[Leica] Re:Monster High-tech 50mm 1.4 from Sigma and everyone else

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

At 4:14 PM +0000 2/5/09, Frank Dernie wrote:
>Hi Seth,
>If the part is correctly manufactured to the drawing it is the 
>design which determines the reliability, quality and longevity, not 
>the place of manufacture. Nowadays machines are generally 
>sufficiently accurate to produce parts which need no or minimal 
>selective assembly. If items are properly inspected there should be 
>no concern.
>FWIW the Nikon lenses of the 70s were notoriously variable from 
>sample to sample.
>Frank
>

I fully agree with all of that. The last part, about Nikon having 
very large sample variations is most definitely true. In the late 
70's I switched from Konica to Nikon for my reflex needs, and was 
astounded how much variation there was. The Konica lenses had been 
far more consistent. Their mechanical quality was almost always 
inferior to that of the Nikon's, but their optical quality was right 
up there and often superior, and much more consistent.

I was fortunate in having camera stores here in Vancouver that would 
have large stocks and would let me try lenses before committing to 
one. The more exotic lenses were somewhat less variable, but higher 
volume ones were often a trial. I think I went through about 6 35-105 
zooms before I found one that was good. All the rest had extreme 
decentering problems.

The 43-86 that Len referred to went through a couple of generations; 
the last one was almost decent but it came out not long before the 
35-105 more or less replaced it, and it also suffered from great 
variability. The early ones didn't vary; they were all terrible. I 
definitely prefer most dogs.

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