The simple fact of the matter is that labor costs in Japan are less than those of Germany. As we saw last week, the Touit lenses are still hand built. And as Eric pointed out in his post, “the lenses are subject to excruciating individual testing, which includes sixty steps of quality control.”
SIXTY! Expected for your grandfather’s pocket watch, but a crop-sensor digital lens? That’s like making a peanut butter sandwich and then asking five chefs if you’ve made it correctly. While it’s impressive and bordering on pedantic to say the least, that’s Zeiss for you. The old saying goes, you get what you pay for. And heck if you don’t pay for it.