I'm not a photography geek, but it seems quite wasteful to cut a finely machined, $4000 lens in two. I feel about the same way any time I see a musical instrument used as a decoration-couldn't someone be using that?
In a sense, it is wasteful; the lens can't serve its intended purpose anymore. These were apparently instructional tools of a sort, however. There's actually a long history in engineering and machining fields of students doing cut-aways as projects. The skills required to create a good one are pretty considerable; it's not as simple as just sawing something in half.
If that is so, it may be justified. It would depend, in my mind, on whether using such a fine optical instrument was necessary to accomplish the educational purpose. Obviously, it may well be for someone seriously studying the construction of fine lenses. I would ideally want the end products of the exercise to themselves be used for such purposes.
They were apparently graduation projects for students at Leica's trade school.
Arguably it's not a $4000 lens until Leica puts it up for sale; I'm sure the cost to them for these was much lower. For that matter, the main reason these lenses are worth so much is they're made in very limited quantities; I think the Tri-Elmar-M 28-35-50mm, in particular, had a production run in the mid-300s.
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Arguably it's not a $4000 lens until Leica puts it up for sale; I'm sure the cost to them for these was much lower. For that matter, the main reason these lenses are worth so much is they're made in very limited quantities; I think the Tri-Elmar-M 28-35-50mm, in particular, had a production run in the mid-300s.
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