How come they don't make different zoom ranges with lenses?

10 years 3 months ago #331267 by KENT MELTON
More specifically, how are focal lengths determined?  18-200mm, 24-70mm, 70-200mm, 150-500mm, etc..  Is there a technical  reason why lenses have a certain focal range?  Why not more options?  Or is this done for marketing and sales reasons, more options equal more sales?


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10 years 3 months ago #331303 by Joves
With zooms they decide what range they want to offer, and what will sell best. There is no real reason other than that. You can make practically any zoom range you want to in reality. But the real problem is with the f-stops. Say you want an 18-200 to be at a steady f/2.8, this requires a much larger lens body due to the elements needed to achieve that, so they do not make one, and the other consideration is that of cost, and other optical problems, such as vignetting at the wide end. This is also why your best performing zooms are in a tighter range from wide to long. There are a couple of exceptions to the rule, but they are the exception. The variable aperture lenses are the norm for ultra wide range zooms simply because they can be sold cheaper, and can perform adequately. This is also why they use certain focal lengths as well. You can buy a couple of zooms, and cover a very wide range now, and have some overlap to boot. Zooms are nice for walk around lenses when you are unsure of what you will encounter, but I still prefer my primes.


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10 years 3 months ago #331315 by Overread
Cost of materials, tooling, and then packaging.  Then the manufactures have to determine if the gap of what users have and the new lens is large enough to pay for all this.  So you see manufactures siting on what is accepted already. 


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10 years 3 months ago #331393 by Stealthy Ninja
because a 23-68 zoom lens is just weird.
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