Originally posted by Blue The reason Cosina can get the ridiculous prices for their lenses is that Pentax isn't producing many mf lenses anymore. And Samyang can't really go head to head with the lenses mentioned previously in this thread. I would rather use a 45 year old Tak (Tak, Auto, Super, SMC) as to even bother with a Samwhang.
Actually, the Voigtlander lenses were well priced. The Nokton was about the price of the FA 50, post hike and is a better lens optically. The others weren't expensive either - within range of DA Limiteds - people mainly complained about lack of AF not about their price when you brought them in a discussion.
The Zeiss were expensive but their coatings can hold their own against the Pentax ones. And if you look at the FA Limited prices, they do not trail far behind the Zeiss.
If you can point me to someone making less expensive lenses than Samyang, I'd appreciate it. Their 85 can go head to head with any 85. And I mentioned them because they set the bar for manual lens prices - if they could sell their models cheaper, they would. No one will beat them on price. They're a good reality check for how low prices would be.
Old Takumars are irrelevant - we're talking about a new line here - you don't expect new lenses from Pentax to sell for the price of old Takumars. Bringing up the Takumars is in fact the best argument against the DM-WR line.
A manual focus line from Pentax cannot be less expensive than Samyang. If it goes for the Voigtlander quality, it won't be cheaper than that either. And people didn't kill themselves buying Voigtlander because they wanted AF. Add WR and you get more expensive lenses than Voigtlander and closer to Zeiss prices. FA limiteds are already pretty expensive. How much market would there be for a DM-WR line? Not much I'm afraid.