I think those öensrs are mostly rented. For a $100M film few thousand a day is nothing. Those lenses also come with a camera. If you want to use same camera and lens in a desert in Tunis and snow storm in Norway and get same quality of image without constantly changing broken equipment, you are going to either pay thousands for a good equipment or millions for delayed timetables for broken equipment. In that sense, it is not only 200 times better, it is your only option. So yes, sometimes the price is worth it.

Furthermore, you make one lense and rent it out, apparently some Panavision lenses made in 60’s are still in use. It doesn’t churn constantly electricity and GPU-chips sucking in more and more resources like these things do.and at the same time, it is quite hard to find the exact cases where the markup is justified, unlike with those lenses. Maybe in cybersecurity etc. but even there some Chinese model can be almost equally good or even better.

Those lenses save money in budgets and make money in getting people into theatre or streaming services to watch films creating profits way beyond their cost. I think in terms of economics that is productivity increase justifying the cost. We are still waiting for that productivity increase come from the AI industry.