Canon and Lens Longevity

If you can develop a product and then keep selling that same thing for 27 years with no changes, you are way ahead of the game. Canon has been able to do just that with their 50mm f2.5 Macro lens. It’s unthinkable in computer terms, but par for the course in lenses. The-Digital-Picture takes a look at the ten oldest lenses still available new from Canon, and number 10 came out in 1995. 19 years! It’s even more remarkable when you look at how the cameras these lenses work with have changed over that time.

In 1987, when the 50mm f2.5 was introduced, the big news on the camera side was the EOS 650 film camera, which was just getting auto-focus sorted properly. And they were still a decade away from a serious digital camera. Despite the huge leap from the EOS650 to the modern digital wonders of the 5D Mark III, the 50mm f2.5, and a whole pile of other lenses, soldier on.