Why does Canon not make such light zoom lenses anymore ?

brightcolours wrote:

Steve Balcombe wrote:

Peter Kwok wrote:

Canon made some very lightweight zoom lens in the past, such as the 3 versions of 28-90mm for their Rebel film cameras. Their cheap constructions kept their weight below 200g. Unlike lightweight kit lens for crop bodies, they fit your FF camera.

In this digital era where we can pixel-peep every lens before we buy, lens like these would not survive the criticism on-line. The 24-105L is considered the minimum quality for FF DSLR.

But lenses like those, and even cheaper ones in fact, are made - for crop bodies. The demand for inexpensive lenses still exists and Canon is happy to satisfy that need. They haven't been made for full frame because it was judged - rightly in my opinion - that few people would want to spend £/$3000 minimum on a full frame DSLR body then stick a cheap lens on it. The 6D, which brings full frame digital within the reach of a wider market, could lead to a change.

Also, I think many people have forgotten how cheap entry level film SLRs used to be. I remember buying a brand new Canon film SLR in the 1990s for under £200 - yes "full frame" for £200. I don't know of a source of £/$ prices for that era but Canon's Camera Museum tells me that the original Japanese market price of the 24-85 USM I mentioned in a previous post was 58,000 yen while the EOS Rebel XS was almost exactly the same price at 59,000 yen. Would you want to pay the price of a 6D (today's cheap full-frame body) for that lens?

That makes no sense. The 6D contains an expensive FF chip, which dictates the price. It is als not a cheap all plastic body with plastic mount, as that entry level film SLR was that you bought.

You can buy an SL1 with 18-55mm STM for way less now (taking inflation into account).

You are totally missing the point. Until very recently the minimum entry point for full frame was in the region of £/$3000. This meant there was NO demand for full frame lenses from people with a budget of a few hundred $/$.

Yes you can buy an entry-level crop body and kit lens with that budget of a few hundred £/$. But not full frame and that's the distinction that the OP was making and therefore the point I was answering.

The 24-105L has been accused by some of being not worthy of the L designation. I don't want to get too deeply into that debate, but it is a fact that its optical quality is good rather than great, it's not weatherproof,

The lens is not water proof (no lens is) but it is weather sealed with rubber gaskets. Maybe you confuse it with some other L lenses.

My mistake, I stand corrected.

and it is one of the few IS lenses with no panning mode.

One can pan with it just fine. Older IS lenses needed a panning mode, but the loci have been improved so that the IS systems notice when one pans and adjust accordingly. So, the lack of IS mode switch just tells us something about the generation of IS (for this focal length range, for longer lenses different IS modes keep on beneficial).

Do some more homework on this one - the 24-105L is not like, for example, the 55-250 which has automatic panning mode. The 24-105L's IS system doesn't support panning at all. That doesn't mean you can't get away with panning the camera of course.

The also weather sealed 24-70mm f4 L IS USM also has no IS mode switch, simply because it is not needed.

And of course it is actually quite inexpensive compared with the alternatives. The OP's criticism that it's a big and heavy is fair enough, but in most respects it fills the same slot as those old mid-level USM lenses.

One can also just buy one of those mid level USM lenses for the 6D, anyway. The 24-88mm USM, the 28-105mm f3.4-4.5 USM (II), the 28-135mm f3.5-5.6 IS USM all will do exactly what the OP is wishing for.

But none of those is available new today - see the recently updated UK web site.