You know, my homeland is renowned for many things, but consumer optics was never one of them. Therefore, I can't help but facepalm when someone is trying to peddle the remnants of past attempts to copy a better product (in this case a pre-war German lens) as something unique, exotic or even desirable... at inflated prices. This is not an isolated case, of course, nor it is really exclusive to Soviet stuff - we all remember the "Petzval lenses" (with the 85mm and one other) selling for more than the consumer Canon / Nikon stuff of the same focal length that provided vastly superior performance. Or the deplorable Meyer-Optik 100mm f/2.8 (that later became a 95mm f/2.6... they even stole 5mm of the focal length and some of the aperture number! 
) that the producer priced at $1600.
P.S. Haha - the link at the top is a 404 now. Maybe they came to their senses and desisted.
P.P.S. Just to make it clear - I can understand the desire to go all lo-fi and dreamy (sometimes I feel that urge as well), but there's a ton of ways to do this cheaply - over here, the second-hand shops are chock full of ancient lens fare - and it pains to see that someone is asking hefty money for the replicas of stuff that really should be gotten for peanuts and only serve as a toy.
I have the utmost respect for companies that make new and groundbreaking stuff - even if it's manual focus and therefore I'll never be in the target group (Samyang, Mitakon...) But this is another matter altogether.
) that the producer priced at $1600.P.S. Haha - the link at the top is a 404 now.
Maybe they came to their senses and desisted.P.P.S. Just to make it clear - I can understand the desire to go all lo-fi and dreamy (sometimes I feel that urge as well), but there's a ton of ways to do this cheaply - over here, the second-hand shops are chock full of ancient lens fare - and it pains to see that someone is asking hefty money for the replicas of stuff that really should be gotten for peanuts and only serve as a toy.
I have the utmost respect for companies that make new and groundbreaking stuff - even if it's manual focus and therefore I'll never be in the target group (Samyang, Mitakon...) But this is another matter altogether.