# *UPDATE* Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.



## Canon Rumors Guy (Nov 1, 2010)

```
<p><strong>*UPDATE*</strong>

Apparently both of the new teleconverters are delayed as well.<strong> </strong></p>
<p><strong>EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM, EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM and EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM lenses delayed

</strong>Following the announcement of the new EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM, EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM and EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM, on 26th August 2010, Canon has now delayed the introduction of these lenses due to some adjustments in the manufacturing process. These lenses are now due to be released in March 2011.</p>
<p>Canon would like to apologise to any customers who will be inconvenienced by these delays.</p>
<p><em>[<a href="http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/Canon_new_lenses.html">NL</a>]</em></p>
<p><strong><span style="color: #ff0000;">c</span>r</strong></p>
```


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## kubelik (Nov 1, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*

so ... we won't be seeing the 500 and 600 until christmas next year? and whatever else gets announced next year as well


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## J-Man (Nov 1, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*

That sucks, good thing I can't afford them right now,
or I might have been upset @ having to wait. LoL


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## oalali (Nov 1, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*

Great! after selling my 400mm F/2.8L IS in anticipation of the new lens, I'm officially screwed! 

I better go and find my self a used 400mm now... :'(


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## hsmeets (Nov 1, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*

maybe reshuffled resource allocations for other lenses that are expected to be selling faster? new (kit) lens for new camera?


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## neuroanatomist (Nov 1, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*



oalali said:


> Great! after selling my 400mm F/2.8L IS in anticipation of the new lens, I'm officially screwed!
> I better go and find my self a used 400mm now...



You could just go get the new 70-300mm L zoom lens, since Canon announced that it would available in late October. Oh, wait, they lied about that, too...


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## MadButcher (Nov 1, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*



oalali said:


> Great! after selling my 400mm F/2.8L IS in anticipation of the new lens, I'm officially screwed!
> 
> I better go and find my self a used 400mm now... :'(



It's not clever to sell your old one before you have the new one.


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## Justin (Nov 1, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*

This is horse sh*t.


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## Justin (Nov 1, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*

It's not clever, it's strategic. Most people can't afford 2 lenses that cost this much. Canon announce the lens, gave a release date and showed the lenses off at trade shows. It's not like it was a cr1 rumor he acted upon. 




MadButcher said:


> oalali said:
> 
> 
> > Great! after selling my 400mm F/2.8L IS in anticipation of the new lens, I'm officially screwed!
> ...


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## Justin (Nov 1, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*

I bet this has been Canon's strategy all along. They never intended all thes lenses to ship this year. The lenses they showed were alphas and nothing more. Only a few dozen made. With the yen being so strong against te dollar on might assume the Japanese are strategically delaying these releases in hopes of better returns down the road. Wishful



neuroanatomist said:


> oalali said:
> 
> 
> > Great! after selling my 400mm F/2.8L IS in anticipation of the new lens, I'm officially screwed!
> ...


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## SMP_Homer (Nov 1, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*



oalali said:


> Great! after selling my 400mm F/2.8L IS in anticipation of the new lens, I'm officially screwed!
> 
> I better go and find my self a used 400mm now... :'(



self-inflicted


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## neuroanatomist (Nov 1, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*



Justin said:


> It's not clever, it's strategic. Most people can't afford 2 lenses that cost this much.



It's not clever to sell the old one before the one _even becomes available_. I'm not even sure it's strategic - in many cases when a MkII is released, the retailers that still have stock of the MkI lens actually raise the price (because the new lens is even more expensive, so they can sell a new copy of the MkI for more and to the customer it still looks like a deal). When the price of a new MkI goes up, the average selling prices of used MkI's also drifts upward. This happened recently with the 70-200 II. So, the strategic decision would be to wait until the new lens is available, then sell the old lens to offset the cost of the new one.


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## Flake (Nov 1, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*

They've probably realised that the plastic bodies they've moved to are not as stable as the metal ones they've replaced. I'm sure that on smaller lenses plastic is not an issue, but on something this size?

Anyway Oalali I sold my 24 - 70mm f/2.8 L on the basis a new one was due out, I can manage with the 24 - 105mm f/4 IS L until it does. I got nearly as much for it as a new one fetches, and if I'd waited there's no way it would have fetched so much. The money raised allowed me to buy a 70 - 200mm f/2.8 IS L MkII so hardly a disaster!

