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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Adey Baker" data-source="post: 1507979" data-attributes="member: 1805">Many of Canon's lenses have been around for several years now, so their development costs have long been covered. Any new design would have to include the development into the retail price and might not look good value against the nearest option. I'd like a lightweight, close-focussing 500mm F5.6 but I suspect that it'd be close in price to the F4 anyway - there's no way that Canon would make it as anything other than a top-grade 'L' series lens. 'Affordable' is all relative under such circumstances and I guess most folks who could afford a putative F5.6 would probably pay that bit more for the F4 version, anyway!There's been a call for a closer focussing version of the 400mm F5.6 for ages - Sigma's Apo/Macro 400mm came out in the mid-90s and was even updated to include their HSM, but still Canon never bothered to update theirs. I suppose they think that the 100-400mm and the 300mm F4 IS (plus 1.4x) cover the options.</blockquote>