How old is canon lens

The remaining seven digits '' are a basic serial number this was a very early lens - one of the first shipped in the UK. How to interpret the date code? It's been suggested that the code starts in January with the number 38 and increments each month of the year.

We believe the code was reset to 01 for Jan - but this is still not known for certain. The figures here should be taken as a guide. If you find a change in codes, please do let us know and we'll see what we can add to this info. The lens was purchased in March , so the code '83' for October is reasonable.

The digit '5' for a revision code is also reasonable for a lens that's been around for a few years , but we are left with a 5 digit serial number.

Prior to this letter was at the end of the date code. You can tell the year by checking your code against the table below. The next two digits are the month. Occasionally, the leading zero of the month is omitted. In my case 10 means October. The new system consolidates the date codes and serial numbers into one string of numbers. And this number is now placed on the body of the lens. It looks like this new system was only implemented on lenses that were marketed starting in and forward.

So some lenses that were produced immediately after , but were introduced to the market before , still have the old dating system. The first two numbers DD correspond to the manufacturing date. It starts in January with number Then Canon reset to 01 on January Please refer to the table below for all the dates and corresponding numbers.

The next number appears to be for internal use. And the final group of 7 digits is the actual serial number of your lens. So following this breakdown you can see on this image that my EF 2. If your Canon lens has a date code then you will be able to tell when it was manufactured. However, keep in mind that the production date is only just that — a date when your lens was made.

Lenses can often take a long time to be shipped and then stored in a warehouse awaiting sale. Production date should only be one of the factors determining the extent of how long the lens has been in use for, other factors being the visual condition of the lens and smoothness of operation.

Your email address will not be published. Subscribe me to your mailing list. This internal code is also occasionally omitted based on reports from Canon owners.

The last letter stands for the name of the factory. In this case, "F" stands for Fukushima which was the main Canon SLR factory for about 20 years from the early 70s until The factory code is rarely omitted, if ever. He adds : « Starting in , the year code was restarted with "A" again, but the factory code was placed before it. So, for SLRs manufactured in , you might see a code starting with "OI" followed by the month code.

Since Canon's SLR lens factory is in Utsonomiya, you might see a date code starting with "UG" for a lens manufactured in , for example.