If you would like a new 400mm f/2.8 IS L MkII then the price in the UK (Calumet) is around Â£11500 so I would suggest that you give the big Canon a miss and buy the Sigma 200 - 500mm f/2.8 There's not much difference in the price, and you get another 100mm + that huge zoom range too. (Just buy a truss for when you have to lift it onto the tripod!

BTW has anyone done a serious review of this lens?


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## scalesusa (Nov 1, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*

OOPs, i'd bet that someone made a wrong setup and a whole lot of parts were made incorrectly. Thats the thing about computer controlled machinery, it can do a lot of damage quickly, but to fix it you have to get more raw material which might be hard to get if it is specifically made for the purpose, like lens blanks, for example.

They probably started up the assembly line and found out the hard way. Maybe the prototypes were tweaked but the drawings or machine programming did not get updated. If the glass was ground wrong, thats a expensive error.


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## visceralpsyche (Nov 1, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*

Rare earth supply issues maybe? (No idea if they are needed in lens electronics but you never know)

If they're hedging their bets on the Yen weakening in the next few months.... bad hedge IMHO! (I'm in Japan)

Cheers,

Paul


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## Edwin Herdman (Nov 1, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*

I feel for the guy who sold his 400mm, because even in good times every dollar counts. But I think you have to assume that part of the reason you buy Canon L-grade equipment is because it's a bit of insurance of the value. (Well, unless it has a green ring around it, I guess.)


scalesusa said:


> OOPs, i'd bet that someone made a wrong setup and a whole lot of parts were made incorrectly. Thats the thing about computer controlled machinery


No, that's the thing about making blind guesses with apparently no idea how production processes actually work. Production oopsies happened all the time in the analog age as well - going from the drawing board to the factory floor is never straightforward, and if anything computer design makes some of these problems less likely. Ever heard of the DeHavilland Comet?

I'm putting it down to two likely possibilities:

1.) The production process currently in place works, but not at sufficient volume to ship enough product to retailer to avoid shortages (and the problems that further causes, like scalping)
2.) Production samples - meaning, just a few parts - were not up to quality and so they had to re-engineer some parts of the process.

Of course, it could also be a mix of these problems.

It's too early (and there isn't enough information) to make any concrete conclusions, but I wouldn't be too surprised if this signals even more capital-intensive (meaning expensive) production retooling is going to be the norm for the new high resolution systems. It kind of strikes me as similar to the deal with hard drive manufacturers, where to prepare for technology that won't be used for some years, a company has to invest a very significant (like 1/6 or more) of its capital into just retooling to stay afloat. If this is true, it means rough hiking for the smaller companies.

But Sigma and Tamron seem to have some competitive products coming at good, cheap prices, so it's hard to say what's going on. But I'd bet it's more likely that Tamron (for example, with the famous-round-these-parts "unparalleled optical performance" 70-300mm f/4-5.6) is saving on features and maybe on quality more than Canon is overpricing by brand. But the tests will be the judge of that.

I think the quote is silly because every company has a production quality inspection process - it's standard practice in every industry to actually inspect the first items coming off the line to see if they actually are coming out as expected, especially when they are made to certain tolerances. scalesusa is suggesting that it'd be perfectly acceptable for Canon to make a bunch of parts without having even having made a guess as to whether they fit the prototype. It's certainly possible for a bunch of parts to be made that don't fit with another part (like two gears), but they have CAD programs for that purpose, so the other part of the post falls apart as well.


visceralpsyche said:


> Rare earth supply issues maybe? (No idea if they are needed in lens electronics but you never know)
> 
> If they're hedging their bets on the Yen weakening in the next few months.... bad hedge IMHO! (I'm in Japan)


The rare earths usually spoken of are used in the lens elements, not the electronics. I don't think any of the other elements used in the production of these lenses are particularly rare. The only thing that comes to mind is lithium for batteries, where some countries merely have more of it than most others.

Hmm, maybe that rare "redringobium" was being mined at a certain mine in Chile now shut down.

In any case, that'd be a supply problem, where Canon here has indicated a production process problem. But who knows, they might fudge the details to keep an advantage, I suppose. I doubt it though.

On the yen issue, I guess you could tell for sure by seeing if the products are being sold in Japan first. But I don't think Japan's market for lenses is so much smaller than the overseas markets that a huge shortage would mean they could even fill domestic orders. In any case, they try not to appear to play favorites because that would piss off their customers and people who like to invoke the memory of WWII.

