For $450, Sony's 35/1.8 normal lens had better be a truly stellar performer...

LOL!!! The optical designs of Leica's 28, 50 and 90 Summicrons have nothing *necessarily* in common with one another, although they are all f2 lenses. The prices between these three lenses also differ radically, but for sound reasons.

People post the weirdest, non-factual garbage on these discussion threads.

Anyone got anything smart to say about Sony's pricing? May the NEX system is for rubes that love zooms and don't care enough about image quality to use prime lenses en masse? Thus R&D and manufacturing is amortized against a much smaller customer base?

I'm not claiming that that is TRUE! I'm just saying that at least that's a *plausible* explanation.

Someone give me the 1) market or 2) engineering justification for the exaggerated price of a very average specified "normal lens" in a system camera lens lineup.

Come on, some NEX fan tell me something truly insightful and intelligent. I have faith...

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"Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed." - Garry Winogrand