It may be wishful thinking, but as one who is currently shifting from Canon to Pentax DSLRs (primarily due to the in-body shake reduction system that works with all lenses, even those I originally acquired in the 1970's), I think the price of Canon's IS lenses is due to come down over time due to the competition from proliferating IS/VS/SR/OS systems. Even point-and-shoot cameras offer various stabilization modes these days. When Canon's IS lenses were first "priced" they were virtually unique and Canon had every right and opportunity to charge a big premium. Now, I can use a 500mm F4.5 Pentax K-mount lens on my K100D or K10D and shake reduction works very well, giving me up to 3-1/2 to 4 stops advantage. Yes, the lens is manual focus and manual aperture, but the Pentax cameras provide focus confirmation in the viewfinder, and you can still get these lenses for a price that is approximately 1/10 that of Canon's IS monsters (i.e., $500-600 at KEH). A manual focus 400mm F2.8 Pentax A* lens just went for under $2500 at Adorama (I lost out on the purchase). Out of production for several years now, Pentax's 400 2.8 gets extremely high ratings on image quality and optical performance. When you can get manual focus confirmation from Pentax cameras, is autofocus (the only discernable advantage of the Canon IS 400 2.8) really worth $5,000? Maybe to pros, but not to me. Probably not to many other users. Granted, a 400 2.8 A* Pentax lens in prime condition comes along once in a blue moon. I should have moved more quickly on that one. But I'm OK with my 500 F4.5 and a Tokina manual focus 300 2.8, both of which have the Pentax equivalent of IS on my DSLRs. I still love my 20D and 70-200L IS 2.8, 300L F4 IS, etc., etc., but I'm using the Pentaxes more and more. They are all great cameras.
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Stuartf287
