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If lenses were made of gold....

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J R R S

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Maybe 4/3 lenses are a little steep in price?

We are now 3yrs in to the m4/3 revolution and all is going swimmingly - we have lots of bodys, lenses and the uptake is better than they hoped!

Is it not about time prices started to head south? - this is after all, the system that requires less glass than the others?

How much would they cost if made from gold (9 carat)
Gold (24 carat) £35per g
9crt gold = £13.125g

12mm = 130g = £1706
14mm = 55g = £722
20mm = 100g = £1312
45mm = 116g = £1522
7-14 = 300g = £3837
9-18 = 155g = £2034
100-300 = 520g = £6825
75-300 = 430g = £5643
OMD = 425g = £5578

So are we realy getting good value for money!
The 14mm is nearly half the price of gold... g for g!
The 12mm is 1/3 the price of gold!
7-14mm 1/4 the price of gold!
OMD 1/4 the price of gold!
The 100-300 being the best value at only 1/10th the price of gold :)

Bugatti Veyron Super Sports (£1,500,000) = 1838kg = £24,123,750 a mear 1/16 the price of gold! making it g for g way better value than any m4/3 lens :P

So next time your looking at the Bugatti garage and wondering if its worth doing time for - just follow the Oly lens truck instead ;)
 
unfortunately for both lenses and cars, less weight is what you're looking for.
 
Also too, to make $2000 worth of gold, melt some jewelry on your stove and pour the correct size blob on a pan to dry. Making $2000 worth of camera takes a little more work. If the third-world employees who assemble these thing made western world wages a Pen would cost $4000.
 
I'm always amused by the posters who think the because the lenses are smaller they should be cheaper. It's actually more expensive to miniaturize things. It also costs a lot of money to design a new lens, build the manufacturing line, test the lenses, and finally begin manufacturing. All those R&D and setup costs have to be recovered in the sale price of the lens.

Sales volume makes a difference, too. Those costs are typically expected to be amortized over the first few years. Given that Canon can expect to sell more copies of a given lens than Oly, simply because there are so many more EF mount cameras in use, Canon can amortize those costs over a greater number of lenses, which lowers the cost of those lenses.
--

Bokeh is the aesthetic quality of the blur in out-of-focus areas of an image, or the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light. Bokeh is not the same as depth of field (DOF).
 
You say that - but I have a funny feeling its not R&D costs that are keeping the prices so high... By that reasoning all compact cameras should be very very expencive!

They have the knowlage and the technology to hand - yes R&D takes some cost but I don't think it is as much as the prices make out!
 
Gold as a safe investment haven for crisis times just shifts the 'trust' issue from money to a metal with preciously little real world applications. Only in jewelry and some industrial application is gold needed, and there's plenty of that about.

Lenses, which can be used to produce services do allow you to create value. So,instead of ditching sovereign bonds and buying gold, investors would be wise to pick up as many lenses as possible. You'll see, they'll boom!

As OP pointed out, Bugatti's are even more undervalued. When the whole monetary society comes crumbling down, you can still use that car to provide taxi rides. But what are you going to do with that much weight in gold??? Eat it?
Tim F 101 said:
Also too, to make $2000 worth of gold, melt some jewelry on your stove and pour the correct size blob on a pan to dry. Making $2000 worth of camera takes a little more work. If the third-world employees who assemble these thing made western world wages a Pen would cost $4000.
Click to expand...
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bilgy_no1
 
I'd check the history of gold prices. Generally, when the economy is good, gold prices go down. Lenses might actually go up in a good economy.

--
John Krumm
Juneau, AK
 
Great comparison!

I suspect the new Panasonic 35-100 and 12-35mm lenses will come 1:1 with gold! :-(
How much is E-M5 body in UK? 1:3?

Damn!!
--
Rick Halle wrote:

" Keep in mind that tall buildings sway back and forth so they require faster shutter speeds."
 
