Why are quality lenses so expensive?
Lenses are very complex and costly products to design and manufacture. Each component has to be built to incredibly tight tolerances and carefully assembled by hand. The extremely pure optical-grade glass used in making lenses is very expensive to produce. Expensive lenses don t have the volume sales of cheap lenses, making them more expensive still to produce profitably. So, unfortunately, when it comes to lenses you generally get what you pay for. Lenses going for 200-300 US$ or € may seem very expensive to a novice, but they are in fact considered dirt cheap lenses by professionals. This isn t snobby elitism necessarily – it s just how it is. Lenses with high optical quality usually cost a lot of money. Photography is, unfortunately, a fairly expensive endeavour.
