On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 11:50 AM, William Robb <war...@gmail.com> wrote: > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bruce Walker" > Subject: Re: K-7 replacement? > > > >>> >>>> From what I've seen, the 55/1.4's on the border of the exotic range >>> >>> price-wise. What I've seen from it looks good, and it's better than >>> the FA 50 at wide apertures, but I don't think it comes close to >>> justifying its price over the other options in K mount (all three of >>> the excellent 3rd party fast ~50-ish lenses are notably cheaper than >>> the 55/1.4, with similar performance. Pentax is not in a position to >>> demand a price premium over Zeiss) >> >> But /they/ don't have SDM or the incredibly sexy felt-lined lens hood. :-) >> >> The 55/1.4 has become my default carry lens. I shoot portraits, indoor >> music gigs, outdoor flowers, in the rain, you name it. LBA never got me a >> better buzz. > > I wonder why one Japanese lens maker is not in a position to demand a > premium over a different Japanese lens maker. > The name Zeiss is about as meaningful as Retsyn nowadays. > > William Robb >
Considering that Zeiss-branded lenses remain Zeiss-designed and QC'd (Both Cosina and Sony have to run their production through Zeiss QC gear run by Zeiss employees before said production is shipped, all Zeiss stuff remains individually QC'd) I'd say Zeiss still means something. In fact their current line of SLR lenses is better than the old Contax versions across the board (both the Sony stuff and the Cosina-produced stuff). The kicker is the Zeiss design and high QC standards. And Zeiss remains a 'Japanese' lens maker, something Pentax can no longer claim. Cosina is the only remaining Japanese lensmaker to do all their production in Japan (Sony does all Zeiss production in Japan, but non-Zeiss lenses are made elsewhere). In fact at this point Cosina is the only lensmaker in the camera business who does all their production in the 1st world. I'd be a lot happier with paying Pentax's current prices for lenses if they were offering the same level of QC as Cosina does for the Voigtlander stuff, let alone the Zeiss stuff. But the move to offshore lens production seems to have reduced the level of QC, particularly with the few remaining older designs (the FA 50/1.4 seems to be particularly affected, with recent production having far more variability than MiJ versions) -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
