Canon Builds 80 Millionth EF Lens

Canon is one of the biggest names in the photography industry and offers a number of digital cameras and camcorders. The company's products range from high-end, very expensive professional-grade DSLR cameras to cheap nearly disposable point and shoot cameras for beginners. Canon has announced that it's celebrating a new milestone in the production of its EF lenses.

Canon built its 80 millionth EF lens on August 3 of this year. The company hit the 10 million mark in 1995, and by 2001 had constructed 20 million EF lenses. Canon took another five years to reach the 30 million mark and in 2008, the company had produced 40 million EF lenses. When Canon's EOS Digital SLR cameras took off, production of EF lenses boomed as well with the 50 million unit milestone coming in 2009.

That means between 2008 and 2009 Canon constructed 1 million EF lenses thanks to its popular digital cameras. By January of 2011, the number of EF lenses constructed had reached 60 million and only nine months later, production had reached 70 million. It has now been nine months since that 70 million mark was hit in 2011, and Canon is celebrating 80 million lenses produced in its EF series.

The EF lens was first introduced with the EOS SLR camera system in March of 1987. Canon says that its line of EF lenses has included a number of world's first technologies, including the Ultrasonic Motor, Image Stabilizer, and multilayered diffractive optical (DO) elements. The current Canon line of EF lenses has 76 models.