Jim and others are right.
The Soviet/Russian quality question gets asked over and over again over on
Rangefinder and Leica discussion areas. After seeing 10's of threads, the
concensus answer is always: "Quality depends mostly on the individual item,
less on the timeframe of mfg, less on the maker". Most big-name brands of
lenses are OK, but there were some very sad eras during the late 70's, 80's,
and early 90's where quality and workmanship was truly horrible for a majority
of the items. In general, more of the older stuff tends to be of higher
quality, as the original equipment and/or engineers were still around from
Germany to keep the quality up.
"You pays your money, and you takes your chances." The upside is that most of
the lenses can be VERY cheap if you search.
I know one guy from Finland who told me that he bought Kiev Contax-copy lenses
by the pound from a market in Lenningrad (when it was named that). He threw
away half of them in the trash due to very poor workmanship. Cameras were
bought where it took three cameras worth of parts to make one good one. The
upside there is that each was less than $5.00.
Skip
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>Subject: Re: [OM] What does this mean ?
> From: "Timpe, Jim" <Jim.Timpe@xxxxxxxxx>
> Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2003 06:20:43 -0700
> To: "'olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'" <olympus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Wayne Harridge
>>Subject: [OM] What does this mean ?
>>Extracted from an add on a well known auction site:
>>
>>"In the main, most all Soviet lenses are exceptionally good
>>and this one is no
>>exception!"
>>
>>What does this really mean ?
>>
>>Wayne Harridge
>
>As someone else put it so eloquently, it means the guy's trying real hard to
>sell the lens. Nothing more or less.
>
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