As far as I know Canon only made a handfull of these and loaned them out at special events. I believe the price to actually get one was something like 60k (though rumor has it the Sultan of Brunei owns one).
This guy on PBase has a few pics of the lens and a few taken with it:
They don't look that impressive to me. IMHO you'd better off investing in a really high quality apochromatic refracting telescope (like a Takahashi) and just using manual focus.
There are only around 8 in the world. From what I read they cost around $60,000 USD when they where available (Apparently now discontinued) and they where all hand built!
There was one on the B/S Forum a while back. Most of the posts were from the amazed lookie-loos, and the thread had to be shut down as it exceeded what the forum template could handel for that forum.
Well apparently it was built by request only, and by the looks of it only 10 requests were made as only 10 were built,and not suprising as the initial price was
around $90,000 as of 1993 !!!
The lens could be increased via tc's to 1700mm @ f8 or 2400mm @ f11, but can you imagine the amount of light this thing would need to soak up ...... it needed a very bright day for optimal use!
Weight - 36 lbs, and interestingly, James Jannard owns one, who is the billionaire founder of Oakley sunglasses!
I tried it at a show a few years ago. Canon had it set up in their booth. A beast for sure, it was set up on three tripods (2 for the lens and 1 for the camera) and still the image was shaking as soon as onybody walked by.
Why does the dentist own a 1200mm lens? If he is taking pictures of patient's teeth would it be better to buy a 100mm macro lens instead? Or unless he has patients with extreme bad breath. Min. focusing distance for the 1200mm is 6 meters.
EOS20 wrote:
There are only around 8 in the world. From what I read they cost around $60,000 USD when they where available (Apparently now discontinued) and they where all hand built!
there are actually more than 8 1200L's made , sports illustrated has a few as well as a half dozen large agencys, i think nasa owns a few as well.this is a special order lens, the cia owns several as well .
this is a made to order lens, meaning canon doesnt manufacture them until a buyer pays first. also the 1200L does work with the 1.4 and 2x extenders
Edited by tom mcconville on Jul 06, 2006 at 01:55 PM GMT
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