Canon has announced the production of 90 million EF lenses in less than 26 years

Canon has announced the achievement of a new lens manufacturing milestone – the production of the company’s 90-millionth EF-series interchangeable lens. This news arrives nine months after Canon announced its production of the 80-millionth lens (August 2012) and clearly highlights the high demand and popularity in Canon’s EF optics.

Production of Canon’s signature interchangeable EF lens series began in 1987 at the Utsunomiya Plant, when the series was first introduced together with the EOS SLR camera system. Since then, the global demand for Canon’s EOS products and lenses has continued to gather pace and in 2011 there was only nine months between the increase from 60 to 70 million units manufactured.

In order to meet this demand, Canon scaled up its production with facilities across Taiwan, Malaysia and Japan.

Throughout the years, Canon has continued to develop and enhance its products such as evolving Ultrasonic Motor (USM) technology and image stabilizer (IS) technology. Other developments include a multi-layered diffractive optical (DO) element and Subwavelength Structure Coating (SWC) anti-reflection technology.

If the popularity in Canon’s EF lens range continues, it’s only a matter on time before the company announces the production of its 100th million EF lens – something we predict could occur as soon as early 2014 if the current trend continues.

EF lens production milestones:

1995: Production of EF lenses surpasses 10-million units
2001: Production of EF lenses surpasses 20-million units
2006: 30-million EF lenses produced
2008: 40-million-unit milestone reached in April
2009: 50-million units produced
2011: 60-million units reached in January
2011: 70-million units reached in October
2012: 80-million units reached by August