Why is Quality Control so low?

[g dan mitchell]

<p>In all of this, ask yourself the following: "If I bought a lens and it worked as expected, would I post about this in a forum? And if I did - not likely, right? - how passionate would I be in my posting and how often would I return to post about it again?"</p>

<p>Then ask the following additional question: "If I had a problem with my new lens, for whatever reason, would I be more or less likely to post about it? And if I did, how might the tone and intensity of my post compare with what I might say about yet another lens that worked just like I expected?"</p>

<p>The point is obvious. People are for more likely to post about a problem than about something working as expected. And people are far more likely to read and comment on the former. Almost no one among the vast majority whose new lens does precisely what they expected it to do will take the time to post: "Wow! I just have to share this astonishing news! I just got my new lens and it works exactly the way it is supposed to work! I really thank the engineers and workers at the Canon plant for doing a super competent job of producing gear that does no more or less than what I expected it to do! Let's have a 6 page forum discussion about achieving the expected! I'm so excited!"</p>

<p>And if you saw such a post, tell me, would you jump into the dynamic follow-up conversation about this? Or would you either bypass it or think, "Boy, that was a strange post."</p>

<p>On the other hand, can you imagine a person who thought that investing in a $2000 new super lens was going to bring them "vastly improved color and contrast," "stunningly sharp images," "unbelievably low levels of distortion," "AF speed that blows away the competition," "professional results," "unrivaled sharpness," and all the rest... and whose first photographs turned out to not meet that standard? Now <em>this</em> is a person who will post... early and often and with great passion! "I can't believe the low level standard the company X has for their equipment! I just spent $2000 on what is supposed to be the newest and best lens and the sharpness is no better than that of my kit lens! What a rip-off! Save your money!"</p>

<p>Even more, think of the person who does get one of those rare defective lenses - and, yes, there will be some defective products among the output of any industrial process: food, cars, televisions, cookware, cameras, computers, you name it. This person, who may take this as a personal affront, will often post repetitively and passionately and often angrily. Such people make up a large percentage of those who write on forums about such equipment. (In order to avoid bringing those topics in to this discussion, I won't name them, but I think that many of us can recite the short list of "problems" that certain posters obsess about...)</p>

<p>These experiences also existed before the era of the web, but the ability of the individual to spread their discontent was much more limited. In the case of a serious and real problem, the reports would get picked up by photography magazines. Camera store employees would tend to warn you away. A friend or a camera club member might say something. But the level of background noise was much lower, and microscopic and inconsequential issues rarely got blown up to the same proportions that we see on the web.</p>

<p>Finally, how many of us <em>have been certain</em> that we were the victims of some unfair or uncaring vendor or business? And how many of us have complained not only to the business, but also in more public forums. And how many, <em>like I have done</em>, have at least once had to eat our words, sometimes in a very public way? Either we finally go beyond complaining to no one in particular and finally contact the company... and someone sympathizes and fixes the problem. Or, worse, as happened to me a couple years ago, we publicly and passionately impugn the integrity of the company and its employees for their incompetence and unfair and uncaring attitudes... only to eventually see that they were right and we were wrong. I'm glad to say that I learned this lesson in a very powerful way not that long ago, when I felt obligated to write a very public apology for something unwarranted that I said about a business.</p>

<p>And, yes, there <em>are</em> some real problems - but not some scandal of generally poor quality control or companies out to rip us off. When the real problems occur, deal with them as what they usually are - individual isolated cases that need to be dealt with.</p>

<p>Dan</p>

[DickArnold]

It's amazing to me that the sharpness and focus measurably improves at the 400 end of my 100-400 when on a tripod, with mirror lock-up, IS off (eliminates IS spin up lag and is not recommended on this lens), the lens is properly focused and apparent shallow depth of field is accounted for. I have had quality problems with third party lenses but never with Canon EOS and EF in over twenty years of use. I have broken a body or two on my own, however. I have dealt very successfully with B&H and Adorama and, in fact, have bought refurbished Canon equipment through them as I knew it went back to the canon factory. . I have never complained when one of my third party lenses failed. I have simply reverted to OEM equipment exclusively rather than use third party equipment.

