Tilt-Shift Lenses: Why Are They so Expensive?

Architectural photography isn’t exactly the cheapest profession to get into. The amount of money that we invest in building this particular kind of business is significantly greater than many other genres of photography. Unfortunately, the current price of tilt-shift lenses doesn’t help very much in this regard.

The question to ask then is, why are tilt-shift lenses so expensive? I mean, they don’t have any form of built-in stabilization, they don’t offer any kind of auto-focus and, they’re prime lenses meaning they offer no zoom features. Even the two cheapest Canon tilt-shift lenses (the 90mm and the 45mm TS-E lenses) which aren’t even worthy of the “L” brand cost $1399.00 brand new. A recent video by ZY Productions discusses some of the reasons as to why tilt-shift lenses cost so much. Aside from the obvious aspects relating to the difficulty of constructing these types of lenses; economies of scale seem to be one of the major factors that keep the cost of these lenses high. Tilt-shift lenses aren’t exactly the most popular lenses on the market and they are pretty niche. There are only a few types of photographers that will benefit from using a tilt-shift lens and architectural photographers are one of those types.

Check out the full video linked above.

Posted via ZY Productions