Originally posted by Tighelander 
How much more does it take to make a FF lens? The retail price of the two announced zooms seems twice as much as the CS equivalents. Years ago I read a book about the downfall of Detroit. In that it was said that the cost to make a big car and a small car were about the same, but they could charge more for a big car and that's why Detroit resisted making small cars for so long.
There several aspects. Up to a point this is very true. This is market segmentation. Even if the latest lenses from Pentax are better a tamron 70-200 screw drive can be get used for maybe 500$ and would achive near the same thing from a practical purpose on optical quality. I mean the shoots will look great from the both lense and maybe even the "macro" capability of the tamron could be more interresting.
The the Pentax lenses have the latest/greatest features, they are made for all weather, using the best coatings etc. So they are overall a bit better and the overall cost to get this from the factory point of view is not much.
But there 2 key things through. Theses lenses are optimized for ultimate AF performance. I have no idea how much it cost to achieve that, but there no lense from Pentax previously that would achieve that, and in Canikon world, the cheaper lenses with that would be limited to f/4. For the ultimate f/2.8 performance, you pay a premium. And overall there no ultimate lense designed for APSC. Pentax was the only one to try with sigma a bit too. But the very fast autofocus is something only the Canikon premium lenses and now Pentax offer (maybe also Sony, I don't know).
For Pentax also the lenses are new, with new optical designs, lot of investement etc that justify the price... Even through the lenses are not stabilized and that a feature they lack compared to Canikon. To justify the lenses price and pro status without stabilization, they would need to perform better on other aspects than Canikon ones.
So that a mixed bag. We pay the Pentax R&D that didn't have such kind of lenses for years, we pay more because of market segmentation that for sure... And we pay more too because most people would not buy such expensive/heavy/big lense anyway and the price need to be increase to cover for lower volumes. But we also pay more because the lenses are going to be the best of the best, and no one offer that for a low price.
My advice is that if you don't need the ultimate AF performance, you may wish to look at one of the Sigma/Tamron offerings. Tamron has a very cheap and great 70-200 f/2.8 with screw drive and Sigma has an interresting offering with great but not ultimate AF performance, great quality and also optical stabilization. That give you choice !
Post #1 by Adam
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