[ted_holm1]

<p>I have made purchase from both B+H and Adorama. My shopping experience has NEVER been less then perfect. They will always be my go to outlets for buying photography equipment.<br>

I have also made purchase from Amazon, which at times didn’t go very well.<br>

I wish to thank both B+H and Adorama for coming to the forum to answer a very simple question.</p>

[helen_oster]

<p>PS I should have noted a 'Thank You' to Henry for alerting me to this thread.</p>

<p>Helen</p>

[pierrearnaud]

Ilkka,

 

I find what you say about autofocus performance varying with distance interesting, as I have noticed that especially

with short focal lenses. Ifind it a bit more difficult to get dead sharp focus on distant objects with my 35 and 24, than

say with my 135 (all canon), the latter being amazingly accurate in all circumstances. Maybe someone with better

technical background than me could explain this.

[keith reeder]

<blockquote>

<p>but consider this. Reports of bad lenses are not rare.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>In comparison to the thousands and thousands of lenses out there, Alan?</p>

<p><em>Yeah</em>, they're rare -<em> incredibly</em> rare.</p>

[swilson]

<p>I have had a lot of problems with lenses and have sent back something like 5 to date. If I recall correctly 3 of them where way blurry in one corner of the image and sharp in the others. The other two lenses did not auto-focus well, missing focus by a huge amount 80% of the time.</p>

<p>I don't buy lenses over the internet any more, I want to see how they will work on my camera before buying.</p>

[henryp]

<blockquote>

<p>G Dan Mitchell: Or, worse, as happened to me a couple years ago, we publicly and passionately impugn the integrity of the company and its employees for their incompetence and unfair and uncaring attitudes... only to eventually see that they were right and we were wrong.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I have an incredible amount of respect for this post. This is the height of online courtesy and responsibility and I hold your integrity in high regard. I say this without knowing (or caring) who the retailer in question was.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Helen Oster: I should have noted a 'Thank You' to Henry for alerting me to this thread.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Happy to help when I can.</p>

<p>Henry Posner<br /><strong>B&H Photo-Video</strong></p>

[g dan mitchell]

<p>Henry, thank you very much for your follow-up comment regarding my own painfully-learned lesson. To be clear, the situation I refer to (in which I wrongly and ignorantly blamed a business for what turned out to be my own blunder) had <em>nothing to do with photography or a photography business at all</em> and most certainly nothing to do with B&H. My experiences with B&H have been uniformly excellent.</p>

<p>Take care,</p>

<p>Dan</p>

[jay_nair]

<p>I had 3 L series lenses. One of them back-focused quite a bit, the other two were spot on. Doesn't matter how many lenses Canon sells, in my case it was 66% good and 33% bad. I had to live with back-focusing till I got a body that was capable of micro-adjustment, which fixed the issues.<br>

It is for the companies to decide on what the focusing tolerances are and what percentage of finished good fail the tolerances. After all, if more lenses fail the QC test, it affect's the company's bottomline.<br>

Somebody mentioned - <em>Photography is about photographs, not about equipment</em>.<br>

I agree partly. Equipment does play a major role. Try focusing on an object with narrow depth-of-field with front/back focusing issues. In short to mask equipment failure, one would have to increase the depth of field.<br>

Do you think its acceptable to tell a soldier that the gun will fire only 99% of time.<br>

Quality Control comes with a price and I do expect L series lenses to have near 0 defects, considering the price paid for the lens.</p>

[maderik]

<p>Modern lenses are more complex both mechanically and optically than their counterparts from 30+ years ago, e.g. auto-focus using internal focus units instead of manual unit focus via a simple helicoid. Autofocus and it's interaction with the camera adds a large new set of potential issues and is probably accounts for the majority of the complaints. Lenses that did not exist then are common now (e.g. 24-70mm f2.8 zooms) so internal zoom mechanics are more complex to get over 3x zooms. </p>

<p>We also demand more from our lenses: not a lot of people routinely printed larger than 12x from 35mm. And if they did, they typically planned ahead, used a fixed focal length lens, a tripod, carefully focussed and stopped down. Today, just viewing an image full screen on my monitor is 22x the size of a Canon 1.6x crop sensor and it's trivial to inspect images at any magnification I desire. Many users now expect that a hand-held auto-focus image shot nearly wide open with a zoom lens will easily go 20" wide and more.</p>

<p>So I'd say QC is probably better because it has to be.</p>

<p> </p>

[DickArnold]

