Peter Lacus wrote: > Adam, > >>>> big hit in Nikon-land, that's only because the Nikon 50/1.4 is fairly >>>> average in performance not because the Zeiss is legendary in its >>>> performance. >>> especially when it's Cosina Zeiss... > >> Yet several of the Cosina-built Zeiss lenses outperform their Contax >> predecessors. Notably the ZF 25/2.8(which is an entirely new design) and >> the ZM 21/2.8. > > don't get me wrong, I have nothing against Cosina. Actually they are > quite like Pentax and usually offer excellent value for money. But these > "Carl Zeiss" lenses are far from that - Pentax own Limiteds are much > better value IMO. > > BTW Contax(Kyocera)/Cosina doesn't matter, both are building lenses in > some automated factory so I'd expect similar results. The price of > original Zeiss/Leica glass is higher because of the labour cost involved > (hand assembly, testing), while this is perhaps slightly above standard > mass production with fancy name on top of it (an unnecessarily high > price IMHO). > > Cheers, > > Peter >
Pentax LTD's are an incredible value, costing significantly less than any other lenses of equivalent quality other than the Voightlanders and some Nikkor AI-S's. Price against L glass sometime and look how incredible the LTD's value is. The Carl Zeiss lenses from Cosina & Zeiss are actually a decent value compared to what their Contax predecessors and Leica competition. Note the current Zeiss lenses are individually QC'd by Zeiss on Zeiss test kit located in the Cosina factory in Japan. They're also one of the very few lens lines produced entirely in Japan or Germany (Cosina is the only Japanese lens manufacturer to produce all of its lenses in Japan, Zeiss makes a couple of the ZM line in Germany as Cosina isn't setup to handle floating elements). Even Leica can't say that (Leica only does finishing and QC in Germany, base production is elsewhere, IIRC it's Portugal). -Adam -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
