Would be much lighter too. The Canon version is excellent despite it's age. A lightweight 70~200 with VR would prove very popular.
I would love one of these. Doing weddings, I'm sick of holding a 70-200 VR11 to my face for extended periods because of the weight.
On wide angle lenses, smaller and cheaper are very hard to achieve since the most important aspect of the lens is to have a large enough image circle to cover the sensor. On longer lenses, the glass size is determined by a formula that will dictate the size of the primary objective lens. This is focal length / F-Stop = Diameter of the objective. For a 200 F2.8, that glass needs to be 71.5 mm in size. For a 200 F4.0, it needs to be 50 mm in size. A 120 mm F4.0 lens would only need a 30mm front objective. A 105 mm F4.0 lens would only need a 26.25 mm lens. On both of these, I'd think the 24 F4.0 will dictate the size of the lens rather than the long end. On the 70-200 F4.0, it will be the long end. I have an 180mm F4.0 manual focus lens that is tiny and stunning sharp. Certainly the new zooms won't be that small since they will have AF-S and VR but the longest will be at least 2/3 the size of the current lens.
I agree that is one lens I never should sold. I agree with Slimandy when he says "I won't be selling my 70-200 f2.8 just yet!!"
That doesn't make the lens smaller or lighter. That's the real reason for the smaller aperture lens. It would be lighter and smaller than the current lens making it easier for some to use.
I don't know about obscenely expensive, considering the alternatives. But if you look at photozone, you can see that while the Canon 70-200/4 isn't quite as good as the 70-200/2.8, it is very good.
Actually, not really!!I guess it's mainly targetted at users who want a constant aperture lens, yet are not willing to fork out that money for a f2.8 lens (provided that the 70-200 f4 is cheaper!) Well I just hope it's great optically