Jay. I worked in aviation R&D for several years specifically with landing and navigating aircraft in low visibilty and using GPS for this task. Even the best of equipment fails. It becomes inaccurate and sometimes unreliable or has production faults. This is true with all things we make. There is no such thing a hundred per cent. Our standards were five nines or .99999 reliability for landing systems. How we made our systems safe was to guarantee that if there were a failure that the aircrew was informed in less than seven seconds, that the system failed passively before bad guidance had an effect, and that system failure was held against very high accuracy tolerances so as not to stray from the desired course and elevation at critical stages of flight. . Nothing that we produce is a hundred per cent. Over the last twenty years there has been plenty of evidence that Canon and Nikon stand behind their products if you send the defective product in while under warranty. I am also a former military and civilian pilot. I have seen plenty of things go wrong with aircraft over a forty year aviation career. What we make fails. What we use fails prematurely at times in operation. What we do in aviation given very high stakes is to make sure that failure is passive, gives quick warning and provides a safe alternative in recovering from a failure. Having investigated aircraft accidents I know that on occasion that despite our best effort there are sometimes terrible consequences. Having been an Air Force test pilot and Quality Control officer I know that things break and sometimes don't pass field inspection from the factory. Although anecdotes don't make good science in my own experience I have had a 70-200 2,8 non IS that I have used and abused (dropped on cement, rained on, gotten muddy etc. since 1997 in a wedding business I formed after I retired from aviation. It has been used for newspaper work including lots of sports, weddings, other commercial photography and it still works as new and looks new without any maintence for almost fourteen years. I think that L lens is a very high class piece equipment. I regularly still shoot large swim meets with it. I think that's pretty amazing considering I have seen all sorts of electromechanical devices break for well over forty years in aviation. Having been a range officer in the Air Force I will tell you a little dirt can cause weapons jamming raise hell with weapons reliabilty . We never called our weapons guns by the way. We used that term for something else. I would like to see reliability figures for something like L lens although that data would be almost impossible to collect. I think the quality of today's photography products, considering the enormous volume of somewhere around 100 million units in 2010 put on the market is quite good thanks a lot to ever improving technology.

[pierrearnaud]

To further Dick Arnold's post :

 

1) in my experience, it's not just Nikon & Canon which stand behind their products, but also alledged lesser players

such as Sigma (see my previous post);

 

2) we should take Dick's opinion on reliability seriously, since he's a former USAF officer : after all, Murphy was a

USAF mechanics in the USAF during WW2. We are talking about the author of Murphy's law here : "what may go

wrong, will.". ;-)

[alan_rockwood]

<p>Dick,</p>

<p>I don't think anyone here is disputing the fact that perfection is impossible to achieve. What is at issue is whether the defect rate is high or low.</p>

<p>Let me repeat a point I made earlier. If someone receives multiple defective units, and there are many such reports, including several mentioned in this thread, it indicates with a high probability that there is a high defect rate.</p>

<p>I don't think you will find Canon or Nikon or the other makers releasing their quality control statistics. I will guarantee one thing however, unlike the systems you dealt with in the air force, photographic equipment is nowhere hear five nines reliable. It might be closer to 99% on average, and probably much worse for some products.</p>

[hjoseph7]

<p>I don't remember having any major problems with any Canon equipment(lenses/cameras) except due to user error, or not reading the manual, consider me lucky.</p>

<p>With that said, historically the Japanese have a much more stringent Quality Control work-flow in their manufacturing ware houses than other countries. I learned this about the Japanese when I took a business course in high-school ages ago.</p>

<p>Unfortunately I can't say I had such luck with lighting equipment purchased from long standing companies with solid reputations in the industry based right here in the US(Paul C Buff excluded). Not wanting to name any names, I once purchased 3 monolights from one of these manufacturers and had to return all 3 of them due to malfunction !</p>

<p>Another time I had to return the DC battery pack I purchased from the same company. My nature is to forgive and forget especially when the replaced item does what is supposed to. I figured it was just a glitch, so as I kept building my lighting system, I kept running into more problems.</p>

<p>*Each time I had to return an item it cost me extra shipping charges and more than a few grey hairs.</p>

<p>Recently I purchased 2 flash-heads(non mono). On both units, the clamp screw to attach the light to a stand were not long enough, so I had to call the manufacturer and order longer screws, this was provided for free, but it makes you think are these guys really Testing this equipment before it leaves the warehouse ?</p>

