How can anyone personally not involved with Cosina make the counter statement, Keith ? That all CV lenses have been manufactured with cost cutting measures, and ZM lenses not ? Which is what I was responding to.
That last statement is not supported by the evidence, and some evidence suggests that you are, to put it indelicately, wrong.
If the C-V lenses show more de-centering or other forms of optical variability than the Cosina-manufactured Zeiss lenses (and Eriwin Puts's reviews pretty unambiguously state that this is the case), that is because more care is being put into manufacturing and/or QC on the Zeiss-branded lenses vs. the C-V ones.
That takes labor and costs money, which will raise the price of the product.
If you believe that price is determined by labor value, cost of material and QA that you get in return, good luck with your next tax payment
🙂
I am not misquoting Puts, but in contrast to you, I am including older reviews in which he rated some CV lenses very highly, for instance the CV 28/1.9 and 50/1.5.
I believe, as you said earlier, you have to look at specific lenses, and what they were designed for - just making a global brand statement is meaningless.
Evidence really suggests that for some specific CV lenses,
as well as for specific ZM lenses, there are QA issues. The similar wobbling of 50/1.5 Nokton, 35/1.7 Ultron, 50/2 Planar and 35/2 Biogon come to mind.
When looking at specific lenses of CV and ZM lens lineups, you first realize that there is only minimal overlap (the 35/2.5 vs. 35/2.8, and that's pretty much it). Either the lenses of the two lineups are very different in specs, or the individual lenses have very specific goals (such as the retro fingerprints of Heliars, ZM Sonnar, and 35/1.4 Nokton).
If you then look at the specs and price, who can say if the 50/1.1 was cheaper to manufacture than the ZM 50/1.5 ? Or the CV 35/1.4 and 1.2 when compared to the ZM 35/2. Do they seem cheaper to the user ? Are 2 aspherical elements cheaper to manufacture than none ? And no, CV does not always use resin asphericals as once claimed by our local Leica marketing representative.
We can believe and buy what we want, of course. I love my CV lenses. And I've owned ZM lenses. If you like to pay for brand, it's your money. If, in terms of photographic output, you are able to use the optical difference between 35 Biogon-C and Color Skopar, I salute you.
Roland.
