They are expensive Mike, like all German-made lenses ...but Nikons own Nikkor lenses are pretty expensive too ...and they are also excellent quality. But in my experience, the image quality produced by Zeiss is pretty much unsurpassed -- although the Leica lenses are amazing too.
There is much debate on the issue of Japanese vs. German lenses ....it's not that one is better than the other, they are just different.
I have owned a Leica M6 for over a decade, it is a terrific little 35mm camera -- there are many people who criticize the M cameras ...but they tend to be people who have never actually used one before. One thing about the Leica M lenses that is interesting is there is sometimes a very slight (barely discernible) distortion of the image -- this would usually be considered an error and would be corrected by the manufacturer ..but sometimes it does give the image a strangely 3D effect. The thing is, the colour rendition from the Leica lenses is so outstanding, I can easily tell which photographs were taken with the Leica as opposed to my Nikon.
