Why do Leica users have to pay more?

I am just curious. Zeiss is making two wide angle lenses: The ZM 25mm/f2.8

Biogon with a Leica M mount costs $1,152. The ZF 25mm/f2.8 Distagon with a

Nikon F mount costs only $874. Both lenses are made by the same company. The

Distagon is larger and heavier (thus using more material?) but it is cheaper

than the Biogon version. Both lenses do not use any exotic glass, and both use

proven old designs from the same company. Is the Biogon more difficult to

manufacture? Or Zeiss thinks they can charge more for the M mount lens?

i'd guess it has something to do with legal fee's in using another companies design. in this case, the m mount. maybe some extra steps in quality control are in the contract?

The Biogon design is better so you have the privilege of paying more.

Two different designs, maybe they figure they will sell more to Nikon owners (since there are

more of them) to cover developemnt costs?

doubt's it licensing fees... i believe that both the M mount and F mount patents have expired...

 

i suspect it's manufacturing costs... Zeiss uses the Biogon design in the SWC (38mm) and the distagon design in the 40 and 50mm ... if they are related designs the biogon is much better corrected for distortion (38 vs 40mm) and is a better performer overall... also believe that the SWC is pricier than the 40 distagon and much more expensive than the 50 Distagon...

short answer is yes.

 

Marketing criteria possibly shows less unit sales in Leica mounts. Nikon mounts probably out number Leica mounts 100:1, if not more. Greater sales (Nikon) allows lower price point to recapture investment/gross profit margins.

The rangefinder coupling cam is NOT a cheap addition to the lens. It also demands a much higher level of precision, as collimation of the lens has to be dead-on, the focal length must be consistent with the rangefinder cam, etc. For an SLR lens, collimation need only be good enough that it will focus to, or a bit past, infinity. If the focal length of an SLR lens is off, all that's wrong is the focusing scale, and they just don't care about that.

 

As for the cost of making the elements, that has to do with their radius of curvature, how thin they are, how critical their thickness is to the design, etc. The radius is much easier to control than the thickness.

 

Also, there is a tendency to make M-mount lenses more compact than other lenses of their speed and focal length, to stay out of the finder. To make a smaller lens design of the same quality costs more.

 

Of course, they would be idiots to ignore price elasticity.

They are two different lenses.

 

Also, perhaps in a perfect world manufacturers would price their products based on a fixed markup, without considering the different markets for individual products. In the real world, Zeiss surely considered that the Distagon's Nikon competitor costs $360 and the Biogon's Leica competitor costs $2900.

John beat me to it. The Leica M cammed lens likely needs to be hand adjusted where as the

Nikon doesn't beyond checkign the infinity setting (if it doesn't focus past infiinity)

Michael, neither of these lenses are "proven old designs", they're brand new computations, and different from each other. We have no way of knowing how much they cost to produce, although it stands to reason that a rangefinder lens requires higher mechanical precision.

Funny, when I first read this I thought you asked " Why do Leica users get paid more?"

Where I live in Asia these two lenses cost about the same. The ZM 25 should be about

$900. I guess pricing is set locally. I was looking at the 35mm last week and the ZF 35/2 is

$900 in HK while the ZM 35/2 plus thelens shade is $850.

C'mon guys - the days when manufacturing costs determined selling price are long, long gone. Now it's all about what the market will bear - ie. how much Leica users are willing to pay. Therefore it's the high price of Leica glass compared to Nikon glass that keeps the M mount lenses much higher. They've simply filled a price void between CV and Leica products. Cynicism aside it does give us consumers a wide choice and price range to play with.

Which is what Matthew said. I missed that.

Also the ZF line is relatively new so it is selling at a premium.

<I>Michael, neither of these lenses are "proven old designs", they're brand new

computations, and different from each other. </I><P>

Is the Biogon really a brand new design/computation? I thought the design was exhaustively

concluded in the Seventies with computer ray tracing and found to be near perfect then.<p>

I realize that one Biogon, the 38mm, has reformulated glass to conform with pollution

control standards, but the design is still the same. No?

Economies of scale? A previous poster has mentioned that Nikon F mount cameras probably outnumber Leica M mount cameras by a ratio of at least 100:1! Zeiss expects to sell more of the Nikon mount lenses. So the per unit average cost of the Nikon mount lens is far lower, even though slightly more glass may be used in it because of its larger size. Hence the difference in price. Of course, Zeiss may also have discovered that it is much easier to fleece Leica owners! :-)

Well, calling it "the Biogon" is a bit misleading: each lens branded Biogon is different and so requires a fresh design, even if it is based on the same design philosophy (and not all modern Biogons are). The term is being used pretty loosely by Zeiss these days. Originally Biogon referred to very wide angle lenses of nearly symmetric design, with the typical advantages and disadvantages of such designs; namely, compactness, extremely low geometric distortion, good field flatness, excellent colour correction and sharpness, heavy illumination fall-off at large image heights due to unavoidable natural vignetting, and fairly good speed (very good in the fifties when the first Biogon arrived on the scene). Nowadays "Biogon" is more of a brand name than a strict design type. Observe for instance the Biogon f/2.8 21 mm ZM, a lens that could hardly be described as symmetrical (it is in fact a steeply retrofocus design, similar to SLR lenses).

 

The true Biogons were staggeringly good designs when they came out, but modern retrofocus designs are finally starting to equal them, albeit in much larger lenses. And of course retrofocus designs suffer far less from natural vignetting (artificial vignetting wide-open is another matter, e.g. the 28 mm Summicron).

It is the price we pay for being feisty.

For the folks who own BOTH a Nikon and a Leica M body, which lens would you buy first? ZM or ZF 25mm/2.8?