Well, the value of Gold is just as imaginary as the value of paper money, only at the next level. So that figures. In fact it's surprising to see that gold goes up when the economy is bad.
jkrumm said:
I'd check the history of gold prices. Generally, when the economy is good, gold prices go down. Lenses might actually go up in a good economy.

--
John Krumm
Juneau, AK
Click to expand...
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bilgy_no1
 
He had the E-M5 in the list. Something like 1:5 for the 12-50mm kit. Real good value!!!
AV Janus said:
Great comparison!

I suspect the new Panasonic 35-100 and 12-35mm lenses will come 1:1 with gold! :-(
How much is E-M5 body in UK? 1:3?

Damn!!
--
Rick Halle wrote:

" Keep in mind that tall buildings sway back and forth so they require faster shutter speeds."
Click to expand...
--
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bilgy_no1
 
J R R S said:
Maybe 4/3 lenses are a little steep in price?

We are now 3yrs in to the m4/3 revolution and all is going swimmingly - we have lots of bodys, lenses and the uptake is better than they hoped!

Is it not about time prices started to head south? - this is after all, the system that requires less glass than the others?

How much would they cost if made from gold (9 carat)
Gold (24 carat) £35per g
9crt gold = £13.125g

12mm = 130g = £1706
14mm = 55g = £722
20mm = 100g = £1312
45mm = 116g = £1522
7-14 = 300g = £3837
9-18 = 155g = £2034
100-300 = 520g = £6825
75-300 = 430g = £5643
OMD = 425g = £5578

So are we realy getting good value for money!
The 14mm is nearly half the price of gold... g for g!
The 12mm is 1/3 the price of gold!
7-14mm 1/4 the price of gold!
OMD 1/4 the price of gold!
The 100-300 being the best value at only 1/10th the price of gold :)

Bugatti Veyron Super Sports (£1,500,000) = 1838kg = £24,123,750 a mear 1/16 the price of gold! making it g for g way better value than any m4/3 lens :P

So next time your looking at the Bugatti garage and wondering if its worth doing time for - just follow the Oly lens truck instead ;)
Click to expand...
--
Viva la evolución!
 
If you want a metal that is valuable and usefull:

Titanium:
approx £30,000 per tonne,

And will probably be in perfict condition even after the atomic bomb and zombies are through!

Could be a bloody hard job trying to devide any of your ingots tho....
 
Leica Noctilux 50mm f/0.95 is even more expensive than it's weight in gold!
Good investment? :D
--
Cheers,
Marin
 
Oh yeh I should have done a Leica list - would have made the gold look cheep! lol
 
Who uses 9 carat gold for anything? It's certainly not what you buy as an investment.
 
Tim F 101 said:
Also too, to make $2000 worth of gold, melt some jewelry on your stove and pour the correct size blob on a pan to dry. Making $2000 worth of camera takes a little more work. If the third-world employees who assemble these thing made western world wages a Pen would cost $4000.
Click to expand...
I can't speak to cameras and lenses, but I do know that for most consumer products (particularly computers and smart phones) shifted to the US for their production, the total cost would rise less than 50%--30% would probably be a decent estimate.
 
What? you mean lenses made of gold would not work?? oh back to the drawing board!

Yeh I know you invest in 24carot but that was not even going to be close so I played the numbers - besides true 24carot gold is very very usless - that is why it is aloyed to make 9/18 carot as it wares so easly in its pure form as to be hard to keep its value.

When you perchace a Kg of gold you actualy get 1001g.... as getting purer than 99.9% is very hard to do... so they just give you an extra gram!

Of corse this is all just a bit of fun and a poke at the prices of m4/3 lenses... which even by 9carot gold standards are fairly costly!
 
I was more thinking you just don't see much, if any, 9k around (or at least I never notice it). Pretty much everything is either 14k or 18k. I think I've seen some 10k and some 5k a few times but not much. Of course once you cast a lens out of it they mark it up to retail and you have to pay 4-6x the golds value along with all the labor and other costs which are also marked up the same. :D
 
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