In the case of playing games with the yen shortage, I think that Canon is a big enough company that it ought to have enough foreign currency reserves to be able to ignore currency conversion most of the time, or to only convert currency as needed for capital investment projects (of course, that may be happening here). But in the case of playing games with overseas shipments to squeeze the most value out of expensive currencies, I've seen Nintendo do just what you suggest by prioritizing shipments of game systems to countries with a more valuable currency, over some others. That seemed to have been rare, or maybe it was just a bigger example of that happening than normal. Nintendo is one of those companies that is reputed to have a lot of money, though, so the idea that they would have to game the exchange rate like that was a bit startling. For reference, Canon is about double Nintendo's size in terms of revenues and operating income, but employs many, many times more employees than Nintendo (nearly 167,000 compared to 4000+ at Nintendo).

Hope that's some help.


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## Justin (Nov 1, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*

OK, I see your point, but I don't think that was a typical event. In any case if you want to own one of these new lenses within the first month of release it often takes a preorder to get it. That's the last I'll add to my defense of this guy who did the reasonable thing to sell his lens in advance of an announced lens' actual release. 



neuroanatomist said:


> Justin said:
> 
> 
> > It's not clever, it's strategic. Most people can't afford 2 lenses that cost this much.
> ...


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## drummstikk (Nov 2, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*

I am sorry to report that my raising of the many thousands of dollars for any of these lenses has been delayed for about two years.

I would like to apologize to Canon for any inconvenience this delay may cause them.


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## docsmith (Nov 2, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*

One slight thing to add, 3 of the 4 lens have been announced as delayed. Apparently the 70-300L is still on schedule!!!!  Hmmmm apparently "end of October" doesn't mean the same thing to them as it does to me.

More seriously, the fact that they did only announce delays for 3 of the 4 and not all 4, to me, indications that it is production issues with those specific lenses or those specific production lines....

Let's just hope this doesn't turn into another Boeing "Dreamliner" which was originally scheduled for delivery in what? 2008???


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## EOBeav (Nov 2, 2010)

First of all, what a cool site. I haven't joined a forum for years, but this seems to be worth the effort. 

It's probably a good thing (for me, anyway) that the 8-15mm L is delayed. I just bought some L glass this summer, so it will probably be a while before I can afford/justify the acquisition of another. I'm really looking forward to taking that one out for a test drive when it's released.


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## Justin (Nov 2, 2010)

Welcome! We have our fun. Mostly it's about agonizing over gaping holes in Canon's lineup, fretting about future releases, enumerating wishlists galore, and weighing in on how Canon is and is not succeeding overall in giving us the tools to take our photography to another level. Have fun.

Justin



EOBeav said:


> First of all, what a cool site. I haven't joined a forum for years, but this seems to be worth the effort.
> 
> It's probably a good thing (for me, anyway) that the 8-15mm L is delayed. I just bought some L glass this summer, so it will probably be a while before I can afford/justify the acquisition of another. I'm really looking forward to taking that one out for a test drive when it's released.


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## Justin (Nov 2, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*

ahahhhah lulz



drummstikk said:


> I am sorry to report that my raising of the many thousands of dollars for any of these lenses has been delayed for about two years.
> 
> I would like to apologize to Canon for any inconvenience this delay may cause them.


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## scalesusa (Nov 5, 2010)

*Re: Official Bad News - Lenses Delayed.*



Edwin Herdman said:


> I feel for the guy who sold his 400mm, because even in good times every dollar counts. But I think you have to assume that part of the reason you buy Canon L-grade equipment is because it's a bit of insurance of the value. (Well, unless it has a green ring around it, I guess.)
> 
> 
> scalesusa said:
> ...




Talk about blind guesses!

Why would you think that I did not know how things actually work? I spent 35 years in the electronics industry as a registered professional engineer working with product design and manufacturing from many of the major high tech electronic companies. I've traveled all over the world to work with subcontractors and review or show them how to to correct problems with new products as well as existing ones. 

Speaking of DeHavilland, I even had a 2.5 year assignment to help them out as well. All the people at DeHavilland were great. I've seen it all, and inaccurate tooling for startup of new production lines is not uncommon, but we are both just guessing, your guss is as good as anybodies.


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