Brightcolours]

Sigh. Each element needs time to be produced, and every element's production is time consuming, which means it adds considerably to the costs to make. Bigger elements cost more to make, more curved elements cost more to make. Elements with a higher precision cost more to make. And that you put an odd threshold to what low volume means, oh well.

Stating that this lens' elements don't cost more than $200 is silly, and I don't care that you like to boast "your experience".

[Klaus]

Well, let's stick to the facts - all the manufacturers can be happy to break even these days.

Thus the revenues are merely covering their costs.

While high-end lenses tend to have a higher margin, the 11-24mm will not reinvent profitability.

At 3000$ it will be a low volume product thus most of the relative costs will be in R&D, manufacturing & marketing.

I tend to agree that the elements will be rather cheap except maybe the non-mainstream front element.

While I will not dare to put a hard number on this, I would be surprised if the naked glass elements cost more than $400 (combined).

[popo]

If this lens were made just of BK7 you could make all of the optics for $200 or so.

Stating that this lens' elements don't cost more than $200 is silly

 

This lens costs more than $200 to make because it is not all BK7 -there are probably 4 maybe even 5 or 6 different materials

I think that sums it up.

In older days of my day job, I used to get indirectly involved with the manufacturing side of consumer electronic devices. One figure of interest is the Bill Of Material (BOM) cost, which is as implied the total cost of the parts used. We're not talking raw material here, but ready to use parts, so if it were an optical system it would be equivalent to prepared elements, not raw glass. The BOM cost of products always surprised me as to how low it was. For lower end, mass consumer units, the BOM cost was in the ball park 10x less than what street price may be. For premium products, it can be a lot higher. So assuming similar applied to consumer optical products, I can find it entirely believable that the element costs could be less than you think, assuming they're not using too exotic materials and have enough volume going through manufacture.

On that note, a question for Scythels. Canon has in the past talked up their use of Fluorite, and I saw it used in some astronomical optics I had considered previously. CoastalOptics also used a load of it in their infamous UV-VIS-IR 60mm design. Just how bad is its relative cost as a material?

[davidmanze]

We're back to acronyms again, what BK7 when it's at home?

 

 

 

 

 While I don't doubt your figures Klaus, surely that leaves a weansy little profit there for Canon!