<p>I also purchased 2 5" reflectors separately for these flash-heads, which were supposed to easily clip on the head by the use of spring-screws. Unfortunately, the spring-screws on one of the reflectors was missaligned and did not fit properly onto the flash-head. Frustrated I managed to stretch the holes on the head with a screw driver so that the spring-screws could fit right in. luckilly that worked, because I just could not take sending another item back to this manufacturer, it was costing me too much.</p>

<p>So to answer the question do I think QC(quality control) is decreasing ? It depends on the Manufacturer, some have not adapted well to the current level of volumne, that they have to deal with now.</p>

[ShunCheung]

<blockquote>

<p>I will guarantee one thing however, unlike the systems you dealt with in the air force, photographic equipment is nowhere hear five nines reliable. It might be closer to 99% on average, and probably much worse for some products.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>We need to keep in mind that it is niether in Canon, Nikon ... Adorama, B&H as well as your interest to achieve "five nines," i.e. a 99.999% reliability, nor a reliability as low as 80%.</p>

<p>To achieve 99.999% reliability, you must have very thorough testing and multiple backups. In other words, if you need one 1Ds Mark III, you may need to buy three of them, and each unit that leaves the factory may have to go through several hours of testing. That kind of reliability is very costly. Are you prepared to pay say $50K for a Canon DSLR and alwyas carry a couple of backups around? Of course not.</p>

<p>On the other hand, if 20% of the new cameras require warranty service within the first year, that mean Adorama and B&H will receive a lot of returns and exchanges; that is costly to them. Canon may need a huge warranty service department with lots of technicans to perform those free repairs (at least at no additional cost to the customers); that is expensive for them.</p>

<p>That is why most manufacturers stike a balance between those extremes. Typically, a 3 to 5% return/warranty repair rate in the first year is normal. Anything much higher or much lower will be costly, for different reasons.</p>

[alan_rockwood]

<p>One of the mantras in the field of quality assurance is that the return for greater quality is higher than the cost. In other words, quality pays. I suspect there is a lot of truth to this.</p>

<p>Shen Chung, if your estimated return/warranty repair rate is 3 to 5% is are dominated by defects, then quality could not be defined as "high", at least not in my view. It might be an "acceptable" quality standard by some measure (probably as defined by the company, since they control quality) but it means that the risk or receiving a defective product is not particularly low.</p>

<p>For example, as a consumer I would not feel happy about spending $1000-2000 on a product with a one chance in twenty of being defective. I might be willing to accept the risk if there is no alternative, and I might be willing to buy the product if I don't know the defect rate is so high, but I would not normally feel good about knowingly spending my money on a product with a defect rate as high as 5%.</p>

[ShunCheung]

<blockquote>

<p>For example, as a consumer I would not feel happy about spending $1000-2000 on a product with a one chance in twenty of being defective. I might be willing to accept the risk if there is no alternative, and I might be willing to buy the product if I don't know the defect rate is so high, but I would not normally feel good about knowingly spending my money on a product with a defect rate as high as 5%.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Alan, first of all, just use my numbers of ballpark guidelines, not accurate figures.</p>

<p>If you are not happy with 5%, I can bring that down to 2%, but the cost doubles. As a result, say a 17-40mm/f4 lens will cost $2000 instead of $1000. It'll probably become very heavy and bulky so that it can tolerate some abuse. Are you willing to accept that? If you want to bring it down to 1%, it might become $4000.</p>

<p>When I travel, I bring a minimum of 3 DSLR bodies so that I have at least 2 backups because I want effectively 100% reliability. I also bring backup lenses. But I admit that I am very demanding; most people wouldn't pay for that.</p>

[scott_ferris]

<p>Alan,</p>

<p>Did you read the link I posted, twice? Is that not a perfectly reasonable assessment of the situation?</p>

<p>Do you realise that now with the enlargement ratios we take for granted, but never print, are showing up engineering tolerances far beyond the limits we ever saw in film cameras? Isn't it strange that the vast majority, the overwhelmingly vast majority, of complaints are glib "this lens isn't sharp" comments"? If the manufacturers quality control was that bad the IS units, the aperture units, the zoom mechanisms, seals, grips and switches would all attract as much criticism, but they don't. Seriously, at 100% on screens, things as small as a grain of sand on your lens mount can show a difference in side to side sharpness in optimum shooting conditions.</p>

<p>There are some duff lenses, cameras and planes (737-300's spring to mind), there always will be, but why assume that somebody who doesn't know how to set up one lens will be any more competent at setting up the next two they get? It is like saying this pilot crashed three planes, the planes are bad, I'd say it was more likely he was a bad pilot!</p>

[William Michael]

<p> . . . Gidday Scott,<br>

DXO not being able to test tissue paper, was funnier than the Pilot analogy - you must be tired today?<br>

Best,</p>

<p>WW</p>

 

[g dan mitchell]

"If someone receives multiple defective units, and there are many such reports, including several mentioned in this

thread, it indicates with a high probability that there is a high defect rate."

