Lens Repair Data 1.0

When we began marking lenses as “higher risk for failure” and explained our reasons for discontinuing many Sigma lenses, a number of you asked us to publish our actual failure and repair data on our lenses. I think it is probably useful: a rental house is sort of a stress-test lab for lenses. We’ve had about 1,500 lenses rotate through our stock. The lenses are used heavily and inspected and tested between every rental. Our testing and checkout is pretty thorough— focus and electronics check, back and front focus testing, zoom testing, visual and mechanical inspection— and we seem to be the most aggressive rental house in terms of having lenses repaired or calibrated: I’ve been told unofficially that we are Canon New Jersey’s largest repair customer in the US.

Our failure and repair data should be considered a worst case scenario because of the high amounts of action and shipping our lenses see. Despite heavy packing and padding, shipping can take a toll on lenses; one-fourth of all the lens failures we see are immediately after shipping, not after use. Our overall repair rate from all lenses per year is just under 5%. For business reason I’m not willing to share the exact number of copies of each lens stocked, but the lowest number of copies of any lens listed is 9, and the average number of copies per lens is 26.

The data presented below is not complete yet, we still have some older records to go through, but it represents about two-thirds of our records and seems worth showing you at this point. Percent repaired, as presented below, is the percentage of that lens requiring repair or maintenance during 1 year excluding cases of user damage. We do not consider a dropped lens, scratched element, etc. to be part of repair and those repairs are not counted here. I might also mention that the Sigma 120-300 data is a bit skewed because two copies required multiple repairs.

I’ve also placed an asterisk on the Sigma 18-200 because we only have actually have 7 months of data so far and have at least one other copy that appears to be loosening in the same area. It should also be noted that the Sigma 120-400 and 150-500 are not one-year data; basically, that number represents failure rate straight out of the box, all the repairs were from arriving broken, with one exception being a lens that failed during its first rental.

The Canon 70-200 f2.8 IS listed at the bottom is not a high failure lens at all. I simply listed it because it is our most heavily used lens per copy, yet the failure rate is about average, which demonstrates a well made lens does not fail simply from heavy use.

Note: These numbers have been updated on 10/1/08 to reflect a two year average for all Canon lenses as we’ve completed our review of Canon repair records.