Hrow
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kakomu wrote:
Hrow wrote:
Having both options is the best way to go IMO and its one of Canon's strong points. I just am getting a little tired of people asserting that since they don't need IS on a wide that it is a stupid idea. It isn't, they just don't need that feature.
The best analogy is GPS. My wife drives to about 5 places and that's it. She knows where they are and how to get there. She thinks my GPS is the stupidest thing on earth and doesn't understand why I benefit from it since she knows where she is and where she is going. On the other hand, I drive places where I have never been and on back roads that aren't on most maps. To me the GPS has a lot of value. Different strokes. For her a GPS is stupid. For me, it is not.
Same thing with IS - even on wides.
The problem with IS is that it introduces a very large markup on lenses. The 70-200 lenses shows the disparity in pricing between IS and non IS versions. The F/4 IS version is several hundred dollars more. The new F/2.8 IS version looks like it can be almost a grand more. Maybe this is a drop in the bucket for you, but this pricing certainly puts these lens well beyond the grasp of most photographers. I'm not independently wealthy, so I tend to have to forego most of Canon's offerings anymore because of how much money they are.
It's about cost/benefit. I really don't feel that IS benefits wide angles as much as it benefits longer lenses. Moreover, if there's going to be a several hundred dollar markup for a feature that has very little benefit (to me at least), the cost of that feature is difficult to swallow.
This isn't like the video feature of SLR cameras where the cost is merely in the software and its cost gets swallowed up over time. The IS hardware seems to be a real extra cost that will continue to make lenses more expensive compared to those without IS.
Canon and Nikon have proven that the cost of IS / VR is reasonable by including it in many of their lower priced lenses. That they jack up the price on their premium lenses is much less because they are recovering the costs of IS then it is because they can. As long as people are willing to pay ridiculous prices then that's what we will get.
Nobody knows if Canon will release a 24-70 IS and nobody knows if it will be $1,000 more. All of that is simply speculation and rumor. More over, even if we find it to be true at point X in the future, nobody here knows how much of that is the IS. Certainly a portion of the price of the lens will be IS but there is a lot more that goes into determining pricing. In fact, Canon could almost certainly lower the price significantly if they choose to and still make money. The problem for us is that their economists have determined that they can make more money following the low volume / high price model. This is a way different reality than IS makes lenses too expensive.
Cost/benefit is real thing for all of us. IS on a wide benefits me greatly. It doesn't benefit you as much. Hopefully we will both have lens options that meet our needs.
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Instead they are content with razor thin DOF and high ISO for every shot to prevent contamination from the impurity of IS