 

Not necessarily. Let's say there are, to make up a number, 20 reports. 20 reports against a total production of 100

units would seem to suggest a "high probability" of a problem.20 reports against a total production of 20,000 units

would not.

 

You would also have to look at possible explanations of one person receiving "motile defective units." This is not

dissonant with the possibility of a high defect rate, but neither is it the only reasonable explanation in every case. One

possibility is that out of the tremendous number of people buying lenses, statistically there is some probability that

someone will get more than one defective unit. Lightning can strike twice. Another possibility is that there is something

connected to the person. Possibilities include unrealistic expectations, poor testing procedures or analysis, purchase

from a vendor who does not take care of equipment very well or does not properly pack fir shipping, a buyer who may

purchase used copies rather than new or purchase from a shady source, something about how the buyer handles or

shoots the lens, and so forth.

 

My points do not disprove the theory that there is a problem, but your explanation is at least as far from proving that

there is a problem.

 

Dan

[Spearhead]

<blockquote>

<p>I would not normally feel good about knowingly spending my money on a product with a defect rate as high as 5%.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You have the statistical data to know this? Where do you get it? </p>

[DickArnold]

I will go along with Jeff. I stated in my post that it is unlikely that OEMs will never pubish reliability figures or even have complete data on reliability. I don't go along with speculation and having been in R&D I don't go along with exptrapolating obviously incomplete information. It is hard enough in aviation to collect information in a much more controlled environment. What I do know is that in succeeding years I have seen the quality of the equipment I use continously improve. I also believe that prices for gear would be much higher if there were not the economies of scale brought about by the large production volumes indicated by annual sales. Remember that most aircraft accidents, according factual information, are caused by human error. There is no way of accounting for human error by consumers in assessing their individual purchases. Lord knows after more than twenty years of Canon use I still screw up on a lot of pictures. As I said earlier, putting one of my four L lenses on a tripod, paying attention to focus and DOF, using mirror lockup and a remote realease, getting exposure right have gotten rid of a lot of fuzziness on so called bad lenses that I have had. I have had a lot of lenses and at least ten or twelve Canon bodies over the years since I bought an EOS 650 in 1998. I do not know what product defect rates are. I could not even speculate on that knowing that any failure collection, even by the manufacturers, is withheld or actually more to the point, incomplete and there is a lack of universally used standards to determine parameters to judge pass or failure on given products. I have used a lot of gear in the business I formed when I left aviation and mostly manual MF, 35 mm got me by and satisfied my customers and digital gets me by better these days albeit it is a good bit more expensive. In my humble, anecdotal, personal, and unsupported opinion I think the reliability of today's stuff is pretty damn good. Someone prove to me otherwise. Remember that nothing is perfect and although our standards are very high in aviation remember that we spend tons of money dealing with the probability of failure and mitigating that failure by heavily backing up systems with software and, hardware. We get no where near five nines on non- critical systems in aviation but when you are doing a Category III autoland with virtually no forward visibility it is essential ot meet those kind of standards. Because camera use is not that critical standards can be significantly lower but I certainly don't know where to find them. I suppose they are kept in secure locations at the various manufacturers.

.

[alan_rockwood]

<p>Jeff,<br>

The 5% figure was a hypothetical figure used for sake of discussion. It was not based on any data I have. It was based on an unofficial estimate Shun Cheung had given in an earlier post. My discussion based on this figure was contingent (see the word "if") and explored the consequences if the figure were close to the real figure.</p>

 

[Spearhead]

<blockquote>

<p>The 5% figure was a hypothetical figure used for sake of discussion.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That's pretty useless when it comes to quality control, which is measured statistically. "Hypothetical" data is irrelevant unless it's on an exam.</p>