Canon has announced the recent production of the company's 50 millionth EF lens, number achieved during manufacturing of the EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM lens, marking another milestone in its history. Also, it looks like Canon produced more than 10 million lenses in less than two years, further stating that it keeps providing photographers with the best quality products.

“Today’s announcement shows an immense achievement in our ability to grow and adapt to reach this impressive target in such a short space of time,” said Kazuyuki Suzuki, General Manager, Lens Products Marketing Management Division Canon Inc. “We are proud to support so many photographers of all abilities through our extensive range of DSLRs, including the recently launched 7D designed to create a whole new photographic experience.”

Even considering how old the company is, 50 million lenses seem very much to me, because just in case you didn't read right, these are only the EF lenses, thus we exclude here any EF-S (that are not so few) and FD lenses for the analog cameras (many others). Without mentioning when the first FD lens was built, I would like to tell you that EF lenses appeared in 1987 with the first camera in the EOS system, namely the EOS 650 and ever since, Canon has shown the world many developments, like follows.

In the same year, it unveiled the first lens using an Ultrasonic Motor, the EF 300 f/2.8L USM (as a comparison, many other rival companies do not have such a lens now, almost 23 years later), followed by the world's first interchangeable lens with Image Stabilizer, the EF 75-300 f/4-5.6 IS USM in 1997 and the very first Canon lens to sport multi-layered diffractive optics elements, the 400 f/4 DO IS USM in 2001.


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