Posted by Dan Borzynski on March 6, 2007 at 10:20 AM
If I remember correctly: the 1200 has a minimum focusing distance of 41 or 47 feet, cost a fair bit over $100,000 (the price was never really announced), and were built one at a time as a custom job. On the bright side, they occasionally appear on the used market at a mere $75,000. They used to be rented by Canon professional services to established pros for specific purposes, basically because almost no one was going to come up with six figures to buy it.
(OOOHHHH, after rereading it, I see the prices have dropped to a mere $80,000! What a bargain!!!!)
Wow, what a lens! I think it is funny when the lens gets so big that it dwarfes the cam "somewhere" attached to it. Looks more like a bazooka - well one can shoot with both...
Nikon also made one of these super lenses years ago. It was a 1200mm to 1700mm f5.6 zoom. It sold for $75,000 almost twenty years ago. It was special order and required payment in advance before it was manufactured. If my memory serves me correctly it weighed in at about thirty six pounds.
Sorry, Jos, my 2300mm focal length lens can eat the socks off this tiny 1200mm any day. And I only paid $1000 for it. Of course it is a Schmidt-Cassegrain telesope with an inverter to bring the terrestrial images right-side up, and it is only an f/11 but hey I can shoot those solar flares erupting in the morning, catch those elusive sandhill cranes 1/2 mile away in the afternoon, and then shoot the Orion nebulae at night. I also do not need two porters to carry the thing as it is not much larger than a Canon 500mm/4.
Discussion
8 replieshttp://www.dvinfo.net/canon/images/images17.php
(OOOHHHH, after rereading it, I see the prices have dropped to a mere $80,000! What a bargain!!!!)